Diggers, Ranters, and Muggles

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Great Britain, despite its relative secularity today, has historically been the Petri dish in which many religions have been cultured. A large part of this phenomenon derives, I suspect, from the relative indecision during a crucial period of what the official religion should be. It is quite possible for a state to dictate a religion, and historically religions have often served the purposes of the state. Governments support the religion that serves them best. Beginning with Henry VIII, however, Britain had a difficult time making up its royal mind. The Church (in Rome) had decreed divorce immoral, and the interests of patriarchy run deep in some men’s souls. In the flip-flopping between Protestant and Catholic that took place, many new groups emerged from the froth. The True Levellers, popularly known as “Diggers,” were one such group. Taking the book of Acts literally, they believed true Christians should have everything in common. They formed farming communities (digging the soil) to support themselves as dissenters. As with most utopian communities, however, this kind of radical sharing just didn’t last. After only two years the Diggers had disbanded.

Around the same time another sect known as the Ranters abounded. The Ranters, early rivals to the Quakers, held ideas well beyond the simple communism of the Diggers. Pantheists in an age of omnipotence, they didn’t really stand a chance of survival. They didn’t trust the authority of the church, and being Christians, as well as pantheists, they urged their English compatriots to listen to the Jesus inside instead of the one proclaimed in a limited way by the church and the Bible. Their antinomianism led to the perception that they were a threat to the social order. Interestingly, there seems to be evidence that the movement was somewhat widespread in the seventeenth century. Eventually they disappeared, absorbed into the Quaker movement or simply losing their cohesiveness by dint of their native antipathy to order.

Mr. Muggleton, I presume

One of those influenced by the teaching of the Ranters was Lodowicke Muggleton. Technically a tailor, Muggleton is remembered as a religious thinker (a rarity in itself) largely because of his writings and Muggletonianism, which he founded (and which lasted until 1979). Apart from the Ranters, he also rejected the Quakers. Muggleton believed only in that which could be physically embodied, denying many aspects of an early modern world still alive with miracles and superstition. Even angels were beings of pure reason. Tracing the origins of fictional concepts may be a fool’s errand—and if so I am well qualified—but I wonder if J. K. Rowling’s “Muggles” derive from the name of this former Ranter who came to see life as having no magic. Muggleton’s world had no place for witches, magic, or divine intervention, yet it was profoundly religious. Once religion enters the public domain, it is sculpted to the satisfaction of individuals in search of their own meaning. Some of those searchers will be Muggles and others will be Ranters and a few may remain Diggers. Without any of them, the fabric begins to unravel.

Another Dark Knight

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Batman was dreamed up in the late 1930s as an ambiguous character that fought crime and protected innocent civilians. The backstory emerged that he had witnessed his parents being shot down as a child, and eventually adopted the identity of a bat to frighten the perps. Batman never, in principle, used guns. Of course, the DC Comics character eventually scored a wonderfully campy television series that entertained many of us as children. It even spawned a movie. Then, fifty years after the original, Tim Burton gave us a darker, more serious Batman. The series of promising movies degenerated into the unforgivable Batman and Robin, and many assumed the flash in the pan was over. We didn’t need any super heroes. Christopher Nolan resurrected this bat in Batman Begins, and when I first saw The Dark Knight I was stunned. Good and evil danced a waltz so delicate that you were never sure who was leading. The frisson was palpable.

Thursday night the Nolan series’ final episode was released. I’ve not seen it yet, but from the moment I step out of the Port Authority Bus Terminal in Times Square until I arrive at work, I will have seen several multi-story Batmen looking down on the real life Gotham, explosions erupting and everyone wondering if Batman will survive this film. Yesterday morning the news opened with a horrifying story from real life in Aurora, Colorado. A gunman opened fire on a crowd of opening night movie viewers, killing at least twelve. Several children were shot. The gunman, like a real-life character from Arkham, was apprehended and claimed to have explosives in his house. I stared at the story and wondered what has become of humanity.

