Lost Purpose

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In a move that demonstrates its love of Inquisitions, the U. S. Conference of Catholic Bishops is officially investigating the Girl Scouts. Seemingly forgetful of the fact that a bunch of unmarried men with a record of protecting pedophiles is not above scrutiny itself, the Catholic Church now seems to think it has the right to police other organizations. The concern these men show for what goes on in other people’s underwear is beyond perverse—WWJD indeed? Both my daughter and my wife are Girl Scouts, and so I know it is not a perfect organization. I also know that it lives up to its goal of offering girls the chance to gain self-confidence and become empowered women. Women who are not trodden under the heavy feet of doctrine are tied to stakes and burnt, in good old-fashioned Christian charity. And why the fuss among our Roman companions? They’re afraid because of demonstrably false allegations that Girl Scouts “associates with” organizations to which the church also objects.

I was a Boy Scout for a few years. Already in those days jokes of homosexual leaders—and a few actual cases—were de rigueur. Where was the Catholic Church? Yet this year alone they have made strident moves against their own nuns and now, again, against the Girl Scouts. Where two or three women are gathered together, the Catholic bishops will begin to pick up stones. Better not read what Jesus is scribbling in the dirt. Some of my readers have problems with my biblical interpretation. I will now ask if anyone can produce a biblical prooftext for the church’s mandate to oversee the organizational structure of secular, non-profit, non-religious associations. What does the Bible say about that? Clearly what the Bible does allow sexually favors men. Where your testosterone lies, there will be your heart also.

All of this belies a lost of purpose for the church. Like the empire whose epithet it shares, the Roman Catholic Church is perceiving paranoid threats from every quarter. The purpose of Christianity, at least according to a guy called Jesus, was to help the poor and underprivileged and to love all people. Even those who crucify you. Now the message the headlines declare is that any organization offering women sexual autonomy will be investigated by the bishops. It matters not whether any allegations have a basis in fact. Christianity’s purpose? To assert male authority. To prevent any organization of women from achieving confidence or equality. To subjugate an entire half of the human race to the will of a single man. Does that sound like the true purpose of religion to you?

Same Sex Sanity

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When the people speak, sometimes it’s just nonsense. So the people of North Carolina believe in the exclusive rights of dysfunctional heterosexuals over committed homosexuals. And President Obama makes a powerful statement. As Americans we are reared to respect personal freedom. And what freedom could be more personal than the open expression of love? The reasons given for exclusivity of heterosexual marriage are spurious—certainly the Bible considers marriage in purely pragmatic, not sacred, terms. As citizens of their own time they were as much programmed by their environment as are people today. Marriages were arranged and the concept of sexual orientation simply did not exist. It is not that I castigate marriage—having been married nearly a quarter of a century myself I would be a fool to do so—but I in no way feel threatened by anybody falling in love with anybody else. Nor is it the right of any loving Christian to stand in anyone else’s way.

A God who created gender-changing fish to fry in Hell (particularly on Fridays) seems unnecessarily cruel. (Yes, such fish do exist.) A God who created other animals that exhibit homosexual behavior (bonobos, penguins, elephants, lizards—at least 450 animal species have been caught in the act) and then condemns it is surely working at cross-purposes with the nature he (always he) created. It has become quite clear from nature that sexuality is far more than procreational activity. If your kit is for kid making only, why do so many good, Christian couples have trouble conceiving? And don’t say “God only knows” because Fundies have no monopoly on questions that demand a verdict. What is God playing at here?

Intelligence and sexual behavior seldom go together. Religions, however, have a hard time keeping themselves out of the bedroom. Loving, committed relationships hurt no one. For a religion claiming to be based on love, declaring various expressions of love wrong is diminishing the good in the world. The Bible has very little to say about homosexuality. Good, Bible-believing Christians often turn blind eyes to the many more stringent passages about divorce and remarriage, but single out the very few that mention specific same-sex acts. Do they not see how such cherry-picking makes a mockery of calling anything holy? With all the excised bits, it might be more appropriately called the Holey Bible. For me, it seems they might find it more instructive to observe the moray eels rather than trying to cover their wrasses.

