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By Catherine Schmidt, Georgia State University

This is part III of a IV part series exploring popular culture depictions of Mary Magdalene.  In part I, we looked at a brief history of pre-Vatican II portrayals of Mary.  Part II discussed the history of Vatican II in relation to Mary and how the change in Church thinking did little to how Mary was portrayed in popular culture as seen in Lady Gaga’s music video “Judas.”  Part III will build on the post-Vatican II portrayals with the musical film Jesus Christ Superstar. 

In stark contrast to DeMille’s and Lady Gaga’s Mary is the Mary that is portrayed in Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice’s musical turned film Jesus Christ Superstar.  Unlike the other two Marys discussed, Webber and Rice’s Mary is not dressed in elaborate costumes.  As well, she is without makeup and her hair is plain.  The one similarity in dress is the jewelry she wears.  In Jesus Christ Superstar, the only differentiating feature from Mary to the other women is that she has both a necklace and earrings on during her two most prominent songs.  Another stark difference is that this Mary is actually more conservatively dressed compared to the other women in the cast.  Where some women are dressed showing plenty of skin (as can be expected for a film made in the 1970s), Mary is dressed in a long tunic.  However, just because she is dressed more conservatively—a term I will use loosely since Mary’s dress is low-cut—does not mean her character is no longer part of the ancient “mud-slinging job.” 

Jesus Christ Superstar was first produced as an album in 1970 just after the Second Vatican Council.  One year later it came to Broadway and received a great reception.  In 1973 it was made into a film and, thus, allowed more than just those able to make it to either New York or London (where it was also now being performed) to see the production.[1]  The musical continues to be produced all over the world and the film has been re-adapted two times, with a third scheduled for release in 2014.[2]  Though the writing of the musical comes at the heels of Vatican II, Webber and Rice apparently did not get the memo about Mary.  Once again, Mary is confused with other women in the Bible and she is still represented as a prostitute.  During the song “What’s the Buzz” Mary starts to wash Jesus’ head and feet with oils.  Then, Judas interrupts the song with his own titled “Strange Thing Mystifying.”  He does not explicitly call Mary a prostitute, but it can been easily inferred when Judas sings “…a man like you can waste his time on women of her kind…” and later “it’s not that I object to her profession, but she doesn’t fit in well with what you teach and say.”  Jesus responds by defending Mary and verbally throws stones at Judas.  He screams/sings “If your slate is clean, then you can throw stones.   If your slate is not, then leave her alone!”  In this one scene, Mary has been combined with three different women in the New Testament, none of which are actually Mary Magdalene.  Mary washing Jesus occurs a second time (possibly to mirror the two separate times different women anoint Jesus’ feet in the New Testament) during her song “Everything’s Alright.”  In this song, Mary tries to calm and seduce Jesus.  Her hands are strategically placed throughout the song to show the intimacy she has for Jesus.  Yet again, Judas interrupts Mary anointing Jesus arguing that the money used for the ointment could have been used to feed the poor (a scene lifted straight from John 12:1-8, except that the Mary in these verses was actually Mary of Bethany and not Mary Magdalene). 

In Mary’s most famous song in the musical, “I Don’t Know How to Love Him,” the audience learns more about her past.  Unlike The King of Kings in which Judas was her best client or “Judas” in which she is in love with Judas, in Jesus Christ Superstar Mary is in love with Jesus himself.  She laments “I don’t know how to take this.   I don’t see why he moves me.   He’s a man.  He’s just a man.   And I’ve had so many men before in very many ways.   He’s just one more.”  Later in the song she admits that she would not know how to respond if he loved her back.  She would be “lost,” “frightened,” and she would “turn [her] head” despite that she “want[s] him so” and “love[s] him so.”  It has been argued that this song is “no distanced reverence for a demi-god but rather a distressed, emotional entanglement with a fellow human-being.”[3]  By having Mary love Jesus as any woman may love a man, the story becomes more relatable to the audience.  Add Judas, who believes they are wrong for each other and should not be seen together, and it becomes a soap opera of biblical times. 

DeMille was not the only director that looked at popular Christian art and legends for inspiration.  Webber and Rice relied heavily on “conflated and erroneous biblical interpretations,” as well as prevalent art and legends.[4]  In fact, the scene of the last supper, the disciples and Jesus make a point of copying the body positions in Leonardo Di Vinci’s famous masterpiece.  The art that is imitated into the film reinforces the concepts they depict to the audience and, unfortunately, many in the audience believe the images are accurate and not fabrications of the artists’ minds.  If Mary is continually portrayed as a prostitute, audiences will believe she was one, even if academia states otherwise.  Film, especially, has great power in reinforcing the pre-conceived notions of Mary’s image.  As well, what the audience sees in film (especially if the same image is repeated in different films) often over-shadows people’s own interpretations of people and events represented in a film.[5] 

The ending to Jesus Christ Superstar is quite unsettling.  After the death of Jesus, there is no resurrection scene.  The movie ends with the cast packing up the set and loading onto the bus the movie opened with.  With no resurrection scene, Mary is unable to be the first to see the risen Jesus, and thus, unable to be the first to spread the message of his resurrection.  The only Mary the audience is aware of in this musical/film is that of a prostitute in love with Jesus.  

Bart Ehrman argues that because Mary was the first to witness and proclaim the resurrection, she started Christianity.  He stated that if the resurrection did historically happen[6], Mary is far more important than how she is depicted currently (and historically).  His argument is based on the idea that: 

The Christian religion is founded on the belief that Jesus was raised from the dead.  And it appears virtually certain that it was Mary Magdalene of all people, an otherwise unknown Galilean Jewish woman of means, who first propounded this belief.  It is not at all farfetched to claim that Mary was the founder of Christianity.[7]

Had it not been for Mary, Christianity may never have started, according to this argument.  Christianity needed someone to announce that Jesus had risen.  And since she was the first to make such an announcement, Mary started Christianity.[8]  By omitting this scene in Jesus Christ Superstar, Mary’s importance vanishes, and she is just another woman around Jesus. 

We will finish this series with Part IV of that will discuss The Da Vinci Code and concluding remarks.  According toThe Da Vinci Code, Mary knew how to love Jesus.

 ***************

Author’s Bio

Catherine Schmidt is an associate editor of Religion Nerd.  Catherine earned her BA in Religious Studies at Arizona State University (2005) and her MA in Religious Studies at Georgia State University (2012).  She has presented her work at academic conferences in the local, regional, and national level.  Catherine’s interest range include: religion and popular culture, women and religion, Mary Magdalene, and early Christian history.  She hopes in the future to pursue her PhD where she can combine her many interests. 

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By Catherine Schmidt, Georgia State University

In part one of this series, we looked at how Mary Magdalene was depicted in popular culture prior to Vatican II. This second installment will discuss both the history of Vatican II in relation to Mary and Lady Gaga’s interpretation of Mary in her music video for her son “Judas”. 

In the 1960s the Catholic Church held a council to essentially modernize the Catholic Church. This was the Second Vatican Council, also known as Vatican II. One of the many things done was the changing of the suggested readings for Mary’s saint day. No longer did the readings include the Biblical verses that Pope Gregory I attributed to Mary, making her a prostitute in the eyes of the church. The verses suggested would now be verses to highlight her greatest biblical achievement: being the first to see the resurrected Jesus. After almost fourteen hundred years, Mary would no longer be thought of as a prostitute, sinner, or repentant whore, right? Unfortunately, not quite. Just because her designation on a calendar was changed by the Catholic Church, it did not change fourteen hundred years of thinking.  Due to all the depictions of Mary as a prostitute in pieces of art, theater, novels, sermons, and film, the “error was so firmly entrenched in Western thought”[1] and it would take more than an official change in Catholic Church thinking to change Mary’s reputation.  According to some scholars, even after Vatican II, many Catholics were unaware, until The Da Vinci Code in 2003, that Mary was not a prostitute. Since American popular culture continued to portray her as such, the views of her stayed the same in the public eye.[2] Even after the novel and film The Da Vinci Code, Mary continues to be portrayed as a prostitute. Mary’s depiction in The Da Vinci Code will be discussed in Part 4 of this series. 

