Right by the Numbers

1 Comment

Reading about ancient religions helps to focus the long view. I’m brushing up on ancient Egyptian gods for my Ancient Near Eastern Religions class. Seeing how various gods rose to prominence with the fortunes of their patron kings or priesthoods suddenly struck a chord for modern-day religions as well. Many of society’s most conservative like to think that this is the day of Yahweh (or, not to put too fine a point on it, Jesus). This pre-biblical god has come into his own with the rise of the Catholic Church, following on from the conversion of Constantine, into the post-Reformation development of Evangelicalism. With the superiority of numbers and fiscal wealth, there is no disputing the one true god, is there?

What happens when the ultra-selfish free market consumes itself to a point that other cultures rise above it? Already outnumbered in souls by China and India what will Americans say when Buddhism or Hinduism outstrips Christianity? Is religion proven correct purely by the numbers? Cultural dominance has become inseparable from religious truth for many brands of Christianity. If in doubt, check out Andrew Schlafly’s Conservapedia (if any state would like to take him off New Jersey’s hands, you are certainly welcome). Being the right religion means being the might religion. Somewhere along the way it seems that the message of Christianity has become equated with bullying others around. I think Jesus must have gotten pushed around quite a bit as a kid on the playground.

What's behind that self-satisfied smile, Akhenaten?

When Amenhotep IV became king of Egypt, the priesthood of Amun had grown very strong. Probably in an effort to suppress this powerful rival, the king changed his name to Akhenaten and promulgated the sole worship of Aton. Some like to give Akenaten credit for being a monotheist. To me it seems more likely that the old pharaoh was attempting to show intolerant bullies the way to behave: use religion to political advantage. If the opposition disagrees, shut them down. Problem is, this doesn’t work well over the long term. As soon as the unpopular king died, the former religion reasserted itself and things went back to the way they had been. Tut, tut. Seems like religious bullies never learn.

Religion Underground

Leave a comment

Imagine a world where the affluent live in lofty houses and the poor, working class citizens trudge to long, dreary, factory shifts in order to keep the system working from their underground world. Although it’s not exactly post-recession America, it is not too hard to imagine. On my final day of vacation from relative unemployment, I watched Metropolis for the first time. A 1927 silent film, this movie of a dystopian world run by an unsympathetic ruling class is experiencing somewhat of a revival. Panned by early critics, the film is now often categorized as a classic of the silent era. It was also the most expensive silent movie ever filmed. Shot in Germany between the two world wars, the story follows a surface dweller who has fallen in love with a troglodyte. It even has robots.

This Fritz Lang film fits in this blog because of its many biblical references and themes. Freder, the protagonist, falls in love with Maria, a working-class preacher among the underground laborers. Following Maria to the underworld, Freder sees the gargantuan machinery that runs the lives of the poor, and when workers die in an accident he calls out “Molech!” Molech, the putative god of child sacrifice in the Hebrew Bible, is shown as a fiery factory door consuming the forlorn men who dutifully march inside. Maria, however, teaches love and patience in suffering. In an underground cathedral she is the sole cleric long before most denominations recognized women as ministers. She compares the skyscrapers of the rich to the tower of Babel and insists that a mediator will come. With its strange blend of Christian and communist themes, this film made a significant impact in its time.

In our own day of entrepreneurship with faux-Christian backing it goes unnoticed that the Christianity of the first century was what might be called communistic. According to the book of Acts, early Christians keep their goods in common to ensure that everyone had what they needed. Among the disciples, Judas kept the common purse. What marked these early Christians as exceptional in the eyes of their earthly overlords was the concern that they had for one another—selfishness had no part in their religion. When Christianity became the religion of empire the lure of worldly goods distorted it almost beyond recognition. Christian industrialists built the tower of Babel with its leering Molech beneath the surface of the ground. Judas, it seems, has become the ideal role model for such a religion.