Battle Bibles

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“There are no atheists in foxholes,” so the old saying goes. No doubt, war is among the most stressful circumstances in which humans insinuate others (who goes to war happily and without reservation?). As a corollary, to keep soldiers comforted in hellish surroundings, it has at times been common to supply them with Bibles. In an exhibit I’ve not yet seen, the Museum of Biblical Arts in New York currently has a display of soldier’s Bibles. A poignant dissonance accompanies such a concept. In the newspaper story announcing it, the phrase that leapt out at me was “Bibles clothed in camouflage.” To be sure, the Bible contains many narratives of war, even demanding genocide in certain circumstances, but as a whole the most valued commodity appears to be peace. Too often, however, it is peace on our terms.

According to the article, Bible distribution began in the United States in the Civil War. Bibles were offered to belligerents on both sides. Naturally, taken into the viewpoint of the chosen ones, God is on the side of the reader. God is the ultimate conflicted deity. This is cold comfort to a soldier dying on the battlefield of all-too-human contention. In keeping with religious differences, over time Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish versions have been offered. Notes in these government-issued religious documents urge the soldier to find succor here. One need not read too deeply between the lines to find the message is the willingness to lay down one’s life.

In a world acutely aware of religious differences, the idea of supplying fighting forces with religious backing may seem questionable. Can there be sincerity in the message that Scripture of any description ought to comfort a person who has been placed in this unenviable position by human greed, powerlust, or self-aggrandizement? What reason have we for war any longer? If religion be true, why have we not matured by even a millisecond since Joshua invaded Canaan? Giving a soldier a camouflaged Bible is to place a Band-Aid on a gaping wound requiring many stitches. Far better to take the message of peace to heart and look for reasonable ways to solve our differences. Idealistic? Without doubt. But it might help to save the cost of distributing Bibles to those whose lives are seemingly less valued than those who begin armed conflicts in the first place.

There is no “holy” in war.

Biblically Married

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The Bible says—. Fill in the blank. Go ahead, someone will believe you. The problem with biblical literalism is that it is often held by people who don’t read the Bible. Well, it is a gosh-darn big book—well over a thousand pages—do you know how much quality television watching time that represents? So many fundamentalists are surprised to find out how little the Bible has to say about marriage. In fact, it says almost nothing. There are no marriage rites given, and marriages are mentioned but not described in detail. So when modern-day readers want to find guidance about political policy they have to—to be frank—make a lot of stuff up.

Take North Carolina, for example. Next week they are scheduled to vote on an issue of defining marriage. The intent, apparently, is to bring the state in line with the Good Book. In comes Matthew Vines, an evangelical Christian who’s also gay. Being a Harvard student, he has immediately impressive credentials. He has an on-line biblical exegetical exploration of what the Bible says, and more importantly, doesn’t say, about homosexuality. The other solution, to actually read the Bible, is a little too much to ask. Another part of the problem is that the Bible was written in a very different context, and to understand the Bible’s view on anything, you need to fit it into its context. All this Bible reading—and context too? Better leave it to someone on the television to explain it all.

Leonard Pitts Jr. is a columnist that I’ve come to trust. His good sense comes through in all his work. In Wednesday’s column, he highlights Matthew Vines’ hour-long talk as an example of what happens when common sense meets the Bible. For those who bother to read it, it will become clear that the Bible nowhere defines marriage. It says nothing about sexual orientation. The few passages on homosexual acts have a narrow context (that word!) that must be considered. Nowhere in the Hebrew Bible nor the New Testament is marriage considered a religious matter. It’s simply what people do. So as North Carolina heads to the polls, Bibles clutched in hands, but not in their heads, it might do to watch Matthew Vines as homework. I haven’t seen the video myself. An hour is just too long to take from my busy television-watching schedule.