Facebook has turned into a venue for flying political banners. I’m always surprised to see how conservative people I knew in school have become—in those days no one had me beat for non-progressive thought. I’m truly amazed, at times, by the glorification of America’s gun culture that accompanies conservative causes. People want to shoot and want to glorify their right to shoot. I have, on rare occasions, shot rifles for sport—only at targets and only when others have asked me to. There is no denying the rush of power one feels, knowing that, like God, you can destroy the thing far distant from you with just a squeeze of the finger. I’m not sure I’m happy in a universe populated by such gods. I grew up a conservative, but also a pacifist. I grew up watching Batman defeat evil so clearly defined that no room remained for ambiguity. Yes, I grew up a conservative, but then I just grew up. I will watch The Dark Knight Rises and will not know what to expect.

Neither good nor bad.

Explanatory Value

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The dividing line between superstition and religion is thin and growing more effaced all the time. Nowhere does this become clearer than in studies of the history of religion. One of the critiques early made between “true religion” and superstition is that the latter involved magic, but today anthropologists find that line difficult to discern as well. Many religions are defined by their insistence on supernatural occurrences. The world as is, is by definition, secular. That’s one of the reasons Euan Cameron’s Enchanted Europe: Superstition, Reason, and Religion, 1250—1750 is so interesting. Cameron, an historian with a precise grasp on theological nuance, traces Christian responses to the world of the supernatural through the Middle Ages. Various theological responses are then explored as the author searches for that elusive distinction that makes one belief religious and another superstitious. It is really a matter of perspective.

Nowhere is this clearer than in the late Middle Ages. As Cameron notes, physics, to the mind attuned to God’s direct intervention in the cosmos, looks like the occult. How could a person seriously believe that two physical bodies, such as the sun and earth, or earth and moon, could attract each other? If you put God back into the equation just to take him out for an instant, this sounds extremely occult. Does not attraction imply volition? How can physical objects attract one another? Thus scientists such as Galileo and Newton often found opposition for their ideas based on the fact that science and superstition can also bear a passing resemblance.

As science’s superior empirical evidence became clearer, the God who’d stepped out of the room temporarily was eventually locked out. This vast universe could be explained without the supernatural at all. What was needed was better glasses. Microscopes and telescopes, and now cyclotrons and space telescopes, provide a consistent and ever sharper image of a universe that gets along just fine without the divine. But what of superstition? Has it gone away? We still routinely construct buildings without thirteenth floors. The sigh of relief from the worker or guest on floor fourteen seems never to be obviated by the fact that they are really on a renamed, empirically thirteenth floor. Your daily newspaper (although quickly growing extinct) will still offer you your horoscope before you hurry off to the lab. Call it what you will—superstition, religion, occult, magic—as long as we’re human no scientist or theologian will ever convince us that there’s not at least some whisper of a ghost in the machine.

Leggo My Congo

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When I first saw the trailer for Congo, back in 1995, I was a new father and my interest in talking apes understandably took a back seat. While the movie sat back there like a quiet child, it was slowly forgotten. Something prompted my memory over the weekend, so I finally watched it. Now, I had plenty of time to read the negative reviews, but I have a soft spot for both talking apes and bad movies. The really fascinating aspect of Congo, however, was the fantastic liberties it takes with the ancient world, particularly the kingdom of Solomon. Solomon has been under investigation over the past few decades. Archaeologists have not found evidence of the biblical opulence concerning both his wealth and fame. It seems likely that he was an actual king, but the king of a small nation that did not have quite the pull that later tradition granted to it. Still, Solomon has become a cultural trope for great wealth and splendor, and if a movie-maker wants an easy frame of reference, well, some people will recognize old Sol. Those who do recognize Solomon probably won’t have a ready inventory of his assets to interrupt their enjoyment (that presumes a lot) of the movie.

The motive factor that brings our unlikely traveling companions together in Congo, are the fabricatedly mythical diamond mines of King Solomon, located in the Congo. A self-styled archaeologist and professional con-man from Romania assists to finance a flight to Africa to help return a homesick gorilla (Amy) who also, by the way, talks. The only realistic aspect of the heroes is that the university professors are the ones who are completely broke and have to rely on corporate funding to get their monkey off their back (well, actually she’s an ape). And then there is the huge communications giant (TraviCom) that needs the diamonds for their communications equipment. And a bunch of Africans who just want to stay alive (most don’t succeed). Solomon was never really associated with diamonds in the Bible. His wealth is described in terms of gold, silver, bronze, peacocks, and suprizingly, apes. Why and how he would have managed a mine in central Africa when even the Egyptians didn’t travel there is never explained.