On May 5, 2011, popular culture icon Lady Gaga released the music video for her song “Judas” from her album Born this Way. In the music video, Lady Gaga plays the role of a modern day Mary who is a member of a motorcycle gang. Though Lady Gaga states she is a Catholic, the way she represents Mary both lyrically and visually in the video shows that she does not pay close attention to scripture. As with pre-Vatican II artistic renderings, Lady Gaga’s Mary is still portrayed as a “fame hooker, prostitute, [and] wench.”[3] Though unlike The King of Kings (see Part 1 of 4) in which Judas is only Mary’s favorite client, the lyrics and music video for the song argue that Mary was in love with Judas with the chorus repeating the line “I’m in love with Judas, Judas!” 

Throughout the music video, Lady Gaga’s Mary is dressed very provocatively, which can be expected from something produced by Lady Gaga.  Her Mary goes through several different costume changes.  There are three interesting outfits that I will comment on.  The first is the very first image we see of Lady Gaga as Mary.  In the opening scene of the video, Mary is riding on the back of a motorcycle holding on to Jesus.  While the other disciples have their names written on the back of their leather jackets, the viewer knows this is Jesus because of his crown of golden thorns he is wearing.  The visual is reinforced with the lyrics “a king with no crown, king with no crown.”  Mary, likewise, has a crown but it is made of jewels.  Here, Lady Gaga is suggesting that Mary is Jesus’ queen. The second interesting outfit is from one of the many dancing scenes in the video. The outfit is a red bikini (the bikini not being the unusual aspect of a Lady Gaga video) with gold crosses on the breasts. Attached to the lower portion of the bikini is a train. This train brings back images of Mary’s cape from the opening scenes in The King of Kings. In an online article responding to the music video, Ed Masley stated: 

This isn’t the first time an artist has turned to the Bible for metaphors, of course.  But [Lady] Gaga dances in her underwear, so it probably seems more sacrilegious than when someone like Bob Dylan does it, even though the central theme of both the lyrics and the video is humanity’s inner struggle to choose virtue over vice, as represented here by Jesus over Judas.[4] 

Lady Gaga’s last outfit of the video has her dressed in a large, elaborate white gown.  She is again suggesting that Mary is the bride of Jesus by wearing what looks like a wedding dress.  As well, Lady Gaga, like Pope Gregory I, combines the many women of the New Testament in her music video into one Mary.  Song lyrics include “I wash his feet with my hair if he needs” and there is a scene where Mary washes Jesus’ feet—as well as Judas’ which is unique to Lady Gaga.  Something that is not depicted incorrectly in The King of Kings, but is in this music video, is Mary being stoned at the very end of the video (in reference to the unnamed sinful woman that Jesus saves from being stoned.  In Gaga’s video, Jesus does not arrive in time to save this woman).  

It is as if Vatican II never happened in Lady Gaga’s world.  Mary is still confused with other women in the New Testament.  To go even further, Lady Gaga’s Mary, unlike many other depictions of Mary, is not the repentant sinner.  At one point in the song she sings “in the most Biblical sense, I am beyond repentance.  Fame hooker, prostitute, wench” and while “Jesus is [her] virtue.  Judas is the demon [she] clings to.”  Mary has not been freed of her demons by Jesus nor is she remorseful of her past.  Lady Gaga’s video/lyrical depiction of Mary consequently allows the misrepresentation and “mud-slinging job” to live on for another generation. Yet another generation, even after the Catholic Church no longer supports the same opinion officially, sees Mary portrayed this way and believes it is true. “Seeing engages us in the activity of the transmission of knowledge. Knowledge is power. Images have power, and an essential part of that power is their ability to communicate authority and reality.”[5]  Since the Mary in Lady Gaga’s video is what audiences expect Mary to be (that is confused with other women in the New Testament, and not dressed in a bikini) it becomes their reality of what Mary should be. 

Lady Gaga’s representation of Mary is not that of a powerful woman. The video suggests that her stamp in history is that of a whore in love with both Jesus and Judas. Varying interpretations of Mary are not only due to Pope Gregory I’s sermon, but also the lack of canonical information on her. Ingrid Maisch argued that many interpreters of Mary are “eager to describe her significance, but they believe that the New Testament evidence yields too little information; hence the evidence is ‘enhanced’ by making the connection to other women…The confused picture is ‘used’ as a means of pursuing various ends.”[6] Mary continues to be marginalized and demeaned even forty-two years after Vatican II. 

Stay tuned for Part 3 of the 4 part article that will build even further the myth of Mary’s reputation. Jesus Christ Superstar will be discussed that adds an extra element of Mary’s sexual love of Jesus.

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Author’s Bio

Catherine Schmidt is an associate editor of Religion Nerd.  Catherine earned her BA in Religious Studies at Arizona State University (2005) and her MA in Religious Studies at Georgia State University (2012).  She has presented her work at academic conferences in the local, regional, and national level.  Catherine’s interest range include: religion and popular culture, women and religion, Mary Magdalene, and early Christian history.  She hopes in the future to pursue her PhD where she can combine her many interests. 

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By Catherine Schmidt, Georgia State University 

There is something about Mary…Magdalene that is.  She is one of the few New Testament women (or even characters for that matter) that continues to fascinate the public; and yet, we know so very little about her.  Because we know so little, it leads some people to create stories of what they think she was like.  Depending on the time and place, she is different things for different people.  Sometimes she is a repentant whore while other times she is the lover—or even wife—of Jesus Christ.  

Many of these depictions of Mary Magdalene actually diminish her memory.  Mary, according to leading feminist scholar Rosemary Radford Ruether, was an unfortunate recipient of a “mud-slinging job” in order for her authority to be questioned by the early Catholic Church.[1]  The Catholic Church could then use Mary as an excuse to keep women from power.  The American popular culture takes this marginalization and runs with it.  Numerous forms of popular media portray Mary in a diminished role and so it is harder to correct the minds of the public.  

According to Richard Santana and Gregory Erickson, America is a “biblical” culture that does not actually read the Bible.  They argued that American popular culture and popular religion have been heavily influenced and impacted by religiously themed books—as well as anything else visual.[2]  This article is part of a four part series that will examine how Mary’s role is diminished within popular culture through her sexuality, and how that image then affects women’s role in Christianity.  

Part I will discuss pre-Vatican II portrayals as demonstrated in Cecil B. DeMille’s 1927 silent film The King of Kings, part II will provide background to post-Vatican II depictions using Lady Gaga’s 2011 music video for her song “Judas” as an example.  Part III will expand further on Mary’s reputation with Norman Jewison’s 1973 Jesus Christ Superstar based on the musical by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice, and, lastly, part IV will conclude the series with Ron Howard’s 2006 film The Da Vinci Code based on Dan Brown’s book by the same name. 

As briefly discussed above, according to Ruether, women in Christianity, not just Mary, were marginalized in order for their power to be removed.  She argued: 

Occasionally a woman in the tradition stands out as so powerful and so central that she can neither be silenced or sanitized.  Here the patriarchal censure introduces what might be called a “mud-slinging job” to displace them from authority and dignity…The Christian tradition marginalized Mary Magdalene by turning her into a repentant prostitute, thus marginalizing her from her position as leading female apostle and first witness of the resurrection, commissioned to bring the good news back to the male disciples who had fled the scene and were trembling in the upper room.[3]

Diminishing Mary’s role allowed men to have complete control over the Catholic Church as well as over women.  Women were not allowed to hold a position that would have her above a man.  The Catholic Church, to this day, does not allow the ordination of women based primarily on the belief that Jesus’ disciples were all men.[4]  It is interesting to note, however, that several non-canonical gospels show that Jesus possibly had female disciples.  If women in the canonical gospels were portrayed as weak and unbelieving sinners, then the Catholic Church (i.e. men) could treat all women as such.  Even after other non-canonical texts have been found to show that women were not always seen as frail, doubting, and adulterous and previous distortions of Mary’s image by the Catholic Church reversed, Mary has continued to be portrayed by popular media in a way that marginalizes her.  

There has been some popular media, such as the book and movie The Da Vinci Code, that attempts to correct the idea that Mary was just a prostitute, but even when she is not portrayed as such, the way she is portrayed still marginalizes her, just in a different way. This will be discussed in the fourth installment of the article.  These alternative portrayals of Mary are deemed inaccurate and unorthodox by those in power within the Catholic Church, and thus, the misinterpretation of Mary as a prostitute or sinful woman is harder to prove erroneous in the minds of the public, both Christian and non-Christian.  