Come Sail Away

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A profound sadness accompanied my reading of Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses, by Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa. I mentioned this study when it was highlighted in the Chronicle of Higher Education a couple months back, and have just finished reading it. My sadness stems from having been told from my earliest years that I was a natural teacher, but having fallen victim to statistics. Higher education, Arum and Roksa assert, no longer considers undergraduate education to be its highest priority. This is statistically borne out. Often it is because colleges and universities no longer have the will or incentive to retain committed educators. Concerned parents sometimes ask me what’s wrong with the system. Truth is, I worked hard on my teaching only to be forced out—I simply don’t know. A large part of it, I believe, is that in the 1970’s the US government instituted changes in higher education policy to advantage freer market forces (i.e., capitalism). Our educational institutions have been on the decline ever since.

Not being a sociologist, I can’t assess all the data presented in Academically Adrift, but the portrait painted is a disheartening one. Middle class and working class people pay enormous amounts to send their kids to college. The majority of students do not learn much in the way of critical thinking when they are there. It became clear, however, that one thing higher education does not erase is class distinctions. The findings seem to indicate that, if anything, college deepens the rift. Those colonists who long ago fled the tyranny of the crown replicated their own version of a caste system in their new nation. I have not been the only one to notice that those of us who grew up in very humble circumstances just don’t stand a chance of earning credibility in academia’s elitist eyes. Our only hope is education—precisely what many college students are not getting for their parents’ money.

My critique of higher education is accompanied by just a small morsel of hope. I cherish every school I’ve had the privilege to teach in, save one. In each classroom I found some students who were eager to learn, some of whom would become friends. Education is pointless if it doesn’t make life better for people. We could be starving dogs growling for the same bone (just like capitalists) living in a junk yard or a desert. Education alone holds the promise of lifting us out from our bestial predilections. With its Midas touch, however, the free market has transformed higher education into a money-making venture eviscerated of its very soul. Unless our society can learn once again to support education for its own sake—the sake of improving our lives instead of improving the bottom line for the top one percent—we will find ourselves back in our caves scratching the fleas from our unwashed bodies. Of course, at least the one-percenters will have plenty of cronies standing in line to scratch their noble backs even then.

Two Sparrows

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Once I found a baby bird blown from its nest. Many future priests had walked by already that morning, not even noticing. At first I thought it was dead, but then it lifted its head weakly and opened its beak in a soundless cry for its mother. Afraid to touch it, I pulled on some gloves, took it home and called the local animal rescue center. With my daughter keeping the chick warm in the backseat, we drove down the country roads hoping the little thing would survive at least long enough to get professional help. When the trees leafed out and the air warmed up that summer, I received a call from Animals in Need. The bird had survived and was ready for release—would I like to let it go near where I found it? They had worked hard to prevent habituation, and I brought the bird home in a paper grocery bag that it occasionally tested to see if it could find its way out. With my daughter, I opened the bag in the woods and the bird was gone in a flash. We barely saw it as it flew to freedom.

If I were a rich man, well, I guess I would run for president. Perhaps it was being overseas for a week, but the presidential race seemed to fall from the news with Santorum’s demise (if ever I believed in divine intervention, it was on the day he dropped out of the race). Of course, those in Britain who knew me wondered about the carnival characters running for the “most powerful man” job. So we’re now left with a very wealthy man who’s just like the rest of us. Ironically, I’ve been thinking about the Bible—an occupational hazard—and wondering when the ideal of Jesus’ teaching was forgotten in the haste to become the richest Christian on the block (or empire, as the case may be). The disconnect couldn’t be sharper between the man who said that if you wanted to please God you had to give all your material goods away and a man running for public servant has more money than the last eight presidents combined. And Reagan was no slouch on the financial end. Where your treasure is, there will be your heart also.