Maria's underground cathedral

Stobor and Dogs

Leave a comment

Having spent seventeen hours on public transit of various sorts yesterday, I had plenty of time to read. My chosen book for this trip was Daniel H. Wilson’s Robopocalypse. In my recent reading spate of dystopia novels Wilson’s vision seems more likely than others and thus perhaps a bit scarier. An obvious reason for this is that much of our tax money goes toward military projects that are, naturally, secret. A large part of Robopocalypse deals with military robots gone feral. Well, not really feral. The robots are controlled by a mastermind computer virus. In the first chapter this robot overlord declares to its creator, “I am your god.”

That statement is probably, metaphorically, true already. We live in a world where culture would change irrevocably without our current technology. Without it even fewer people would be reading the words I daily post here. Without it industry would shift into reverse back to the days of Thomas Edison or Eli Whitney. Present-day culture would be unrecognizable. Although not the best-written novel I’ve read, Wilson’s story does raise a salient issue—at some point the tool becomes the master of its user. For many years those who loudly proclaimed the superiority of Homo sapiens declared that we were the only tool-making animals. Subsequent observation has, of course, proven that to be inaccurate. Nevertheless, once knowledge of tools is acquired a trajectory is set. We lose a little bit of control.

Has technology replaced God? For some it clearly has. God is a symbol of comfort and meaning. As I watch thumbs busily texting away on planes, trains, automobiles—and especially in the middle of lectures—I realize that this altar of technology boasts many worshippers. There are very few scenarios where advanced technology is not present, like an omniscient being. Thankfully we have a few more years before Raymond Kurzweil’s artificial brain comes online. We should use those few remaining years to prepare ourselves for either an epiphany or an apocalypse. When the slaves become the masters, we are firmly in the territory of dystopia, at least from a human perspective.

Kings and Codes

Leave a comment

I readily acquiesce to the suggestion that others are smarter than myself. In a world of overly competitive commerce that has wormed its way into higher education, I have found myself ill-equipped to compete against those who are more clever at working the system. At times I can be decidedly pre-medieval in my perception of fairness. Thus it was a combination of self-denigration and legitimate surprise to find a brief piece in the May edition of Wired magazine on the Code of Hammurabi. In this arena I would have supposed myself to be on firmer ground. The piece by Joel Meares appeared in the Blast from the Past section of the “Humor Issue” of the erudite magazine. The writers at Wired are by default well beyond my ability in the tech scene, but this piece was a consideration of how Hammurabi’s justice still plays its way out in popular culture. Beginning with the 1970’s movie series Death Wish, Hammurabi is given credit for inspiring Hamlet, The Count of Monte-Cristo, Red Dead Redemption, Frankenstein, Moby Dick, and Batman. Holy pedigree, Hammurabi!

Each semester I try to explain to my students why study of the ancient world is still relevant. It may be overly simplified to suggest that Hammurabi directly inspired all these works (the Akkadian language wasn’t really deciphered until the middle of the nineteenth century, CE, long after Shakespeare), but clearly the trajectory had been set long ago. Even before Hammurabi. The earliest known law-codes predate Hammurabi by many centuries and demonstrate that our sense of justice and fair play were being bandied about by the gods long before Hammurabi was a twinkle in Shamash’s eye. If we want others to play nice, the best way to convince them to do so is to lay the dicta in the realm of the gods.

Maybe I can’t figure out where Death Wish and Moby Dick share anything beyond a cursory resemblance to Hammurabi, but it is clear that the Mesopotamians were the first to articulate the idea that the gods set the rules and it is our duty not to upset them. Of course, in our society fair play is frequently sublimated to corruption at various levels. Someone is always willing to bend the rules if the covert payment is enticing enough. After all, doesn’t it look like Hammurabi is placing his fingers to his lips while receiving a kickback from Shamash on the pinnacle of the famous stele bearing the code that now bears his name?

Hammurabi winks at Shamash

Sanctuary

Leave a comment

Sanctuaries are often difficult to get to, but are often even more difficult to leave. Various religions make use of the concept—a sanctuary is a safe place, somewhere away from the normal world. Perhaps this is one of the reasons humans devised religion to begin with; the world feels heartless and threatening much of the time, and a place where the unseen parent will keep us safe is a desideratum anxiously quested. The problem with sanctuaries is that too much safety inhibits growth. As history repeatedly demonstrates, sequestered religions grow stagnant and antiquated—frequently hindering more than helping.