If one of the most important woman in Christianity can be made weak and unimportant, then women can continue to be oppressed, and verses such as 1 Timothy 2:12 (which states that women must be silent in the church) can continue to be used as basis to keep women out of power.  James Carroll argued that the early Church Fathers wanted to “disempower the figure of Mary Magdalene, so that her succeeding sisters in the church would not compete with men for power” and had “the impulse to discredit women generally.  This was most efficiently done by reducing them to their sexuality.”[5]  Reducing Mary to her sexuality affected not only her memory, but how women have been treated throughout Christian history.           

When Cecil B. DeMille’s The King of Kings was released in 1927, it was not the first time in the short history of filmmaking that Mary was depicted on the silver screen.  The King of Kings was the ninth movie to portray Mary, however, this movie continues, even to this day, to be “one of the most popular and influential movies ever made” due to its continued popularity worldwide.[6]  At the very beginning of the silent film, there is a short note from DeMille stating: “He Himself, commanded that His message be carried to the uttermost parts of the earth.  May this portrayal play a reverent part in the spirit of that great command.”  From this statement it is clear that DeMille wanted to make a film about the story of Jesus in order to, at some level, evangelize.  However, that does not mean that the film was completely accurate.  DeMille liberally quotes the Bible throughout the film.  Bible verses are out of order, out of context, paraphrased, and said by people who did not actually say them.  As well, DeMille added material to what is not found in the canonical gospels.  It has been argued that DeMille did this for two reasons: “to make money and to make the narrative about Jesus work on the screen.  In doing so, DeMille made Jesus interesting and thereby distorted the original gospel narratives, voiding the rhetorical and theological purposes of the gospel accounts of Jesus.”[7]  And of course, if the biography of Jesus is uninteresting based solely on the canonical gospels, Mary’s would be even less interesting.  “The sparse information in the New Testament about Mary of Magdala is not adequate for a biography, and thus not for a biographical novel either.  Anyone who attempts the latter therefore has recourse to legends and creative fantasies.”[8]  How would one depict a woman who, according to the gospel of Luke, had seven demons cast out of her?  By making her a prostitute and associating the seven demons with the seven deadly sins, according to DeMille.  

When it was first shown in theaters, the movie was praised for accurately portraying the story of Jesus.  According to Diane Apostolos-Cappadona: 

The seeing of this film had an indelible impact on the minds of thousands of young people who saw it throughout the 1920s and 1930s.  Ask them to describe Mary Magdalene, and see if you don’t recognize Jacqueline Logan—bad girl turned saint!  After all, seeing is believing.[9]

Since the film, like many others, relied heavily on previous depictions of Jesus and Mary in art, which often had her wearing little-to-no clothing with ornate jewelry and extravagant hairstyles,[10]  DeMille’s Mary was what the audience expected. 

In The King of Kings, there are three scenes in which Mary is prominent that I will focus on.  The first scene is the opening scene of the movie, which opens up at the elaborate home of Mary.  She is cast as a successful prostitute surrounded by what appear to be important people of the community; this is affirmed when she, later in the scene, asks for her zebras that were gifts from a Nubian King.  She has multiple servants that will do whatever she commands, including one that keeps her cool her with a large, feathered fan.  She is surrounded by musicians, exotic animals, and food to show off her opulence.  Mary is dressed in an outfit which for the 1920s was very provocative and revealing.  One could argue that this outfit could rival only Princess Leia in Star Wars: Episode VI – Return of the Jedi.  As if the gold bra were not enough, Mary sports heavy makeup, has her hair braided elaborately, and wears much jewelry to drive home the point to the 1920s audience that she is a woman of sin.  The viewer learns that Mary’s favorite customer, Judas, has been missing for several days.  Mary demands to know where he is (and who his new lover is) and learns that he is with “a Carpenter from Nazareth.”  She decides to go to this carpenter and bring her best client back.  In a sign of her great importance, she goes off in a Zebra-drawn chariot.  At this point the scene cuts to Jesus performing miracles and the twelve disciples, along with Jesus’ mother Mary, are introduced.  Mary the Mother is dressed in polar opposite of what Mary Magdalene is dressed in.  Jesus’ mother is literally dressed from head to toe in cloth.  Women in this film are dressed either as Mary Magdalene at the beginning scene—as a prostitute—or like Mary the Mother—as a virginal woman.  This portrays to the audience that women can be only whores or virgins with no middle ground.  

Mary arrives at the home Jesus is in with an air of prominence around her.  She commands beggars away and requires her servants to lay a carpet down on the ground so that she does not have to walk in the dirt.  She enters the home and sees her former client Judas, now one of the twelve disciples.  Mary struts over to Jesus with the intention of demanding Judas to return to her, but as soon as she looks into the eyes of Jesus she is transformed from prostitute to penitent sinner.  She becomes very aware that what she had been doing was against everything Jesus teaches.  Jesus then casts out seven demons from Mary, which DeMille chooses to be the seven deadly sins (he even modifies a Bible verse to make it seem like the demons cast out of her were the seven deadly sins).  Once the demons are cast out of Mary, she looks down on herself and is ashamed.  She covers herself up with her cape.  After this scene, she dresses in a manner similar to Mary the Mother.  This again signals to the audience that women are either virginal or prostitutes, with no other options.  

The final scene of importance that includes Mary, is the second to last scene in the film.  This is the resurrection scene and the only color scene in an otherwise black and white film.  Here Jesus first appears to Mary and commands her to tell the others that he has risen.  It is unclear from the next scene if Mary is actually successful in doing as commanded.  Ten of the now eleven disciples are in a room looking sad and forlorn (Thomas enters the room only after Jesus has appeared).  Had Mary been successful, would not the disciples be waiting in anticipation for Jesus to come back?  Or, did they not believe her because she was a mere woman? 

Viewers saw the way DeMille depicted Mary as real or true due to her being depicted as they believed she should be.  Jacqueline Logan as Mary confirmed what the audience already thought Mary should look and act like from church sermons, Bible studies, and Sunday school.[11] DeMille himself was heavily influenced by the pictures in his family Bible, illustrated by James Tissot (1836-1902), as well as the Biblical art of GustaveDoré (1832-83).[12]  These depictions show Mary as a prostitute.  As it is well-known, however, Mary as a prostitute did not start with these nineteenth-century artists.  In a 591 sermon, Pope Gregory I combined Mary Magdalene, several unnamed women, and Mary of Bethany (who washed Jesus’ feet) and stated that all the women were actually just one: Mary Magdalene.  By doing such an act, Mary’s greatest claim to fame (according to the canonical gospels) of being the first to witness and announce the resurrection is changed to her repenting her sexual and/or evil ways.[13]  Mary was then, for more than a millennium after Pope Gregory I’s sermon, “unjustly condemned for something she never did, and denied her rightful place in Church history, while Paul has been exonerated for his own sins and held up as a model for all.”[14]  Mary goes from a faithful follower and supporter of Jesus who is worthy enough to be the first to see him risen to repentant whore and is condemned for that.  Yet Paul, a male, who admits to persecuting and killing Christians, is considered an exemplary Christian.  Pope Gregory I’s sermon was the “mud-slinging job” Ruether is alluding to.  By combining the women, “whether intentionally or not, he changed the Christian world’s attitude toward Mary Magdalene, women, and sexuality for centuries to come.”[15]  From that point on, Mary would be defined by her sexuality, and not for being an important disciple (and if one takes into account the non-canonical texts she was also a confidant of Jesus) that was the first to see Christ’s resurrection.[16]  The audience of The King of Kings will likely remember the opening scene Mary over the closing scene Mary because that is the Mary they have been raised to know because of Pope Gregory I’s “mud-slinging job.” 

We will continue to build on the myth of Mary’s reputation in the next segment and see how early film depictions of Mary—such as The King of Kings—contributed to how she has been  perceived in subsequent portrayals.