I can’t remember the last time I felt valued by a politician. At least the Democratic candidates attempt the lessen the suffering of the poor a little bit, but I still see people sleeping in the streets. The roller coaster that is the economy demonstrates its unfeeling course as some get rich then plunge to the depths only to soar out of them again into sunny spaces. According to the Gospels, Jesus said not a sparrow falls to the ground without God knowing it. Apparently that little bird I was privileged to rescue was part of the divine plan. That guy sleeping on the subway grate over there trying to keep warm? Well, the politicians apparently can’t see him, and I wonder if the God who watches the sparrows has noticed either.

Not a sparrow (golden pheasant)

The Price of Religion

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Gender is a religious construct as much as a biological one. The study of religion has brought me face-to-face with the reality that religion appeals to many women and to those who would manipulate them. Lately I’ve taken to reading the memoirs of women who’ve discovered the abuse their faith has doled out to them and who’ve taken moves to reclaim their lives. This past week I read Deborah Feldman’s Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots. As someone who has spent much of his life reading and re-reading the Hebrew Bible that gave fuel to the Mishnah that gave fuel to the Talmud that gave fuel to the Hasidic movement, I found Feldman’s narrative gripping. Some branches of Judaism, like some branches of Christianity, try hard to separate themselves from society. Their cloistered lives become secretive, and often by the standards of secular culture, incomprehensible. While reading this wrenching account of sexual domination, I kept wondering why Feldman didn’t try to escape. At the same time I already knew the answer.

I was raised by a religious mother who found her faith both a source of rules and a source of comfort. Unaware that religion can be a trap, women are frequently its victims. In a society that still refuses to give females equal opportunity for earning a living, is it any wonder that religions offer alternative routes that equally entrap? How do you appeal to a higher power when that higher power is, by biblical definition, male? Who will help you out when the largest religious structures in the world are male constructs? Yes, lately some religions have opened themselves to female leadership, but almost always at the cost of splitting off of factions that claim seniority and sanction from the beginning, when, they claim, only men ran this show. Deborah Feldman was trapped in a religion where her life, down to her hair and clothes and reading, was programmed by male expectations. In this continuum between religions we find the same progression in a series of degrees where men make the rules.

Many who read Unorthodox, I suspect, will see it as a condemnation of Hasidic Judaism. It is not. As Feldman makes clear, she has retained her Jewish identity, but she has let it evolve into a place where she is finally free to express herself. Gazing over the religious landscape, I see this as a place that many women find themselves. The very religions that had formerly held them down, however, continue to be male preserves. Even if women may join the club of bishops, clergy, or rabbinate, they do so with the constant reminder that they are only invited guests in what was once a masculine world. The world of men never voluntarily relinquishes its grip. As long as people are considered in the image of God they will always be by default male and female only as an afterthought. To conceive it any other way would be very unorthodox indeed.

Honor Thy Mother

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Earth Day should be an international holiday. Perhaps the most disturbing attribute of some varieties of Evangelicalism is their tendency to read the “Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it” of Genesis 1 to be a mandate not tempered by a literal reading of Genesis 4. As I noticed when tweeting the text yesterday, Genesis 4.11 has God say to Cain, literally, “And now art thou cursed from the earth, which hath opened her mouth to receive thy brother’s blood from thy hand.” Her mouth? What is this if not a biblical affirmation of Gaia? The earth, according to Genesis 2, is literally the mother of Adam. Yahweh is the male element, the fingers molding the dirt (those who have ears, let them hear), while the womb of this bizarre conception is the earth itself. She has a mouth to receive the blood of Abel. The planet beneath our feet, according to the Bible, has not only a mouth, but also hands (Psalm 89, for those who doubt). It is our duty to grasp these hands and save our mother from ourselves.

In the spirit of the day, I decided to fix that pesky leak in the bathroom sink yesterday. We rent, of course, and our landlord—the nicest I’ve ever known—can be a bit slow when it comes to non-emergencies. I fixed the kitchen sink a year or two back, so I stuck my head under the cast-iron monster, baptized by the drips that continued to appear above my head from pipes far older than Methuselah, to see what I could do. After trips to every hardware store in the area, watching bemused DIY experts scratch their heads at photos on my phone of the Byzantine arrangement under my sink, I finally had to admit defeat and reassemble the old faucets again. The drips that fall are Gaia’s tears.