The concept of a sanctuary is of a piece with the amorphous idea of sacred space. The idea that some places are different, special, or spiritually vibrant is one that admits of no testing or verification. Nevertheless pilgrims will seek out such places in order to recover a sense of balance or peace. Even scientists know the feeling, although it is frequently consigned to the psychologist’s couch. Finding that spot that gives momentary tranquility is big business, as any travel agent knows. While we may invest our sanctuaries with divine trappings, the practice is, at its roots, very human.

The world was not created for us. Congealing from a rapidly spinning mass of superheated rock and dust, it took a few billion years before life might even manage to float atop the cosmic embers. As part of this fascinating development called life, we have learned its hard lessons. Nature is beautiful and dangerous. We are its masters and its slaves. Some of us take great pains to escape to it and when it is time to leave we are ripped from it like a crying babe from its mother’s arms. Sanctuary is a human concept with divine implications.

A sanctuary

Dead Wood

1 Comment

nurse log

Whether it makes a sound or not, when a tree falls in the forest it joins that great cycle that embraces all living things. Decomposition is as much a part of life as conception. Rotting logs provide homes and minerals and nutrients to other living creatures. Although the individual life is over, life as a whole goes on. Nowhere is this more evident than in nurse logs. Nurse logs are those trees that directly host seedlings after they die. While examining such a nurse log yesterday my daughter said, “It’s life after death.” Resurrection. The more I reflected on nature’s resurrection, the more selfish the human concept seemed to become. We want—and some of our religions offer—individual resurrection, the continuance of me, not mere life.

Nature has no theology. In its immediacy and pragmatism, creatures live without pondering what it means, striving to pass on the gift of life they’ve been given through their offspring to keep the cycle going. Evolution may shape forms into new varieties along the way, but we are more amoeba than angel. We are part of something larger than ourselves. Unfortunately our society has evolved to emphasize individual drive over collective effort. We don’t want to tax the ultra wealthy, for they are where we all want to be. It is the poor who are sacrificed on the unholy altar of this thinking that truly reflect what nature intends for us to be.

To justify our selfish outlook humans made gods in their image, adding prerogative to perfidy. Somehow we deserve more than others—longer life and even more life after that. Evolution has, in its non-directional way, distorted the picture by providing us with inordinately parsimonious attribution of souls, according to theologians. Nature belies our paltry attempts at self-deification. Quietly in the forest a tree dies, offering its life for those that will come after. The nurse log knows the true meaning of resurrection, while we fumble to gain more for ourselves, backed by the religions we’ve invented.

Metaphor

Leave a comment

Author Neal Stephenson, inspired by fellow author George B. Dyson, built a baidarka a few years back. The baidarka, an Aleutian version of the sea kayak, was such a necessity of life among the Aleut that it was treated as a living being. Whenever I find myself at the same latitude and longitude as the baidarka Neal built, I like to take it out for a relatively safe lake voyage. I’m not much of a swimmer, and taking boats out on the big water always chills me before the water actually touches my skin, but this is a kind of ritual that I feel compelled to observe. It is a participation in the mythic world of the Aleut. As spiritual beings, kayaks were a necessary part of life for island dwellers. In their own way, I suppose, they are saviors.

Author and partner in the baidarka

Traveling by water, I find, is a spiritual experience that eschews scientific quantification. It is a feeling, not a measurable commodity. To quote the great sage Rat in Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows, “There is nothing—absolutely nothing—half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats.” We are born of water, mostly made of water, and ineluctably drawn to the water. Rachel Carson suggested in her classic, The Sea Around Us (always one of my favorite books), that having evolved from the sea we are forever yearning to get back to the sea. Water is life as much as blood is.

broken water

When water breaks by being forced into an unyielding shore or by being thrown over a cliff to become a waterfall, flinging refreshing spray into the air, its great energy is released. Although its flow may be interrupted it will break apart granite and basalt, literally moving mountains and carving coastlines. Water that is placid in the morning may be raging by the end of the day. Water is life, and if life is anything more than a metaphor no one has yet convinced me of it.