************************

Author’s Bio

Catherine Schmidt is an associate editor of Religion Nerd.  Catherine earned her BA in Religious Studies at Arizona State University (2005) and her MA in Religious Studies at Georgia State University (2012).  She has presented her work at academic conferences in the local, regional, and national level.  Catherine’s interest range include: religion and popular culture, women and religion, Mary Magdalene, and early Christian history.  She hopes in the future to pursue her PhD where she can combine her many interests. 

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By Kenny Smith, Religion Bulletin

In his recent comments on the Fox News Channel’s FOX & Friends morning show, Geraldo Rivera claimed that the shooting of Florida teenager Trayvon Martin was equally the result of (i) an “overzealous and irrational” neighborhood watchman (George Zimmerman) as well as (ii) Treyvon Martin’s ethnicity, gender, and attire. By appearing in public as a dark-skinned and hoodie-cloaked male, Rivera suggests, Trayvon unwittingly (and unwisely) presented the neighborhood watchman, George Zimmerman, with a highly ambiguous object. On one hand, Trayvon was merely a boy (age 17, though in fact he appeared considerably younger) eating Skittles while walking home; on the other hand, he was a black male donning garb associated “with robberies, muggings, and confrontations,” which sensible others (read middle-class whites) seek to avoid. 

For Rivera, the latter reading of Trayvon is clearly the most compelling: if black and Hispanic males wish to “stylize themselves as gangsta wannabes,” then they should expectto be “perceived as a menace,” as such perceptions represent “an instant, reflexive action” on the part of others (again, read whites). “Trayvon Martin,” Rivera passionately concludes, “was an innocent and wonderful kid,” who “did not deserve to die,” and “if he did not have that hoodie on… that nutty, irrational guy would not have responded in that violent and aggressive way.” 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RTMyb15bfAE

There is of course a great deal to be said about this utterly horrific event, and this post in no way seeks to trivialize its moral, legal, and cultural significance; quite the opposite, in fact. For the Trayvon Martin case brings to light one of the ways in which American culture has come to imagine (and in this case, violently respond to) some perceived embodied identities. 

In thinking about this case, my attention is drawn back to our recent spate of posts regarding the symbolic function of zombies in contemporary American culture, and to the popular TV series, The Walking Dead (TWD), especially. Over the course of two seasons, the show’s characters, as well as audiences, have gradually transitioned from intense revulsion at seeing zombies (who appear to be people but no longer are) summarily executed (often shot in the head at point blank range), to a sense of empowerment and celebration as “walkers” are “put down” by heroes and heroines who narrowly escape being torn apart and consumed. More, the show’s characters have increasingly come to deal with perceived ambiguities as to who is a zombie and who is still a human being by means of lethal force, evident in Andrea’s overly hasty shooting of an injured Darrell limping back to the farm (whom she mistakes for a zombie), and who is a threat as opposed to a viable community member, evident in the group’s willingness to summarily execute other human beings deemed to be dangerous. 

My point here, obviously, is not to compare Trayvon Martin to zombies or George Zimmerman to television heroes. But rather to suggest that the progression of character (and audience?) sensibilities evident in TWD powerfully mirrors American attitudes as to how identities are decoded, categorized, and reacted to. What Rivera implicitly frames and defends as understandable–the “instant, reflexive” perception of a dark-skinned, hoodie-wearing, male, walking through an affluent, gated, residential neighborhood as a “menace” that “allows” the “irrational and overzealous” neighborhood watchman to shoot him–is disturbingly close to the brink TWD characters approach, one in which the world is comprised of true human beings (those like us) and “zombies” (those not like us). 

Was Trayvon Zimmerman’s imaginary zombie, that which only appears to be a full human being, but is in fact a subhuman being intent upon violence and brutality against others, that ultimately ought to be “put down,” shot at point-blank range? Does the hoodie transform the smiling dark-skinned teenager into a “walker” in Rivera’s conceptual world? Again, such comparisons are disturbingly close to the mark and, given the misanthropy, racism, bigotry, and misogyny obvious in many popular appropriations of the “killing zombies” motif, they are chilling indeed.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TceD2Il3QFA

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Originally posted at Religion Bulletin, March 26, 2012.  Follow Religion Bulletin on Facebook. 

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About the Author:  Lizabeth Lyon-Brown is a Religious Studies major (philosophy minor) at Georgia State University.  Her focus is on ethics, pre-Christian, and early-Christian Europe (500 bce to 500 ce).  She plans to pursue a Master’s and Ph.D. in Religious Studies, possibly in Europe.

By Lizabeth Lyon-Brown, Georgia State University

Is it possible to have a new religious symbol in the 21st Century?  How about this Image:  Take three circles, two are the same size but smaller than the third.  A circle is a clean and even symbol that translates into every language, nationality, and religion.  Now take those three circles and place the two smaller ones on top of the third at the 10 and 2 positions of a clock.  Those three circles together, in this new symbol, now bring to mind Mickey Mouse, Disney, and all that goes with it.  Other ‘legitimate religions’ would balk at the thought of a new secular religion and religious symbol.  They would denounce Disney as an illegitimate religion.  But even the three most populous religions have their detractors.  David Chidester defines religion as: an arena of human activity marked by the concerns of the transcendent, the sacred, the ultimate – concerns that enable people to experiment with what it means to be human. [i]   Using this definition of religion, I will show the many ways Disney functions, for millions of people around the world, as a religion.  Universalizing many stories taken from all walks-of-life.  Making this a human story.

The date is the end of the Twentieth Century and the beginning of the next.  The place is Anywhere, America and the home belongs to the average Joe.  The father comes home and prepares to watch college basketball, he checks CNN on his laptop for pre-game news and reads an article about the “Cinderella Story” player that is going to “The Ball.”[ii]   He watches the game and “Cinderella” wins.  Afterwards, the player is interviewed.  When asked what he plans to do next, he answers, “I’m going to Disney World!”  The father jumps up and down with joy and excitement.

Disney has so permeated every part of American life that it seems natural for it to be included in a national news article about a college sports team.  Disney becomes an expected response to the question: what comes after an achievement?  Americans go and pay homage.  They go to Mecca.  They go to their religion’s holy ground.  They go to Disney World.

From the top please!

How did this new religion start?  Well, let us take a step back in time, and start at the beginning.  Mickey Mouse made his 1928 debut in Steamboat Willie.  It was the beginning of a love affair that has endured to this day.  In 1937, the first of the European fairytales followed in the form of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves.  Before Walt Disney died in 1967, he had produced seventeen feature length animated cartoons.  Of those seventeen, fourteen were based on European fairy or folk tales.  These stories were not told in their original forms.  They were homogenized, or universalized to make them simpler for the children, less frightening.

While these stories were simpler, they had one common theme: the triumph of good over evil.  These fairytales, from Snow White, to Cinderella, to Sleeping Beauty, all paint a picture of fantasy.  They are part of what is sacred in the world of Disney.  They help tell the Disney myth.  These original animations are a part of Disney religious texts.  Of course, these texts are a bit different from the usual books written about “thou shalt not”, as the Disney mythos is “written” in the movies. 

The Disney narratives have similarities; they are all stories of being true to yourself, good triumphing over evil, and being good, kind, and forgiving.  All values American’s would want to instill in their children in the 1940s and 1950s, the timeline in which these movies were made.

The narratives were made available to the public at large, in a way that might not have happened had Walt Disney not made his films.  The public acquired a familiarity with the stories, albeit in a simpler version, and because of this, a completely new world opened to the public.  These stories played over-and-over at the movie theater and they were incorporated into books, allowing parents to read the narratives to their children at night.  And, in case the movies and books were not enough, Walt Disney had the first park built in southern California, which opened in 1955.  With the second, larger and more expansive park built in central Florida in 1971.

I’ve got some swampland for sale, cheap!

With the land purchase in central Florida, Walt Disney was able to make Disney World just as he had always imagined.  The transformation began with swampland and through the magic of Walt Disney’s creative vision, “the popular culture capital of America”[iii] materialized. 

Like Mecca and other sacred pilgrimage sites, Disney World is separate, set apart from the rest of the world.  You have to travel to get there.  When entering the property, there is a liminal transition, allowing you entrance into the beginning of the magic.  You leave your car, the last part of your original self, in the parking lot and board a tram that takes you to either a monorail, which travels around the lake or a boat that traverses the lake.  Both forms of transportation moves you through liminal space and toward your final destination—the entrance to the main park.  It was a pilgrimage just to get this far and once through the last stage of liminal transition, there is now only one-way to walk: straight down Main Street, USA.