When I was in college I learned of Pascal’s wager. A philosopher who liked to hedge his bets, Pascal deduced that if God exists then our eternal fate relies on our obeying him (always him). If God does not exist, we have lost nothing by behaving ourselves, Pascal concluded. While many Evangelicals find that reasoning attractive, they do not apply it to their mother planet. If God is not coming back any day now, we’d better take care of the planet that sustains us. If God does show up, against all odds, what have we lost? Watching the plants burst back into life after a gray and dank winter, who can help but wonder at it all? Literal or not, the earth is so maternal that we should all pay her the reverence she is owed. Even if it means being a literalist for a day.

NASA's picture of our mother.

Nun Such Luck

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It hardly seems to be news anymore when the headlines read “Vatican orders crackdown on US nun association.” Religions are largely characterized as men telling women (and milquetoast men) what to do. Perhaps because of our evolutionary, simian respect for the alpha male, most followers will resist pointing out inequities in the system just to have a smoother ride. The all-male Vatican is reportedly worried about how nuns of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious might be distorting the masculine teachings of holy mother church. No matter how much science the Vatican supports, it just can’t get over the idea that when God is found out there he will have not only a human face, but a human penis as well. The Associated Press article states that the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith—that is the organization of the Inquisition, my dear readers—found grave errors of doctrine among the ladies. Sounds like time for an auto-da-fé, n’est-ce pas?

Somewhere on its long and weary trek, the control of fellow humans for the sake of God has slipped into the rut of control of fellow humans for the rush of power. The Catholic bishops are worried about abortion (and other healthcare options for women). The Bible says nothing about abortion, considering life to coincide with the first breath. The chosen people did not have a conception of how conception worked (you can’t see the sperm or ova without a microscope, no matter how divine they may be) and so life began and ended with breath. The only reason to push the origin of life to conception is so that men may control women’s sex lives. These decisions are made by sexless men who wear dresses behind inscrutable walls of power. When nuns start seeking fair treatment for women it quickly becomes heresy.

I don’t mean to single out the Roman Catholic Church here, since many religions proclaim male superiority—loudly or softly. Back in ancient times when goddess worship was taken as seriously as the cult of male gods, a few religions did exist that gave women a position equal to, or sometimes even above, men. The priests of Cybele, for instance, had to undergo ritual emasculation. Strangely, religions with celibate priesthoods today leave their men intact, perhaps as a loophole for sin. I wonder how much more women-friendly official theologies would be if only eunuchs were allowed to serve as pastors. It is, as Genesis famously states, sin that “is crouching at the door,” and therefore it is better to remain gendered and pray not to be led into temptation. Perhaps we have something to learn from history yet.

Final Flight

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Back in the day before CD players, let alone MP3 files, my mom had a squat, boxy rectangle of a cassette-tape player. (Remember, I am a student of ancient history.) The cassettes we had were home recorded, scratching and hissing like a disgruntled cat, but they were the latest in technology. And, of course, they were religious in nature. One particular tape I still remember with terror. Narrated by a optimistically doleful bass male voice, it recorded the events surrounding those climbing aboard a plane bound for heaven, along with authentic jet noises. It was, of course, a thinly disguised metaphor for death, something I realized even as a child. As the passengers climbed aboard, anticipating that meeting with Jesus, I trembled in fear. They were all about to die.

I have never been particularly afraid of death. Not that I’m in a hurry to go there, but I have always sensed it as inevitable and therefore not worth worrying over excessively. I was one of those who grew up thinking quite a lot about it, viewing it from different angles, trying to make sense of it. I still do. While I was in England, Time magazine ran a cover story on Heaven. Now that my feet are back on the ground, I have been reading the story with interest since I’ve just been spending several hours on a jet in the sky. One of the most surprising elements in the story is the fact that some evangelical preachers are beginning to inform their flocks that heaven is what we make it here on earth.