Well, I shouldn’t be so hasty about the Egyptians. Our Romanian con-man is also able to translate Egyptian heiroglyphics, liberally scribbled on the walls of the fortress surrounding Solomon’s mine. These preserve the story of the “myth of the killing apes” that generated an honest-to-god guffaw from my cynical self. New mythology and corny characters aside, the movie didn’t fail to reach me. I’m always a sucker for talking apes and under-funded education, both of which represent a kind of extinction. If Solomon really had a reach all the way to the Congo, and if he extracted the huge diamonds the movie showed scattered around on the surface of the ground and if universities could actually get media attention for causes other than the shortcomings of their football programs, there could be cause for hope. In what is a bit of probably unintended social commentary, after the mine is destroyed in a volcanic eruption, only one diamond remains. And that diamond benefits neither the single surviving African nor the underfunded university professor. It becomes a weapon in the hands of a large, private corporation.

Your Brain on Plastic

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“Cogito ergo sum,” Descartes famously, and apparently erroneously, wrote. As technology races wildly ahead, those of us of biological origin are left feeling somewhat insignificant. An article in Monday’s Chronicle of Higher Education on “The Strange Neuroscience of Immortality” touches on many of the issues that are the very pulse of religion. Revolving around the theory of Dr. Ken Hayworth that a preserved brain, sealed in plastic instants before death, may in the future be thoroughly mapped and resurrected, Evan R. Goldstein explores the idea of immortality. Hayworth’s belief is that a thoroughly mapped brain, reconstructed artificially, would be the ego of cogito. The self. Despite all our advances in science, we don’t know what it is.

As Goldstein makes clear in his article, this transfer of consciousness and possibility of immortality is not mainstream science. In fact, most scientists rapidly distance themselves from it. Many cite the unscientific nature of the very enterprise, but I wonder if it might not have a more religious basis. Immortality is the ultimate of religious ideals. Christians generally recognize it as resurrection, and other monotheistic traditions offer a heaven after death (sometimes, to some people). Is that not all at stake here? If we manage to assure some kind of human immortality, have we not just robbed ourselves of heaven? Quite apart from the technological hurdles and uncertainties about what the self/mind/soul is, is not immortality what separates gods from humans?

The problem with gods is that they don’t get to go home at the end of the day. Would Heaven be so great if you just left another tough day in the universe full of sadness, violence, and pain? Hayworth suggests that a reconstructed brain placed in a mechanical body (robotic, probably) would have the potential of lasting forever. It will, however, be expensive. That means that only the very wealthy will be able to afford the procedure, if it ever works. Imagine that world: a planet full of immortal, wealthy entrepreneurs who can spend eons without sleep, trying to acquire yet more for themselves while knocking the competition on its metal rump. It really doesn’t sound like Heaven to me. But then, what would I know? To me cogito sounds like a snack food.

Like Clockwork

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It is probably safe now to reveal something that occurred at Grove City College over a quarter of a century ago. I often feel I must justify my choice of college, but I was a first-generation college student who knew nothing about higher education. I was raised with a Fundamentalist orientation, Grove City was a “Christian college,” and it was only about 30 miles from home. I do give Grove City credit for shaking me out of my Fundie way of thinking; as a religion major I met some genuine honest thinkers in the department who let me question the inconsistencies of Fundamentalist beliefs. I broke free in my own time. One of the literature professors, however, insisted that we both read and watch the movie version of A Clockwork Orange. It was my senior year and I felt ready to handle it. As I watched the movie again over the weekend, the first time since college, I was shocked that the institution Grove City College has become would have ever allowed such a movie to be shown. Although there is Kubrickian nudity, the movie was initially given its rating because of the violence, which, by today’s standards, is somewhat tame.

Anthony Burgess’ book is so well known that I don’t need to summarize the story here. What struck me in a new way was the religious element in the plot. While Alex is in prison, and wanting to be reformed, it is the prison chaplain who advises him against it. Undergoing the famous movie treatment, Alex indeed proves docile after testing, leading the priest to declare, “He has no real choice, has he? Self-interest, fear of physical pain, drove him to that grotesque act of self-abasement. Its insincerity was clearly to be seen. He ceases to be a wrongdoer. He ceases also to be a creature capable of moral choice.” Of course, the government is satisfied with this kind of morality, the sort that upholds appearances at any price to humanity.