Troying Around

4 Comments

While discussing Homer with my relatives, it was decided that we should watch the movie Troy. Although conceived as a blockbuster retelling of the Iliad, the presentation reminded me significantly of The Clash of the Titans (2010). In both instances the directors and writers attempted to portray a realism of sorts, making Achilles and Perseus into just regular guys with issues. There is something of the fallen hero here, and perhaps a misunderstanding of the way the Greeks understood their greats. While it can’t be denied that heroes were intended as figures of unattainable stature, they were in some sense conceived as role models for mere mortals. The Iliad is an exploration of the anger of Achilles and the unpredictable influence of the gods.

As the critics pointed out when the movie was first released, the absence of the gods from the film is a serious departure from the Iliad. Without the gods, Achilles takes on a level of prominence never intended by Homer (whoever he was) and the playing out of his revenge begins to feel like a bad western. Although the Iliad does focus on Achilles, it requires an ensemble cast. None of the characters are evil like the movie portrays Agamemnon. He, along with his brother Menelaus, is the hapless inheritor of the curse of the house of Atreus. No matter what Agamemnon does, he is doomed. This fatalism is cut short in Troy as Menelaus, Ajax, and Agamemnon fall in the foreshortened battle of Troy.

The Trojan War is a myth. There is no history to portray accurately here. Instead there are gods and heroes. In removing the gods—a subtle nod toward many modern sensitivities—the movie loses its soul to beat the bank. And so perhaps it is a modern parable for a society that values money above all else. Whether the gods are real or not is immaterial, for they are but projections of the human spirit. Without them we are mere molecules conglomerated into biological entities with no purpose. Troy is a movie that falls short of truly mythical status, but at the same time holds a mirror to modern culture and asks “are you so sure that you can live without the gods?”

Assyrian Dreamers

Leave a comment

And the widows of Ashur are loud in their wail,
And the idols are broke in the temple of Baal;
And the might of the Gentile, unsmote by the sword,
Hath melted like snow in the glance of the Lord!

These lines from Lord Byron’s “The Destruction of Sennacherib” were recently quoted to me by one of my relatives who houses a tremendous store of memorized poetry. The poem is Byron’s vision of the siege of Jerusalem, a historical event that is now well understood because the actual annals of Sennacherib were discovered in 1830. The Akkadian version of Hezekiah’s revolt and the subsequent siege of Jerusalem in 701 BCE match the statement in 2 Kings 18 that declares Hezekiah bought off Sennacherib, thus sparing his kingdom. The biblical version then goes on to add the event eulogized by Lord Byron that an angel was sent after a prophecy of Isaiah and the Assyrian army fell decimated outside Jerusalem. The latter event is not historically accurate, but it is much more poetic. Who would write a poem about a king paying off his enemies?

Annals of Sennacherib

The Bible is comfortable with conflicting accounts of events, sometimes laying them side-by-side without comment, supposing that the reader is bright enough to see the obvious contradictions and draw the relevant conclusions. With the birth of Christian Fundamentalism in the 1920s, however, the myth of biblical inerrancy was born. In a world rendered in shades of gray, a distinct comfort lies in having answers in black and white. The Bible, considered the exact (if sometimes dodgy) words of God himself, could not be other than one hundred percent historically accurate. This version of history distorts what actually happened to what must have happened.

Lord Byron, notorious sinner that he was, seems to have been closer to the biblical spirit when he penned his famous poem. Glorying in the bravado of a warrior God who lays waste an entire army without lifting a sword or spear is fanciful, if breath-taking, poetic license.