This may not sound shocking to you, but having grown up evangelical I knew that the only reason we behaved so well all the time was so that we could get into Heaven when we died. This was the economic basis of salvation—you paid for Heaven in good deeds and correct belief. Not that you exactly earned it, but you did invest in it. This was the defining characteristic of Christianity. The suffering that is so obvious in the world (I saw three homeless men curled up together inside the Port Authority Bus Terminal just this morning) can harsh anyone’s paradise. The traditional “Christian” response has been to look past that to a shimmering, if imaginary, kingdom in the clouds. I am very surprised that some evangelical pastors are willing to risk their entire campaigning platform in order to help those in need. It’s getting so that it is hard to tell which way is up any more. Maybe that’s what happens when you spend too long on a plane bound for a mythical destination.

Sutton Courtenay

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Sutton Courtenay lies sleepily outside the bustling business complex known as Milton Park. Over my work time at Routledge in the United Kingdom, I have been immersed in the frenetic world of academic publishing. Putting a book together and selling it may seem a simple prospect, but in reality it involves many people at multiple stages who specialize in everything from writing content to ensuring that the four-color print of the cover looks just right. Sometimes working in publishing one can get so close to the trees that the forest really does become invisible. So it was that a friend of mine took me to Sutton Courtenay over lunch one day. The hamlet was very quiet. Next to the clattering pub—the only real sign of life here in midday—stood the gateway to an abbey long decayed to dust. Iconic thatched roofs and brilliant grassy greens make this place seem very far indeed from the negotiations and dealing that take place just down the road in Milton Park.

In a silent cemetery dotted with yew trees just behind the twelfth-century Norman All Saints’ church, rest a couple of very influential people. Lord Asquith, sometime Prime Minister, holds the most prominent place. A few paces away in an unassuming grave are the remains of Eric Arthur Blair. Unless you knew his penname, you wouldn’t be aware that you were in the presence of George Orwell. Orwell never lived in Sutton Courtenay. When he died in 1950, requesting to be buried nearest where he died, there was no room in the interment grounds. Millions of people live in London and millions have died there. The image conjured in the mind is distinctly Orwellian. Sonia Brownell, his widow, with the help of David Astor, found a resting place in Sutton Courtenay.

Today one would be hard-pressed to find a school child in Britain or the United States who has not been assigned to read one or both of Orwell’s prescient novels. Orwell’s anti-fascist views were often eerily prophetic. In 1949 1984 seemed a long way off. As the latter year came and went, some heaved a sigh of relief that Big Brother never arrived. Those who labor away in busy office parks, those who attempt to board a commercial airliner, those who live in cardboard boxes on busy city streets, and those who pay taxes so that the wealthy won’t have to, however, know that Big Brother is indeed alive. He has grown crafty with age and is well adapted to camouflage. He is known by many names: Free Market, Laissea Faire, Unrestrained Capitalism. One place he is not to be found is in a quiet churchyard in Sutton Courtenay contemplating a simple stone to a man named Eric Arthur Blair.

Rule Britannia

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Being back in Britain serves as a constant reminder of how conspicuous consumption has come to be a hallmark of American culture. When my wife and I moved to Britain back in the 1980s we soon became acclimated to the shift in scales to a size that seemed much more within our grasp. Yes, civilized people could live without undue excess and still be quite happy. Living in the States swiftly eroded the confidence that less is enough. Those who do not climb die. Back in Britain, there is evidence that the unabashed capitalism is spreading like a poison through this nation as well. Too readily the draw of gain and personal comfort outstrip our concern for other people. On a whole, however, the ideals of a society where all have health care and the elderly are not simply forgotten still remains intact.

Perhaps it is the benefit of having once been an empire that spanned the globe, or perhaps it is a hangover from having borne the burden of monarchy and a stratified society where noblesse oblige ensures that those below are not left behind. Not that such a system is without its faults. A century ago Titanic was setting forth from these ports and sank with the humble classes going first. Such tragedies show that even where noble ideas hold sway, the inexorable draw of evolutionary development will favor those who assert themselves. The monkey on top when the ship sinks gets to draw the last breath.