One thing you will notice while walking down Main Street, USA (in any one of the parks) is that you will see every possible building except a church.[iv]  This was done on purpose.  According to Bob Thomas, “Walt considered himself religious, but he still admired and respected every religion.”[v]  That meant leaving overtly religious symbols out of the parks and the movies.  While visitors may not encounter a Christian cross, Jewish Star of David, or any other popular religious symbol, they will see, if they look closely, the hidden Mickey’s[vi]. 

Throughout the park, visitors will find the religious symbol of Disney–Mickey Mouse.  The flowers are arranged to bloom in that shape; the fences along the pathways proudly display Mickey’s familiar face; the artwork found on many walls and buildings include hidden Mickey images; the signs outside the stores and restaurants all include the iconic Mickey Mouse form.  Some are easy to spot, while others tease passersby with their implied presence. 

If this were a church or a synagogue, would it be that unusual to see religious icons everywhere?  To see it’s mythos displayed on the walls in story forms for the masses to read about?  In many churches, visitors encounter important biblical stories artistically displayed on the walls or in the form of stained glass windows.  These visual sacred narratives help people to learn, from an early age, the important stories of that particular tradition. 

For Disney, it is no different.  They display their myths on their walls.  Their religious symbols are incorporated into the overall landscape of the park.  These symbols, like the artist’s renderings in churches and synagogues, transmit Disney’s mythos—sacred narratives—to children and adults alike.  This transmission is not done through marble, stone, or stained glass but through the modern medium of animation.  But are they really that different?

The participants in the rituals that take place around Disney World are fully enveloped in the Disney religion.  They have transcended the everyday hustle and bustle of the world, and are living every moment within the fantasy created by Disney.  They are surrounded by the symbols and the myths of the religion.  They have entered into sacred space.  These participants come from, as I said earlier, Anywhere, America.  Nobody knows which participant is a bank president, a landscaper, a stay-at-home mother of three, or a university professor working on her fourth book.  Everyone who journeys to Disney is treated as a prince or princess, no matter their age.  This universalizing aspect helps the participants to relax into their ‘roles’ and helps sustain the fantasy for everyone.

Cher Krause Knight, in her article on Disney World and pilgrimage, discusses how the movements of Disney visitors are controlled and how that optimizes the pilgrimage experience.  She continues with,

There is an intellectual and moral uniformity of conduct and thought among the pilgrims, whose goals and moral ideals are higher than in the everyday world.  At Disney, these goals and ideals are nothing short of universal niceness and total world peace, in a Disneyfied context, of course[vii] (page 34).

The pilgrims want to follow the rules set forth by Disney; rules that, time-and-again, play out and are experienced in and through Disney movies.  Follow the rules, as the characters do, and you too can live happily ever after, at least for as long as you are here—in sacred Disney space.

Eventually all pilgrims must return home.  Slowly retracing the steps outward, passing through the same transitions that now, reintroduce them back into the ordinary world.  They reemerge, changed in some way.  The average American family takes with them fond memories of their Disney experience and commemorates their visit with their own “everyone must have their picture taken from here” family photo.  Families are changed through their Disney experience.  They retain, forever, those cherished memories and will reminisce about the time they spent there.

Where to now?

EuroDisney opened in 1992 to mixed reviews but after many behind the scene changes, including a name change, Disneyland Paris found firm footing on the road to success.  It is here that Walt Disney returns the reimagined European castle—a Disneyfied castle—complete with narratives, myths, and the Disney religion.  A new European Disney Mecca.

European pilgrims are akin to American pilgrims.  Disney was not new to Europe, as many Europeans had journeyed to Florida in search of the Disney experience.  The creation of Disneyland Paris was, in some ways, a homecoming—a return to the land where the stories began—where the inspiration for Cinderella’s Castle is just a day’s drive away.[viii] Visitors still have the pilgrimage-like experience.  They negotiate liminal space through different transitions.  They move from profane space to sacred space and ultimately end up at Main Street, USA.  The icons are the same, Mickey’s face still smiles on all visitors, and the myths are unchanged.  Yet the visitor is in another country, another continent.  The experience is pure Disney, as it is in California or Florida.  Time and space seem to stop and yet bend at the same time.  Time exists only through the change of seasons and the seasonal Disney parades that follow the march of the calendar.  The uniqueness, the sameness that pilgrims encounter, regardless of which park they visit, unifies the feelings of all those that choose to experience the religious overtones of Disney.  Yes, the stories that were originally told by the Europeans are coming back to them in a different form, but for the pilgrims at Disneyland Paris, there doesn’t seem to be a negative care about it.

A new religion?

Since its inception, Disney has given immense joy and happiness to children and families from all over the world.  It has done so through its theme parks and movies—movies that offer a type of mythos to its audience, with leading characters such as Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty and Snow White all portraying images of people following the rules and ultimately triumphing over evil.  Disney is a Mecca to which pilgrims travel but it is not a single sacred place.  The varied locations allow pilgrims to choose their destination, but in all, they are sure to encounter the three simple circles that form the now famous Mickey head and the possibility of a new religious icon. 

Almost 15 million pilgrims traveled to California in 2009 to visit Mickey Mouse.  That same year more than 41 million visited the various Disney themed parks in Florida, with over 17 million visiting Mickey Mouse specifically.  Tokyo Disney saw 13.5 million visitors in 2009, and Disneyland Paris welcomed just under 13 million, while Hong Kong received 4.6 million.[ix]  These numbers are interesting in light of the world’s economy.  There are always certain things that people cannot live without.  Religion is one of those.  These numbers seem to indicate that many find joy and comfort in the Disney stories, myths, and movies.

Forty-five years after his death in 1966, Walt Disney’s company, his dreams of magical cities, and his beloved Mickey Mouse have endured.  Mickey Mouse seems stronger than ever these days, as visitors to Disney parks are expected to reach 100 million in the very near future.  Walt Disney dreamed of bringing happiness to children;[x] most anyone would say he has succeeded. 

Disney’s success has transcended the simple animated stories with which it began.  Disney has become so much more; it has grown into a myth of its own making, reaching people worldwide.  Pilgrims travel to the parks to experience and participate in a special fantasy, one that escapes the bounds of time and space, and pay homage to Mickey: the Mouse that started it all.  The pilgrims wait patiently in long lines, entertained along the way by classic movies, to have their individual photos taken with the iconic Mickey Mouse.  These photos are taken home, framed, and looked back upon with fond memories.  Future visits produce more photos, which are hung next to the first ones, recording the physical changes of the pilgrims and noting the unchanged, timelessness of Mickey who is forever joyful and welcoming.  Time stands still for Mickey.

In the end, it is up to the reader to decide.  Does Disney have the attributes of a religion?  Does it function like a religion?  Would a churchgoer see it as a religion?  The pilgrims who visit the parks year-after-year, do they see it?  Or, is Disney just another corporation?  Maybe the answer is a little of both?

• [i] Chidester, David, Authentic Fakes: religion and American popular culture (University of California Press 2005) page 1
• [ii] http://www.cnn.com/2011/US/04/01/final.four.cinderella.sweep/index.html?hpt=C1
• [iii] King, Margaret, “Disneyland and Walt Disney World: traditional values in futuristic form” Journal of Popular Culture V. 15, 1 (summer) page 117.
• [iv] Douglas Brode, From Walt to Woodstock: How Disney created the counter culture (University of Texas Press 2004) pg 106.
• [v] Bob Thomas, Walt Disney, An American Original (New York; Hyperion, 1976) 194 – 195
• [vi] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hidden_Mickey
• [vii] Cher Krause Knight, “Mickey, Minnie, and Mecca: Destination Disney World, Pilgrimage in the Twentieth century” Reclaiming Spiritual Art (1999), Galileo
• [viii] http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&rlz=&=&q=paris+to+neuschwanstein&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wl  ix] http://www.scottware.com.au/theme/feature/atend_disparks.htm
• [x] http://www.disneydreamer.com/walt/quotes.htm

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By Louis A. Ruprecht Jr., Georgia State University 

It is hard to be anywhere in New York and not hear the name of Jeremy Lin. His accomplishments are impressive, and his story is compelling, but he also has clearly filled a void in the New York media world, at least where the struggling Knicks are concerned. 