For the Angel of Death spread his wings on the blast,
And breathed in the face of the foe as he pass’d,
And the eyes of the sleepers wax’d deadly and chill,
And their hearts but once heaved, and for ever grew still!

bears a grandeur lacking in “Hezekiah gave him all the silver which was found in the house of the LORD, and in the treasuries of the king’s house. At that time Hezekiah cut off the gold from the doors of the temple of the LORD, and from the doorposts which Hezekiah king of Judah had overlaid, and gave it to the king of Assyria.”

Hope Soap

2 Comments

I have the distinct good fortune of an occasional sanctuary. I married into a family that owned a share in a remote cabin on a pristine mountain lake. When I can afford it, I make the long journey during the summer and wonder why anyone would ever want to live anywhere else. When I began coming here in the 1980s, the preferred method of bathing was in the cold waters of a meltwater-fed lake. Although I’m extremely sensitive to cold, I’d nevertheless take the plunge and I’d always take my Dr. Bronner’s Magic Soap with me to lessen the environmental impact. My wife and I bought our Dr. Bronner’s at a local health-food store and were pleased not only with its eco-friendliness, but also with the many religious/philosophical sayings printed on the bottle in tiny script. After using Dr. Bronner’s yesterday, I decided to learn a little more of the religion on the bottle.

Dr. Bronner's in its natural environment

Emmanuel Heilbronner emigrated to the United States shortly before the Second World War. His parents were murdered in the Holocaust, but Heilbronner, shortening his name to Bronner, developed a religion that promoted love and peace, making him a popular figure in the hippie movement. He called his philosophy All-One-God-Faith or the Moral ABC and he had tenets of his religion printed on each bottle of his product. The factory he founded remains unmechanized and produces over a million bottles a year. The soap is not animal tested. Ironically, the bottle I used yesterday was purchased back when Dr. Bronner was still alive: visits to the lake are tragically brief and the soap is concentrated and lasts a long time.

Dr. Bronner’s religion is a blend of his father’s Judaism with Christianity and a sprinkling of Islam. Bronner was a promoter of the benefits of monotheism, and his eccentricity may partially be accounted for by the fact that he was treated with shock therapy in an asylum while developing his philosophy at the University of Chicago. Society has a way of trying to silence those who speak with conviction—especially if the conviction doesn’t lock step with those who secretly admire McCarthy. It is fitting, in tribute to this free thinker, to give the final word to Dr. Bronner: “1st: A Human being must teach ‘Love His Enemy’ to help unite all mankind free or that being is not yet Human! Jesus #1. Based on African astronomer Israel’s: ‘Listen Children Eternal Father Eternally One:!’ Exceptions? None!”

Patriot Games

1 Comment

Earlier this week I had the occasion to find myself in Newark’s Liberty Airport. I had mentally prepared myself for a government-sponsored groping (I find full-body scanners immoral and, no matter what the Patriot Act says, illegal) but I managed to make it through with just emptying my pockets and walking around in my stocking feet. Once I arrived at the gate area, I was once again struck by the duplicitous use of religion in America. Posted above each gate was a small banner reading “God Bless America” surrounding a stylized flag. I thought of the Hindus, Buddhists, and atheists flying out of that terminal (and in Newark I am certain there were all three species, in spades). Since 9/11 the staffs of the large New York City airports are justifiably cautious, but the blending of nationalism with divine will always makes me nervous. Especially since the weightier implications are so readily ignored.

In the biblical world the ideal was that travelers would be treated fairly. Someone away from home is already at a disadvantage. In ancient times the traveler deserved special consideration, not to be swindled or met with unfairness. Looking around at the prices merchants charge for those who’ve gone beyond the gate and have no choice, it struck me how when religion and economy collide, economy always continues on unscathed. The weary traveler, according to the Bible, especially deserves fair treatment. Charging extra to someone already at a disadvantage violates just about every biblical standard that echoes through those unread pages. God bless America? Only if it fills the coffers.

The sentiment expressed in “God bless America” is vastly at odds with the way we behave. Taking advantage of others is the bane of prophets and messiahs alike. Taking care of the poor, the disadvantaged, the traveler—this is the biblical ideal. Instead it is easier to band-aid over our sins with posters asking God’s blessing on our insincerity. Many people fear Islamic fundamentalists without taking into account the more subtle damage done by our own homegrown variety, giddily holding hands with an unfettered free market. Cheating the traveler may not be as wicked as blowing up an airplane, but both these tangled vines, in the biblical view, spring from the same root.