Back in my Nashotah House days I used to have recurring nightmares of sinking ships. In our attempts to extend mastery over the largest environment on our planet, the one in which we cannot survive, we face an uncomfortable reality. Even if those whose names still register a nod of recognition are those who had amassed the most wealth, they are equally as deceased when the hull strikes the Atlantic floor. Is it such a difficult matter to make sure that everyone has enough before allowing those enamored of wealth to accumulate superfluous amounts of it? When the ship sinks, those with the wealth to buy themselves extra minutes may have time to think. And if those thoughts are honest, they will realize that the cost has been too great all long.

Strixology

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One of the fascinations of parenthood is learning to see things through the eyes of a young person again. When my daughter was fascinated with dinosaurs, I found myself learning such tongue-twisters as micropachycephalosaurus (I spelled that without looking it up just now) and struthiomimus just to remain conversant with her. (That, and I never really grew up.) When she took a childhood interest in insects, I found myself picking up bugs that would have sent me running just a few short years before, in my bare hands, to take them home to show her. All of this is by way of introducing my current continuing interest in witch trials. My wife (and consequently our daughter) is a direct descendent of the Towne family that included three innocent women accused as witches in the 1690s—Rebecca Nurse, Mary Easty, and Sarah Cloyce. When my daughter found out, the next long weekend from school we drove to Salem. I’ve been reading about witches ever since. I recently finished Brian A. Pavlac’s excellent Witch Hunts in the Western World. Well, as excellent as any book about such a gruesome topic can be. In the course of reading it, an unexpected connection dawned on me.

Many of those accused of witchcraft in the early modern period in Europe were accused of killing babies. The vast majority of them were women, often midwives. Those so accused had their bodies stripped and examined in public venues, generally only to have confessions tortured out of them later, under the eyes of male magistrates. The church had given credence to the superstition that witches actually existed and were in league with the Devil. Suddenly as I read, I heard the echo of a familiar refrain that comes from modern witch hunters. Those who, like the magistrates of old, are men; men telling women what they may or may not do with their bodies. Who draw their self-righteousness from their religion and who claim that birth control is of the Devil. Who accuse women of killing babies. Texas begins to sound like the rebirth of the Holy Roman Empire. In all of Europe that was where the most women were slaughtered, in thousands, by men who burned with the zealotry of a religion that had lost touch with reality.

Time spent on history is never wasted. At times we seem to have come so far, but then I look back over my shoulder and see the suchomimus of unbridled male fantasy closing fast. We have worked hard to bring equality to all people, but at the start of yet another millennium, we are still measuring the worth of humans by the gonads they carry. Based on outdated views from a book that was once meant to be inspirational. Sadly, the legacy often left by religion is only a residue of superstition. The reasoning behind the witch hunts of yesteryear and those of today is the same—the desire to control the behavior of others. It is the cocktail of religion and politics that inebriates those who crave power. What was true then remains true today. In the words of Pavlac, “A history of the Middle Ages shows the intensifying entanglement of magical thinking with political power, which produced the European witch hunts.” Substitute “Modern Day” for “Middle Ages” and “Planned Parenthood” for “European” and see if you can’t find a pattern.

Lower Education

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Is there anything that can’t be sold? I think in the context of the free market, with its oxymoronic name, the answer must be a resounding “No!” A concept may be sold as a piece of writing or a patent or a trademark. Souls may be sold to the devil, at least according to the entrepreneurship of demons, if centuries of folklore are to be believed. A person who has betrayed his or her ideals is a sell-out. We can sell anything. Two related stories in the Chronicle of Higher Education confirm, in very different ways, this truth above all truths. The first piece, “More Notes on the Rise of Thrun Credits,” by Kevin Carey, notes how universities are in the business of selling academic credentials. Those of us who’ve gone through the educational grind-mill that leads one to poverty with the dubious benefit of a Ph.D. diploma to hang on the wall of our cardboard hovels, found this out the hard way. What matters is not what you learned or how well you learned it: where did you go to school? That is the most important commodity that a university sells—its name. It is sad that academia has gone after Wall Street, but there’s no changing the direction of this charging bull.