The anomalous highlights of his meteoric two-week career are well known: a Taiwanese-American point guard who played college basketball at Harvard, one whose masterful timing in the pick and roll nonetheless failed to generate sufficient interest to earn him a starting role on any of the three teams who considered fielding him. 

At least until February 4^th, when the desperate New York Knickerbockers (then 7-15) decided to shake things up yet again, and started him. Lin played tenaciously and intelligently, and he led (if that is the right word) the Knicks to the first of seven straight wins, the last of which came with a buzzer-beating shot of his own against the struggling Raptors (9-21) on Asian Heritage Night in Toronto (“Be my VaLINtine” posted one eager fan). The Knicks’ streak came to a groaning halt last Saturday night with an 89-85 loss to the New Orleans Hornets at home in Madison Square Garden.  I heard those groans loud and clear in the New Jersey bar where I watched the fourth quarter. 

Given his religious commitments, comparisons between Jeremy Lin and Tim Tebow were inevitable, I suppose—the up and coming star with some obvious technical flaws but great heart, the spiritual adept turning a struggling franchise around with repeatedly dramatic and last-minute victories they seem virtually to will into being. 

Enter David Brooks who, in a column drafted after the Knicks’ VaLINtine victory, curiously referred to “the Jeremy Lin Problem”.

Brooks refers to “a religious person in professional sports” as an “anomaly,” which seems rather odd to anyone who has witnessed the prayer circles before and after most professional football games, or the finger-to-the-sky salute after most home runs in baseball, but let that lie. It is the reasons Brooks finds the marriage of religion and sport “anomalous” that are worthy of consideration. 

For Brooks, there is an inescapable moral tension between what he calls “the ethos of sport” and “the ethos of faith.” By “faith,” he explicitly limits himself to the three scriptural monotheisms, so we might well wonder if what he really means to underline here is an apparent contradiction between pagan virtue and Christian virtue. 

Reading on, we discover that this is precisely what he means to do. 

The pagan virtues of the athlete, he tells us, are fierce competitiveness, personal ambition, pride, self-assertion and self-dramatization, a willingness to do anything to win.  By contrast, the virtue of the religious person may be captured in one word: humility. 

In other words, you can’t connect the Sermon on the Mount to the gridiron. 

Except that you can.  If you have never read the Sermon on the Mount, and just recall those memorable lines about the meek and the poor being blessed and inheriting the earth, then it’s easy to forget that Jesus in this same Sermon tells his hearers that if their hand or eye offend them, then they should cut them off or pluck them out.  Many a professional athlete engages in precisely that sort of ascetic self-denial throughout their relatively short careers. Religion, very much like professional sport, is a hard code.

But the key for Brooks is this: “[The athlete’s] primary virtue is courage–the ability to withstand pain, remain calm under pressure and rise from nowhere to topple the greats.”  He then casually throws out the conclusion that explains what this essay is really all about.  This athletic ethos, and this list of pagan virtues, is what ultimately explains the contemporary world of corporate, academic, and political life. 

Yowza. Let’s try to break that down. 

For Aristotle, that great summarian of pagan virtue, courage was indeed a headline virtue. It is the first virtue he discusses at any length in the Nicomachean Ethics and it has been remembered ever since as one of the so-called cardinal virtues.  Most of Aristotle’s examples in his discussion of courage come from the battlefield rather than the Olympics, however. 

It was Thomas Aquinas’s great achievement to suggest, and then to display how, pagan and Christian virtues were not necessarily incompatible. The point for Aquinas was to take the virtue of courage off of the battlefield, and to explore its essential qualities in other social arenas… like martyrdom. 

But Paul, himself reputed by the tradition to be a very early Christina martyr, repeatedly used athletic metaphors in describing the life of Christian faith (“I have run the good race,” he suggests most memorably, “I have fought the good fight”). Later Christians, already in the late first and second centuries, regularly referred to the martyrs as Christian “athletes” (it’s a Greek word, after all). 

Why does Brooks fail to see this? Why does he want to drive such a wedge between pagan and Christian virtue? Is he simply suggesting that Wall Street, the modern university and the US Congress cannot be Christianized? 

No, what Brooks misses is that Jeremy Lin is the member of a team, and that the virtues are social phenomena, not individual ones. 

Now, it is the case that there were no team sports at the ancient Olympics; Greek athletes competed ferociously, and they competed alone.  But team sports are the dominant feature of modern sport, and they are an essential feature of modern life. The key for a point guard like Jeremy Lin is not to score on every trip to the basket; the point is to enable someone on his team to score.  He is a brilliant passer as well as a deft reader of set screens and posts. His virtue is his ability to bring a flagging team together. 

That is what modern sports are centrally about. That is why we encourage young people, boys and girls alike, to play them. Sport is a school for virtue, and virtues like courage do not belong strictly to the athlete or to the Christian. They are supposed to belong in every social arena, regardless of confession or creed. 

That is the story embodied in the fledgling careers of Jeremy Lin, of Tim Tebow, of a hundred other athletes whose names we know, and the thousands more whose names we do not. It is primarily a story about teamwork, selflessly working toward common ends and aims, the demanding code of individual excellence married to our moral responsibilities for one another. 

And that is the story the current Republican ethos, an ethos that Brooks’s columns represent quite eloquently, seems most consistently to miss.

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By Kate Daley-Bailey

The Parable of the Good Samaritan (the Gospel of Luke 10:25-37) is probably one of the best- known parables from the Christian New Testament.  In the U.S. the phrase ‘good Samaritan’ is commonly understood to describe someone who has gone out of their way to help another.  This phrase has been thoroughly secularized and one need not be a Christian to know its meaning.  You voluntarily carry your elderly neighbor’s groceries… you are a ‘good Samaritan.’ You clean up someone else’s litter on the side walk… you are a ‘good Samaritan.’

In the second grade, I was recognized as the most conscientious student in the class… and you guessed it… I was awarded a certificate for being a ‘good Samaritan.’ But wait… who exactly are the Samaritans and why did my second grade teacher think I was a particularly ‘good’ one?

Who are the Samaritans?

Stephen L. Harris in his text, The New Testament: A Student’s Introduction, describes the Samaritans of first century Roman occupied Judea as a sect of Jewish people who “recognized only the Mosaic Torah, but not the prophets or other biblical writings, as binding Scripture (67).”  

According to Harris, there was a great deal of animosity between the Samaritans and other Jewish groups due to the Samaritan’s acceptance of only the first five books of the Hebrew Bible as scripture.  Not only did the Samaritan scripture differ from that of the standard Jewish version but the Samaritans also embraced Mount Gerizim, rather than Mount Zion, as God’s holy place.  

During Jesus’ time, the Samaritan Jewish identity was hotly contested… so much so that “Jews in Judea regarded the Samaritans as an alien people who practiced a false version of the Jewish religion (67).”  Harris also notes that according to some biblical verses (such as 2 Kings 17) the Samaritans were viewed as the descendants of “Mesopotamians whom Assyrian conquerors settled in the area during the eight century B.C.E.- and therefore not ‘authentic’ Jews (67).”  Harris states that this description of the Samaritans’ origin, although historically inaccurate, was a widely held belief among the various Jewish sects in Judea during the first century CE. 

Jesus and His Historical Context:

Historically speaking, Jesus was a Jew.  He had Jewish parents, went to the Jerusalem Temple, knew Jewish scripture and often quoted from them, and celebrated Jewish holidays such as Passover.  The name Jesus is actually the Greek version of his Hebrew name—a variation on the name Joshua.  The majority of Jesus’ followers, according to the four gospels of the New Testament, are patently Jewish.  I am illustrating this point because there is a tendency among some Christians to see Jesus as outside of his Jewish context and thereby miss the impact that many of his actions and sayings would have had on his primarily Jewish audience.