How Great Thy Art

Leave a comment

Celebrating the four hundredth birthday of the King James Bible, last month’s Harper’s magazine featured seven popular writers giving their take on various passages from the Bible. Noting the Bible more or less gave the English language its shape, this little exercise in eisegesis represents, in small measure, the power of the Bible even today. While many lament that America is no longer Bible-centered, with its misuse and abuse in the political arena the Bible still seems to be the heavyweight champion of the country, albeit altered through the eyes of certain key players. I was happy to note Harper’s chose novelists and poets to respond rather than theologians, biblical scholars, or—God help us—televangelists or politicians (frequently the same thing). What emerges is a tapestry that alike puts biblical scholars’ teeth on edge and makes fundamentalists wince.

Novelist Howard Jacobson looks at the creation story and takes the angle that God is a lonely artist. Writes Jacobson on the creation of light: “It’s good because it reveals an idea. The artist isn’t obligated to explain what that idea is.” Here, in the words of a non-specialist (can one say “amateur” of an accomplished novelist?) lies the heart of the matter. Art is creation and creation must be interpreted. Anyone who has undertaken a creative enterprise knows the feeling—the casual, disinterested glance at your work hurts. Any artist wants to be appreciated. Once the metaphor of God’s authorship of the Bible is recognized, there is a group of human artists hiding somewhere outside the annals of history. One of the great mysteries of the Bible is that we know very little about who wrote it (with the exception of Paul in the Christian Scriptures.)

The Bible is a work of art on a broad canvas. Today it is frequently criticized for the abuses it endures, but if we allow it its original purpose the view should become more sympathetic. The Bible was composed by individuals struggling with ideas. For millennia it served as a useful guide to the human experience until the church became politically powerful during the reign of the emperor Constantine. From that point on, deep knowledge of the Bible became power. For centuries the church guarded that power, keeping it in the hands of the clergy. Now that the Bible has become democratized, it threatens to take over democracy itself. Out there, somewhere unseen, the original artists are snickering as they chink their glasses and toast their accomplishment—they are writers who changed the world. But I suspect Paul is there too, warning them against partying too much.

Black and What?

Leave a comment

Dystopias are not all of the same stripe, or, in this case, color. Jasper Fforde’s Shades of Grey is perhaps the most colorful look at a bleak future I have ever read. The premise, funny and strangely serious, is that in the distant future color perception ability determines social rank. A cast of odd characters who see predominantly only one color vie for superiority while keeping to the rules of the founder of this society. The hilarious results often carry profound consequences. Those who live within this highly stratified culture fear those who do not, including a mysterious group known as the monochrome fundamentalists. The founder of the social order, Munsell, has achieved god-like status and his writings have the force of scripture.

This dystopia reflects, whether intentional or not, the social impact of many religions. Reading about the prefects, the political leaders of this culture, is like reading about the clergy who mistake spiritual guidance for power. The transition from pastor to politician is simple enough among social creatures like ourselves: we need those with persuasive powers to make decisions in accord with our best interests. Prefects and priests, however, are both eminently corruptible (let us say nothing of politicians) and evolution favors those who look out for themselves. The trick is to make others buy it.

Fforde’s dismal future includes Leapbacks where useful technology from the past is discarded in order to make people more compliant. In a world where color is a rare commodity, a modern usage of the rainbow seems apropos. Everything we are learning from psychology and biology—sciences still in their youth—suggests that sexual orientation is deeply ingrained, more so that just preferences or likes. The mainstream religions, however, have actively discriminated against those who are aware of their deepest needs. I know many excellent, caring individuals who’ve been kept from the ministry because of their orientation. Others who are clearly deleterious to the church climb to positions of power based on their approved sexual appetites. And society falls into lockstep with them. I don’t know Jasper Fforde’s political views, but along with him I would suggest that the ability to see shades of gray might be the best thing for any society, whether in the distant future, or especially, in the present.