What I find particularly disturbing is Burgess’ prescience. A Clockwork Orange was published fifty years ago, and since that time we have seen politics shift from care of the citizen to the ultimate window dressing of courting the Moral Majority to make it look as if all governmental decisions are moral. The Tea Party seeks to underscore that charade, claiming that all who would argue for Alex’s humanity deserve the fate that he so wrongfully dispensed before his “reform.” This view of the world suffers for its lack of complexity. Humans do not come in black and white. Ironically, Burgess chose to make the clergyman the only the objector to the inhuman treatment imposed on Alex. This is the kind of dilemma on which Stanley Kubrick thrived, but it has become even more poignant in the decades since his movie was released. True, Kubrick’s film is based on the apocopated American version of the novel, perhaps obscuring the intended meaning of Burgess. But isn’t that exactly what he was attempting to do?

Risky Business

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Scientology has been back in the news with the divorce of Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes. Media pundits like to point out the highly unorthodox nature of Scientology, but such critiques overlook the vital nature of New Religious Movements. Many of us are raised believing that religions, to be “true,” must possess at least a modicum of antiquity. We routinely reject the science of the first century of the common era (well, maybe the Creationists don’t), but we accept without question that the religious views of the time were on-spot and unchanging. It comes as a surprise, therefore, when a new religion like Mormonism or Scientology prospers. Accusations of being money-driven are rife, but then, who has recently audited the Vatican or CBN? Religions are “non-profit” by definition, but they certainly do raise money. As players in the capitalist game, I say more power to them. Who else can make tremendous profits and claim tax-free status (apart from major corporations, I mean)? Most believers are happy to throw a few dollars in the direction of some guru who will deliver him or her from hell, at least.

The fact that true believers in revelation don’t like to face is that every religion started some place. It would be a different story were there only one religion that ever developed, but as soon as someone started to declare their belief orthodox it was only a matter of time before heterodoxy joined the conversation. In the light of this wide-open world of religious beliefs, I think that creativity has been undervalued all along. Say what they might, critics have to admit that Mormonism, Scientology, and even Jehovah’s Witnesses have to score high on the originality scale. Since Yahweh has a lot of competition in the deity market these days it will be difficult to find an adequate final arbiter.

I would like to suggest a panel of experts, like on the appropriately titled “American Idol.” Gods are often hard to pin down, even with email and Twitter and Facebook. To fill in our distinguished panel of judges, then, who might we choose? The clergy of any tradition, I’m afraid, will be biased and so we might look elsewhere. Politicians too should be excluded since their remit is exploitation. Besides, they don’t often recognize creativity as something worth funding. Where does that leave us? We can’t use the average person, because who is going to watch their peers on television. Famous people. An athlete would be a good choice since overthinking religions can lead to trouble. We might need to avoid Tebow, however. Hollywood is said to be godless, so an actor would have great appeal—besides, good looks must equate to good theology, mustn’t they? Who will our third panelist be? Probably a writer; they are creative and their names are well-known. They would add intellectual heft without having the same star status as their more visible colleagues. Funny, L. Ron Hubbard was a science fiction writer whose religion thrives in Hollywood and who enjoyed the sport of yachting. We may have our winner here!

Religion or science fiction?

Tree Goddess

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If you’re missing a virgin, I suggest you might try West New York. According to the local section of Friday’s New Jersey Star-Ledger an alleged image of the Blessed Virgin Mary has appeared in “an unusual tree” in West New York. The local diocese, no doubt correctly, suggests that the “image” is probably “just some discoloration that resembles Our Lady of Guadalupe.” Those inclined to accept pareidolia as fact, however, have already made up their minds. The tree has been barricaded off and flowers have been laid at its base and cell phone shutters are making their electronically fabricated snapping noises. A Google image search of “Virgin Mary West New York” brought up more than a million hits. People are desperate for a miracle.