The second article, which I only spied because of a link on the first, was a tribute to Irving Louis Horowitz, world-renowned social scientist and founder of Transaction Press. In my days of desperation at Gorgias Press, looking for a new position that would make use of my editing and higher education (sales) background, I had contacted Transaction and ended up having three lengthy interviews with Dr. Horowitz. He was well known for his quirks, but he always had a kind word for me, and even read my book to find out more about me. Such determination and depth of investment are rare these days. In the end, I never did find a place at Transaction, although it was literally a ten-minute walk from where I taught my Rutgers classes on Livingston Campus. Publishers, it stands to reason, are also in the business of selling on the basis of reputation. Once Dr. Horowitz said as much during one of my interviews. “Without reputation, what does a publisher have to offer?” he asked.

Both of these ventures in which I have participated began as sources of disseminating knowledge. I was naïve enough to suppose that such ideals could survive the onslaught of that hissing serpent called finance, yet it is sad to be in a world where nothing falls outside its coils. Long before the birth of capitalism universities managed solvency and provided the intellectual inquiry that eventually led to its own demise. Publishers always sold their wares, but many pieces were published for the sake of their content, not their earning potential. That world no longer exists. In order to be paid you must have something to sell. All other transactions are null and void. We send our children to college to find jobs, not to learn. Maybe it’s just as well. Schools are busy with marketing and branding, so let our young ones learn the only system that works. For those interested, I have some swamp-land in Florida to sell…

Paradise by Half

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Some times the Bible is best taken in small doses. I’m no technical guru, but I do know that Twitter doesn’t always display the Bible bits I type in daily. Perhaps in some far distant future civilization that has learned how to recover “data” from fried pieces of digital storage devices, the Bible will be woefully incomplete. Maybe not woefully, depending on whose point of view sees it. Reading over passages worn smooth by timeless repetition, it is sometimes difficult to notice the harsh undertones. My twittering is up to Genesis 3 now, the infamous Garden of Eden episode. Over the last few days I’ve tweeted, “And the Lord God called unto Adam and said unto him, Where art thou? And he said, I heard thy voice in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself. And he said, Who told thee that thou wast naked? Hast thou eaten of the tree, whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldest not eat? And the man said, The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat. And the Lord God said unto the woman, What is this that thou hast done?”

The weary “blame it on the woman” trope aside, several things stand out. God seems to be interested only in Adam. Perhaps the divine Dad wants to take his boy aside for a man-to-man chat, but it seems more likely in the context that Eve is simply irrelevant. Even Adam’s response is completely void of Eve, “I heard,” “I was afraid,” “I hid.” For a man about to shove the blame off onto his significant other (sorry, Tea Partiers, nowhere does Genesis say Adam and Eve were ever married), he is strangely circumspect about his recondite female. Even God sounds surprised, “Who told thee that thou wast naked?” Hmmm, who else is there in the Garden? Adam suddenly abandons the first person singular and begins his response with, “The woman whom thou gavest…” Blame anyone but Adam. The tragic disappearance of Eve until blame is to be attributed should warn us that the remainder of the Bible will not be a happy book.

The first chapters of Genesis have a lot of uncovering going on. God, like a detective in a CSI drama, tries to uncover the mystery of the naked man. When man is found naked he blames the woman, not even bothering with her name. Much is revealed here. Coming as it does as the first biblical story of human interaction, this tale sets the stage for all subsequent developments. From this point onward, with rare exceptions, the story will be a male narrative. Women will be assigned to, literally, support roles. Is it any wonder that women gather to protest against women’s rights, when under the thumb of such teaching? I suggest that what is required is even more uncovering. If we examine the bare facts of the Bible, we might be able finally to get to the root of this problem. That root lies deep in the literal interpretation of mythology.

Who's missing?