Friend of Jonah

4 Comments

Last year a gray whale was spotted off the coast of Herzliya in Israel. As in the days of Jonah. Actually, we need to turn the clock back a little further. According to Arthur Max of the Associated Press, the gray whale was hunted to extinction in the Atlantic already in the eighteenth century. This whale, therefore, had to travel north of Canada from the Pacific Ocean through channels that are normally frozen. Global warming has opened these passageways and plankton last seen in the north Atlantic 800,000 years ago have begun to reappear. If Jonah was smart, he’d have stayed in that whale and would’ve just kept going.

Big business stands to lose the most from cleaning up the environment. It cuts into the bottom line. Happily, if brainlessly, joining the laissez-faire coven are many of the “Religious Right” who see destruction of the environment as part of God’s plan. So much for “and behold, it was very good.” When free market economists first met the conservative evangelicals it seemed that they had little in common beyond similar haircuts and a desire to turn time back to the 1950s. Since then they’ve joined to become a very powerful force in American politics, preventing any headway to improving the globe for others, even if it isn’t a personal concern of theirs. So much for “do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”

Each year in my Prophets class I have students that are far more concerned that a literal Jonah was swallowed by a literal whale rather than hearing the message Jonah proclaimed: repent or face destruction. If we turn the thermostat up a few degrees more each year maybe Jesus will finally jump on that white stallion and split the Mount of Olives. You can’t quite see the Mediterranean from there, but if you could you might spot a lonely gray whale. You don’t need to look for the little man inside. That whale is the sign of Jonah.

Wave to Jonah for me!

Reverend Sanders?

Leave a comment

According to the Associated Press yesterday, Yenitza Colichon was sentenced to 18 months’ probation for child neglect and cruelty. The charges stemmed from a 2007 religious ceremony in which her seven-year-old daughter was made to watch a chicken sacrifice in New Jersey, and the girl was fed the animal’s heart. The practice is part of the Palo Mayombe religion of central Africa. This whole incident highlights the vital question of when religion crosses the line into child neglect. Many of us bear scars—some psychological, some physical—from our religious upbringings. It has been concluded by psychologists that children do not possess the level of abstraction necessary to deal with religious concepts until they are about the age of twelve. Parents, often fearful of eternal consequences should their children depart the one, true faith (whatever that is), begin religious instruction early, often passing their children off to others who are in no real sense an expert in the religion itself.

The United States embraces, on paper, the concept of freedom of religion. Rightly, it seems, the strong arm of the state will step in when a child is endangered or neglected. The unanswered question is at what point does this neglect or endangerment occur? Authorities turn a blind eye if the faith is time-honored, and, especially, if it is of European/American extraction. Typically of the monotheistic variety. What is standard practice for other religions, as this case demonstrates, may be called into question. Sacrifice is also at the heart of the Judeo-Christian tradition. Sublimated into different forms for both political and theological reasons, those of us in that tradition have abstracted sacrifice to bloodless words on a page. When we see red, child neglect and cruelty are cited.

Religions frequently make extreme claims over the lives of their adherents. Most religions relax such claims for children, but others continue ancient practice that is tacitly condoned. Sometimes those permissible rites cause real physical pain and scars. If under the hand of a moyel, okay; if scarification in African tradition, not okay. Religions denigrating personal achievements of the young, setting them onto a path of failure, okay; religions ritually killing animals, as even the Bible demands, not okay. Without making any judgment on specific religious outlooks, the reality of lingering effects remains. Are the terrors of Christian nightmares inspired by tales of Hell any less cruel than watching a domesticated animal die? Is eating a chicken heart any less unusual that fish on Fridays? Is being unfamiliar with a religion grounds for dismissing its authenticity or claim for equality? Some of us find animal sacrifice distasteful, but if we proclaim a tidy sacrifice each Sunday, and share it with our children, that particular rite/right is protected by law.

What would (wiki-commons) chickens do?