Back when I was working on my dissertation, the tree goddess was inevitably Asherah. One of my unspoken speculations from those days was that trees are evocative plants, easily playing to the human imagination. In the right conditions a young tree can be mistaken for a person at a distance. The branches, particularly in late autumn and winter, resemble gnarled fingers reaching for the sky or any unwary passer by. And the natural knots and scars on tree trunks (such as in the current example) readily fire unlikely associations. They can be eyes, mouths, faces, or other anatomical bits—as people we project ourselves onto any likely (sometimes unlikely) avatars in the natural world. If images are to be believed, hundreds of people are devoutly weeping and praying at an entirely natural formation in the wood less than two miles from the most sophisticated city in the country.

Even with the Roman Catholic Church urging caution, blind belief is not dissuaded. What does it say about us that we so deeply desire a sign from above? This is the kind of question those who claim that a reasoned materialism will inevitably trump superstition must ask themselves in profound reflection. The fact is that people always have (and always will) assigned meaning to what they see. It is the gift and curse of evolution. “I think I shall never see / A poem as lovely as a tree,” Joyce Kilmer famously wrote before being killed in World War One. This New Brunswick, New Jersey native, who died at 31 in the killing fields of France, might wonder that so many stop at that first famous stanza. To those thronging in West New York, I would recommend a little Kilmer with their miracle. Let’s leave the last word to the poet: “A tree that looks at God all day, And lifts her leafy arms to pray…”

New Salzburg

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For some reason Austria is on my mind. It been more than two decades now since I have been there, but I recently decided to read a little of the history of Salzburg. My interest revolved around a case of religious intolerance that took place well before the days of political correctness, but after the idea of religious freedom was being promoted in New World colonies. Two centuries after Martin Luther’s theses stirred the world (perhaps the last time in history a religious thesis has received such attention), the Roman Catholic Archbishop—and Count! (rank has its privileges)—Leopold Anton von Firmian decided to expel the Protestants from Salzburg. Religious diversity was frequently seen as a threat to civil authority. Either Protestants would recant or be forced from their homes in the winter, often losing everything they had in the process. A substantial number of citizens were exiled and found little in the way of refuge. Prussia finally offered some quarter and others made their way to England or to a then religiously tolerant Georgia.

Religious imperialism is a funny phenomenon. Religions, as sets of teachings, often emphasize the just and fair treatment of other people. When powerful people (or power-hungry people) become religious they find a great mind-control technique available in it. Popes, for instance, very quickly ceased being pastors and instead styled themselves as princes. This was a safe move since Jesus was king, and since he’s in heaven any attempts at usurpation are bound to be suspect. As a co-regent, however, various privileges apply! This is something Protestant reformers very swiftly learned as well. John Calvin was practically in charge of Geneva, and who can think of Lynchburg, Virginia without accounting for Jerry Falwell or Virginia Beach without Pat Robertson? Religion, by its genetic nature, seeks to take over and control.

In this it is not so different from other aggressive ideologies such as capitalism or communism. The problem is that religions claim sanction from the highest authority, and once a believer is convinced of that no amount of reason is sufficient to dissuade him or her. So it was that an Austrian Count, also an Archbishop, decided to turn out members of his own putative religion (Christianity) into a harsh winter where many would die and others would live the remainder of their lives in exile. Were this the hallmark of one religion alone we might have united together as a species and cast it out. Unfortunately history has repeatedly shown us that even the most placid religions can quickly form the dark face of a demonic storm front if certain of their privileges are threatened. No one likes to be wrong. In the game of religions, however, there must be losers if anyone is right. Where is the New Salzburg? It may be going by a different name these days.

Digging Deeper

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A propos of apes, I’m not sure whence derives the draw of Planet of the Apes on me. I watched the movie with fascination as a child—since the obviously satanic delusion of evolution was impossible this had to be pure fantasy (and perhaps just a little dangerous). The movies just kept on coming, Beneath the Planet of the Apes, Escape from the Planet of the Apes, and Battle for the Planet of the Apes, each with their new twist on the theme that we are the beasts. Recently I watched the second installment, Beneath the Planet of the Apes. It had been years since I’d seen it, although I remembered the terrible mutants and their possession of an atomic bomb. Although the geography is badly distorted, it is made amply clear that the church where the bomb is stored is St. Patrick’s Cathedral on (beneath?) Fifth Avenue. As Brent makes his way into the partially intact cathedral he finds a priest praying to a missile with the letters alpha and omega inscribed on one of its fins.