The Parable:

According to the Gospel of Luke, Jesus is approached by a Torah scholar (a man very learned in Jewish law) and asked what he must do to inherent eternal life.  Jesus returns his question with another question: “What is written in the law?  What do you read there?”  The scholar quotes from the written Torah: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.”  Jesus affirms the man’s answer but before he leaves he wants Jesus to clarify who his neighbor is… who does this category include?  Instead of directly answering the man, Jesus tells him a parable, a common didactic literary tool used by Jewish teachers to have listeners work through their own questions.  The parable illustrated is the Parable of the Good Samaritan, which reads as follows:

30 Jesus replied, “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell into the hands of robbers, who stripped him, beat him, and went away, leaving him half dead. 31 Now by chance a priest was going down that road; and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side.  32 So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side.  33 But a Samaritan while traveling came near him; and when he saw him, he was moved with pity.  34 He went to him and bandaged his wounds, having poured oil and wine on them.  Then he put him on his own animal, brought him to an inn, and took care of him.  35 The next day he took out two denarii, gave them to the innkeeper, and said, ‘Take care of him; and when I come back, I will repay you whatever more you spend.’

After telling the parable, Jesus turns back to the man and asks “Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?”  37 He said, “The one who showed him mercy.” Jesus said to him, “Go and do likewise.”  (New Revised Standard Version, 1989)

Unpacking the Parable:

The road from Jerusalem to Jericho, in Jesus’ time, was a notoriously dangerous stretch of road.  Particularly hazardous because bandits would often lie in wait for travelers.  The unfortunate man in Jesus’ parable fell victim to a band of robbers and they striped him, beat him and went away leaving him half-dead.  The injured man is anonymous. The parable presents three new characters: a priest, a Levite, and finally a Samaritan.  According to Brad Young’s book The Parables: Jewish Tradition and Christian Interpretation, the priest and Levite both “serve religious functions in the temple” and did not “follow the oral interpretation of the Torah” which means they were probably associated with a particular group of Jews in the first century known as the Sadducees (106).  These Sadducees were very concerned with ritual purity and followed the written Torah injunction (Lev. 21:1) that they not touch a dead body which was understood as ritually contaminating.  The priest and Levite’s actions were dictated by their strict interpretation of ritual purity laws.  If the man is dead, then they risk ritual contamination by touching a corpse.

Relationship to the Law

According to the Law, what is one required to do?  Some Jewish groups like the Sadducees accepted only the written Law and read these texts literally.  The Samaritans, who as we previously discussed, were often viewed as enemies of the Jews, ironically shared one characteristic with the Sadducees… they too only accepted the written Law.  Both groups rejected the oral Law.  According to Harris, the Pharisees “accepted not only the written Law contained in the Mosaic Torah but also a parallel oral law (65).  Harris explains this oral law as “intended to extend the laws of Temple purity to virtually every aspect of life” (65).  So this parable not only suggests that Jesus viewed even one’s enemies as one’s neighbors but also shows his affinity with the Pharisee’s reverence for both the written and oral Law.  The oral law, accepted by the Pharisees, prioritized the preservation of life over ritual purity.  Therefore, if there had been a Pharisee in this parable, we can guess what, given his view of Jewish law, he would have done in this circumstance… he would have done as the Samaritan did.

What is so shocking about this parable?

The audience listening to Jesus were Jews, as he himself was, and the man to whom Jesus was speaking directly was not only a Jew but he was very well versed in Jewish law.  It is likely that Jesus’ audience had heard a teaching like this before and were merely waiting for Jesus to fill in the details.  This might have been akin to hearing the opening lines of a joke you have told a number of times… only to find out that the person telling the joke had modified it.  The audience probably nodded their heads in agreement and gave each other knowing smiles as Jesus began the parable… of yes… the infamous road from Jerusalem to Jericho, the callousness of the priest and the Levite, and then the… what?  Jesus’ followers probably expected the champion of the story to be a Pharisee… after all… this group of Jews were required to follow the oral as well as the written law.  But Jesus changes the pattern and chooses a very unlikely candidate as his hero… a Samaritan.

Why did Jesus tell a Parable about a ‘Good’ Samaritan?

We have briefly touched on Jesus’ historical context and noted the significant historical tensions between Samaritans and other Jews living in Judea during Jesus’ time.  We might not be shocked to find Jesus, as a first century Jew in Judea, telling a story about a Samaritan to his predominately Jewish audience.  What is shocking is that Jesus makes the Samaritan the champion of his parable!  Not only were Samaritans seen as enemies of the Jews, they also followed the written Law (albeit a distinct version of it) and were not beholden to the oral Law. The Samaritan was not fulfilling a requirement placed on him by oral or written Law and given his status as outsider was probably risking his own life helping the anonymous man laying half-dead on the side of the road.

The Torah scholar to whom Jesus directs his parable is now asked which of the three characters in the parable “was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers” and the scholar responds knowingly to Jesus’ question… “the one who showed him mercy.”  Keep in mind that this Torah scholar knows both the written and oral Law and appears to be in line with the Pharisaic view of the law.  He too may have expected the hero in Jesus’ parable to be a Pharisee if not Pharisee like.  He might have expected the man to act due to his lawful obligation.  Here, in this instance, the Torah scholar is the champion because he understands the underlying meaning of the cryptic parable.  The Torah scholar did not answer Jesus’ question by saying ‘the Samaritan.’ He defines the man by his actions and not is social, cultural, or religious status.

After telling the parable, Jesus turns back to the man and asks “Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?” 37 He said, “The one who showed him mercy.” Jesus said to him, “Go and do likewise.”

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By Heather Abraham

Fighting Monks?  Roman Catholic, Armenian, and Greek Orthodox Monks battle each other with brooms.   Why are they fighting?  For the ultimate prize: Sacred Space!  The 1500 year old Church of the Nativity, built over the spot believed to be the birthplace of Jesus, is a hot bed of contestation with the three Christian denominations vying for control of space within the church. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TsT-iOiO4HM

 Powerful and controversial poem  by Chris Tse:  ”I’m Sorry I’m a Christian”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EieFdXy_HwM

Robert Watson, Professor of American Studies at Lynn University, addresses the paranoid ranting of those claiming that President Obama has forbidden Christmas Trees  in the White House.  BTW, according to Barbara Walters, who toured the White House recently, there are 37 Christmas trees in the White House this year.   

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_JsO8SEGBiA

 Rick Perry promises an end to “Obama’s War on Religion.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0PAJNntoRgA

 JESUS responds to Rick Perry.        

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yxyEkrxsWP8

 Religious People are nerds! 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gNtnN_DiP3o

Banned Super Bowl commercial, “Jesus Hates Obama” 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=luyGmcVMoAE

The “Fuck it Way,” a break off NRM which finds its roots in the cult classic “The Big Lebowski,” released a Christmas video.   

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2BXLpHNPW84

For those of you wondering what the hell ”The Fuck it Way” is, here is an introductory video.   ”The Ultimate Spiritual Way:  Say, Fuck It!”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DVdKQ0I35qo

What connects spirituality, poetry, and fashion?  Levi’s Jeans, of course.  “The God’s wait to delight in you….”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KT16DcHcjRA

Pole Fitness for Jesus!  Christian women embrace the stripper pole to get fit while listening to upbeat Christian pop music.  Apparently pole dancing empowers women and 4 inch+ hooker shoes are good for the legs!  Who knew!  Now don’t judge, “It’s all about being spiritual.” 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tplfas9OIFI

Raelian Swastika Rehabilitation Day.  An interesting walk through the history of the swastika before it became the Nazi symbol.   The Swastika, a Coca Cola symbol?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xBpfnqcnrJw

Bill Maher talks about Apatheism—apathetic atheist.  

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=momdjeHgBy4

Australia’s John Safran explores religion and pop culture in his homeland and beyond:  Islamic Jedi?, Matrix Messiah?, Juggalo Minister? 

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EPZ77_vORPY

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints has unleashed an “I’m a Mormon” commercial blitz on America.  Their goal?  To introduce Mormons to mainstream America. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_wLYveIaaQ

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By Kate Daley-Bailey

Alfred Rosenberg, sometimes referred to as ‘the philosopher of the Nazi party,’ was instrumental in the ideological construction of what might be called a Germanic Aryan ethic.  Rosenberg, an ardent anti-Semite, anti-Bolshevik, and anti-Catholic, presented the Nazi establishment with a disparate and staccato ‘history of the Aryan’ in his book, The Myth of the 20th Century: An Evaluation of the Spiritual-Intellectual, which was used to philosophically support Nazi doctrines on race and religion.  While Nazi German elite often held a great disdain for Christianity, condemning it as a flawed ideology not compatible with the regime’s political and social aims, they were not, initially, opposed to using Christian theories about Jesus to promote their own cause.  Rosenberg is no exception. In his most prominent book, second only to Mein Kampf in Nazi circles, Rosenberg presents a rather unusual, and ahistorical, view of Jesus of Nazareth.