Since last seeing the movie I spent a lengthy stint among the Episcopalians. Naturally I became thoroughly acquainted with the liturgy and therefore could appreciate subtleties in the movie I had missed before (nothing is ultimately wasted, it seems). As the mutants prepare to set off the doomsday bomb that will obliterate the entire planet—both apes and humans—they recite many prayers from the mass, substituting the word “bomb” for “God” and “Holy Fallout” for “Holy Spirit.” Okay, so maybe “subtleties” was the wrong word. Of course, back in the early 1970’s this was a very real concern, the arms race was well underway. Despite the overacting and forced script, the movie did offer considerable social commentary. Ironic and iconic Charlton Heston condemns the unadulterated praise of such a lethal weapon (or was it just missile envy?), even as he falls, shot, onto the controls, accidentally destroying the earth.

The fascinating aspect of this social critique is that the players may have changed, but the drama remains the same. Those who protest evolution praise the build-up of native strength so that the true Christians might obliterate their enemies first and better than they will obliterate us. One gets the feeling that destruction is not so bad a fate as being proven wrong. Somewhere along the millennia religion slipped its mooring from being an ethical way of life to become an extreme way of believing. And yet people are still the same. And the Planet of the Apes movies continue to appear, ever evolving. When it comes down to the final scene, however, it is not the evolved apes who destroy us. No, it is the utterly self-righteous humans who decide that if they can’t have it all, nobody will have any of it. In the name of the bomb, and the holy fallout, amen.

The Times they are a’Chanin

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Across from Grand Central Terminal in Midtown Manhattan rises the Chanin Building. Named for Irving S. Chanin, the tower is no longer easily picked out among Manhattan’s dizzying skyline, but the building is a monument to the humanistic spirit that was beginning to flower in the 1920s between the harsh realities of the world wars. Outside the building, above the ground floor shops, runs a bronze frieze that still catches the breath of visitors who stop to stare for a moment or two. Interestingly, the frieze is a monument to evolution, showing the development of “lower” life forms among the water flourishing into birds and fish. Although prosperity gospelers would object to its inherent Darwinian message, they would appreciate a huge monument to the triumph of capitalism in Chanin’s dream, as much of Manhattan reflects.

Antipodes are a fact of geography and human understanding. It would seem that they are also a paradigm for those who “want it all.” Perhaps it is ironic in coming from a Disney movie, but I’ve always found Mary Poppins’ maxim apt: “enough is as good as a feast.” Indeed, leaving the table after eating more than I need I feel miserable and disgusted. There is only so much that people can have, and this is a matter of physics as well as biology. If God wanted us to be wealthy, why didn’t he make us that way? (Surely the God who promotes personal wealth must be male.) Evolution and capitalism could be a dangerous mix should we forget that evolution is not goal-oriented. Natural selection works by trial-and-error, only the trial isn’t planned or intelligent.

This dialectic reminds me of that old chestnut, Beneath the Planet of the Apes. Ursus, the gorilla warlord, gives a jingoistic speech concerning the Forbidden Zone. “It is therefore our holy duty to put our feet upon it, to enter it, to put the marks of our guns and our wheels and our flags upon it.” Of course, this second, lesser installment of the Planet of the Apes movies raises the entire specter of nuclear war to a disturbingly sacred level, but that’s a topic for another post. What I notice is the full circle of evolution here—not just human to ape, but human to capitalist ape. Apes that wish to own and control their entire world, including that region where, in the original movie, both ape and human fear to go. It should not surprise me to see talking apes in Manhattan, but then again, it might just be the bright sun reflecting off the bronze of Irving Chanin’s monument to economic growth.

For the Love of Gold

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Do you ever get that feeling that you’ve been led along by a false premise that has gotten out of hand, like a practical joke that has gone too far? If I had to rate the books discussed on this blog in terms of urgency, Jeremy Carrette and Richard King’s Selling Spirituality: The Silent Takeover of Religion would top that list. I’ve felt for a long time that something’s been wrong, but I didn’t possess the training or resources to discern what it might be. I think Carrette and King may have named it. Just a few pages in and I knew there was profound insight here. Religion has been taken over by capitalism and the result is that alternatives to the godless, sanctified free market are rapidly disappearing. In a truly Orwellian sense, we have been taught the language of capitalism and have lost the ability to frame our ideas in any other way. Free markets take no prisoners—one must assimilate or die. Religions, which had traditionally served as correctives to selfishness and greed, have been co-opted into the forces of unbridled gain for the few. Amorphously marketed as “spirituality,” what sounds like religious conviction now lives in the service of consumerism.

By slowly shifting all our language and metaphors into those of Reaganomics (the very fact that you know what that means shows how far gone we already are) the capitalist machine, supported by the flaccid terms of spirituality, has established a new god—capital—and has pilloried any who dare question it. Think of the trashy phrase “prosperity gospel” for just one minute and you’ll see what I mean. Those of us who disagree with the orthodoxy that meaning can be found in money have become the resistance in a war we did not start. The twin hellions of privatization and corporatization have sunk their fangs deeply into the jugular of society and its old-fashioned value of caring for others. People are, like strangers in a strange land, just marks for the powerful. We’ll buy anything if it looks attractive enough.

The problem with consumerism is that it is easy. We all love to play along because—who knows?—we might end up getting rich in the process. We have gained the world and lost our souls. Carrette and King show clearly how entrepreneurs have learned to market the language of religion while divesting it of its venom. Go along, it urges, everything is fine. Even the economic collapse brought on scarcely two decades after Reaganomics has failed to convince the average citizen that they are but a petroleum bi-product to grease the unrelenting gears of commerce. Anything, even salvation, can be sold. Back in April I stood beside the graves of Eric Arthur Blair (George Orwell) and Karl Marx. And maybe in an unguarded moment I shed a tear or two that critical thinking seems to have been buried along with those who were brave enough to state the obvious.

Scotland’s Cryptic Evangelist

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Many years ago it was now, on a Victoria Day bank holiday weekend, my wife and I were on a camping trip with friends in the Scottish highlands. Pitching our tents on the banks of Loch Ness, we joked about the potential danger—after all, Nessie had reputedly attached St. Columba, therefore even the pious had no refuge. Early the next morning, our party still intact, we drove to Urquhart Castle, arriving before it opened. Out on the loch we saw something moving through the water, leaving a wake. It was breaking the surface but was too small to be a boat and it was not a bird. It moved at constant speed until it was out of sight. This was in the days of actual film, and slide processing was “dear” as the Scots say, but I snapped off a photo anyway. The slide is too indistinct to make a diagnosis, but our friends, who had a better camera, came to the conclusion that it was a small boat. After looking at their enlargement, I still have my doubts. I’ve always sat on the fence for the Loch Ness monster. Certainly it seems improbable, but we have only a cursory knowledge of sea creatures and Loch Ness is deep and long and isolated. Is there a Loch Ness monster? Maybe yes and maybe no.

Of course, Nessie has been in the news, as my wife pointed out, backed by the considerable creativity of the creationist camp. Seizing a living dinosaur as the death knell of evolution, Fundamentalist schools in several states are using textbooks that argue Nessie’s existence proves that dinosaurs didn’t evolve and that they still walk (or at least swim) among us. An excellent corrective to this “either evolution or special creation” is Victor Stenger’s book God: The Failed Hypothesis, that I reported on a few weeks back. With apologies to the late Stephen Jay Gould, this tactic puts an entirely new spin on the concept of the hopeful monster theory.

Religion and monsters are thoroughly intermeshed. Often this intermingling comes as the result of revulsion against the unclean or impure aspects of life that monstrosity represents. Numerous analysts have shown that monsters tend to be unholy mixes of elements that religions prefer to keep widely separated—animals that would never have made it onto the ark, yet somehow have arisen since the deluge. Human fear at contamination has an excellent basis in evolution; those who never developed the sense to stay away from the sources of contamination grew sick and died off. Monsters, in this sense, serve as useful reminders for avoiding the “strange fire” that so displeases the Lord. Reading how good Christians are now reaching out the right hand of fellowship to their monstrous brethren, I wonder if a long-held belief is being imperiled. Those who would swim with monsters must be very cautious indeed, for above all things, monsters are notoriously unpredictable.

Black Swain

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In a somewhat rare move, I watched a film that was released less than five years ago this weekend. Black Swan is difficult to classify since it crosses so many genres with relative ease and it left me strangely reflective. Although called a “thriller,” the frenetic pacing and sense of outside menace of most thrillers is lacking. Black Swan includes some horror elements, but little in the film defies rational explanation if Nina Sayers is really going insane. The underlying story, however, is something that every religion would recognize—the need for transformation. Even before John Calvin dreamed up the laughable doctrine of total depravity (and for any Presbyterian readers, I was predestined to write that), all religions have at their heart the concept that people need to change. Sometimes the transformation is subtle and gentle, at other times fiery and dramatic. If you end life the same way you began it, you are a religious failure. This premise lies behind every movie where a character transforms into something else, be it werewolf, Mr. Hyde, Mrs. Doubtfire, or a wereswan.

Our perceptions of who we are cause us considerable introspection. Nina Sayers is a timid yet ambitious girl, living with her mother yet wanting to be the seductive black swan. She really doesn’t comprehend what she is wanting to become, but she knows that it must be better than what she presently is. Again, the parallels with religion are striking. I have known good people who’ve transformed into black swans under the influence of noble religions such as Christianity and its monotheistic siblings. People who have become intolerant and judgmental, insisting that their way is the only possible correct way. In the mirror they see a white swan, but the audience sees the black one.

Black Swan is heavily symbolic and provocatively mythic. Like any honest account of life it refuses to provide any definitive answers. Since each experience we undergo leaves its mark upon us, we cannot help but transform. Volition, however, can lead us toward paradise or perdition and any ambiguous place in between. Is the Nina Sayers dying on stage the greatest sinner of all, or a saint who has been beatified as fully human? The answer to the riddle the film stubbornly refuses to relinquish. So it is with life. We will transform over its course. Religion will declare whether it is good or bad, right or wrong. At the end of the script, however, we are both the white and the black swan.

Double Exposure

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Back when I was teaching full time, one of my favorite television shows was Northern Exposure. In fact, the fictional town of Cicely, Alaska, had quite a lot in common with Nashotah House. Both were populated by quirky characters in a relatively remote location. Both were small, insignificant places with visions of grandeur. Both were effectively run by conservative forces that liked to imagine themselves as benign or downright noble. Both distrusted outsiders with ideas that might challenge the status quo. One of my favorite characters was Maggie O’Connell, the woman in a man’s world who refused to let the male establishment set the limits to what she could do. A strong woman character whom the men all respected served as an antidote to daily life at the seminary. My wife and I liked the program so much that we even stopped in the town of Roslyn, Washington, where the outdoor scenes were shot, a couple of times on our way out west.

We don’t have television now, so we have to watch Northern Exposure on DVD. While at a hotel recently, however, the name of Janine Turner on the television made me look. I had known that the actress portraying Maggie O’Connell was a political conservative in real life, but here she was advocating an “anyone but Obama” type campaign or some such nonsense. I felt as if I’d been sold a false bill of goods for all these years. Like Margaret Thatcher, Turner believes in socially conservative causes. Margaret Thatcher, that contradiction of a woman who felt that females belonged in the home, had undue influence on a once great Britain. Where was the woman who played such an ardent feminist in a male world? How could anyone pretend that kind of passion in front of a large audience for six years and spent her real life trying to deconstruct a cause that has everyday ethical implications? It’s all an act.

Women have been relegated to positions of lesser prestige for millennia for the crime of caring for their offspring. Men have been free to abandon responsibility and seek selfish ends, if so inclined. No matter what our gender, we pursue in life what is most meaningful to us, and it amazes me when strong women support a structure that has consistently shown itself interested in keeping them down. Vaunted as a show where diverse characters come into constant conflict but always “strive to accept their differences and co-exist,” Northern Exposure displayed depth without eschewing what is laughable about the human condition. Real life, I suppose, it is much more like the small town of Rosyln, Washington. For a few years it was an out-of-the-way tourist stop where actors could play characters they really didn’t believe in while living in a fictitious town where everyone at least attempted to tolerate everyone else.

Do you recognize this character?