Rosenberg claims that Jesus was not a Jew (but that he might have been Aryan) and that it was in fact the Jew Saul/Paul that twisted Jesus’ words in order to use Jesus’ message as part of the conspiracy for Jewry to take over the world.

There is no proof for the often made claim that Jesus was a Jew.  Indeed, there is much to show the contrary.  Jesus possibly was Aryan, or partially so, showing the Nordic type strongly. (page 411)

Blaming Saul/Paul and the institutional church (especially the Catholic Church) for the gross distortion of Jesus’ message, Rosenberg’s Jesus was a master, a conqueror, and the antithesis of what he sees as the broken, humble, Jesus of the Christian Church:

The smiling blond child who often gazed at the world with unhesitant heroism was transformed into a broken down figure tortured by pain. (page 292)

Rosenberg hopes to return to the ‘real’ image of Jesus:     

From the dark Jesus on the cross comes a luminous, slim, blond, risen Christ. (page 293)

Heralding the Jesus of the Gospel of John as the best canonical example of what he will call ‘positive Christianity,’ Rosenberg condemns the current state of European Christianity:

The Gospel of Saint John, which still retains an aristocratic spirit, strove to defend Christianity against this collective bastradisation, orientalism, and Judaisation. (page 88)

So, how might a Nordic-blooded Jesus have ended up in 1^st century Palestine? 

Rosenberg built upon the theology of his mentor, Houston Stewart Chamberlain (a British author who married Richard Wagner’s daughter and became a German citizen and a Nazi) and used Chamberlain’s book, The Foundations Of The Nineteenth Century, as a model for his book, The Myth of the 20th Century: An Evaluation of the Spiritual-Intellectual. 

Rosenberg claims that thousands of years ago, Nordic races left their prehistoric homeland and carried the worship of their sun god from Europe to Mesopotamia.  Pulling from Chamberlain, Rosenberg envisions a Nordic people associated with the Assyrians of Ancient Mesopotamia. The Assyrians are thought to have invaded northern Israel (722 B.C.E) and to have displaced the original population.  For Rosenberg as well as Chamberlain, immigrants from Assyria (distant descendants of Aryan conquerors) were placed in the region that would later be referred to as the Galilee. 

How does Rosenberg explain the ‘Jewishness’ of Jesus in the New Testament?

Many of the subsequent  ‘Aryan Jesus’ arguments spawn out of this desire to place pure blooded Aryan-Assyrian (at least non-Jewish) communities in the Galilee.  Chamberlain emphasizes that these Jews in Galilee- were not Jews by blood but by faith (after years of cultural assimilation).  Chamberlain, like many of his colleagues, attributes the rebellious nature of the population of the Galilee to the natural consequence of link between blood and cultural character: 

the national character of the Galileans was essentially different from that of the Jews.  Open any history of the Jews that you will, that of Ewald or Graetz or Renan, everywhere you will find that in character the Galileans present a direct contrast to the rest of the inhabitants of Palestine they are described as hot-heads, energetic idealists, men of action. (Chamberlain page 207)

Needless to say, Rosenberg’s hypothesis troubles me as a reader but what is perhaps even more disturbing is how his ‘theory’ on Jesus is not an isolated incident among writers and intellectuals in Europe (going back even to the 1800s).

Further Reading:

• Article: “The Nazi Quest for an Aryan Jesus” by Peter M. Head, Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus, Jan2004, Vol. 2 Issue 1, p55-89, 35p
• Book: The Aryan Jesus: Christian Theologians and the Bible in Nazi Germany by Susannah Heschel
• Book: The Myth of the 20th Century: An Evaluation of the Spiritual-Intellectual by Alfred Rosenberg
• http://www.archive.org/details/TheMythOfThe20thCentury
• Book: The Foundations of the 19^th Century by Houston Stewart Chamberlain
• http://www.archive.org/details/TheFoundationsOfThe19thCentury_362

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By Lady Arsinoe

Samhain is fast approaching.  Many of us look forward to this time of year.  Candy, carved jack-o-lanterns, itty-bitty children dressed up as adorable bumblebees, princesses, or pirates.  This is a joyous time of year!  The leaves begin to crunch beneath our feet.  And the crisp breeze begins to pinch our faces and burnish our cheeks.  There is nothing so beautiful as frost on crimson leaves gleaming in the morning sun.

At this time, my thoughts turn to death and dying.  <screech> Whoa!  What?  O, not in a fatalistic manner, or in the Goth-cool fashion either.  Samhain is when the veil between the worlds is thinnest, when we celebrate those who have crossed over during the past year, and when we make reckonings of our lives.  I’ve always seen parting the final veil as an adventure to be anticipated.  Those who have taken this journey before me have all the secrets of the Universe on 3X5 notecards.  Lucky!  To be one with the Divine?  Wow.  Death is not the end, merely a new beginning. 

“Death— the last sleep? No, the final awakening.”….Walter Scott

“Because I could not stop for death
He kindly stopped for me
The carriage held but just ourselves
And immortality.”….Emily Dickinson

“Seeing death as the end of life is like seeing the horizon as the end of the ocean.”….David Searls

“The day which we fear as our last is but the birthday of eternity.”….Seneca

“For what is it to die but to stand naked in the wind and to melt into the sun?”….Kahlil Gibran

“People sleep, and when they die, they awake.”….Mohammed

“I am ready to meet my Maker. Whether my Maker is prepared for the great ordeal of meeting me is another matter.”….Winston Churchill

I can’t help but find comfort and solace in these words.  To awaken from sleep?  To melt into the sun?  How wonderful!  How beautiful!  How glorious!  I hope to live my life in a manner deserving of such beauty.

Life, as someone once said, is a sexually transmitted terminal disease.  We start the journey to death the moment we first hit the atmosphere.  Nobody gets out alive.  Yet, that is no reason to be fearful, or dread the inevitable.  Embrace life, and live it to the fullest!  One of my favorite sayings hangs in the kitchen of our dear friends, which sums up a wonderful approach to life: 

“Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive and well preserved body, but rather skid in sideways, chocolate in one hand, wine in the other, body thoroughly used up, totally worn out and screaming “WOO HOO what a ride!”

That’s going to be me, sliding into home plate with a martini in one hand and a bar of chocolate in the other.  Wow!  That was fun!  Let’s to that again!  After all, if life is too short to drink shitty beer, is there any good reason to fill it with fear, bitterness, and assorted and sundry negative crap?  We are so much better off enjoying ourselves!

There is no escape from this prison called life, yet one day, we will be freed.  In the meantime, we should endeavor to make Heaven/Summerland/Nirvana this life on earth.  Be nice to people.  Actually treat everyone and everything like you would want to be treated.  Be compassionate.  Be loving.  There is no sense in waiting till we’re on the other side.  That’s the ultimate in procrastination.  Instead of bitching and whining about how badly life has treated us, why not, in the words of Mohandas Gandhi, “Be the change that you want to see in the world.”

Living in a compassionate, grateful state of mind prepares us for the inevitability of crossing the veil.  The Buddhists say that one’s frame of mind at the end helps determine how one enters the next life.  Filling our minds with happy, compassionate, and grateful thoughts as we cross the bridge helps move us into a new and better life.  Thoughts of fear and anxiety hinder our progress on the spiral.  Frankly, I don’t want to come back as a mosquito.

No one has ever come back to give a travelogue of the Summerland.  Yet, I still get glimpses and fleeting sensations of those who have gone on before me.  I swear I can smell my dog every once in a while.  He and my cat are happily chasing each other around.  My Mother and Father appear to me in my dreams and provide words of love, comfort, and encouragement.  Based on this, I know the Summerland is a place of joy, peace, and fulfillment.

Of course we miss those who have gone before.  That’s only natural.  What kind of sick puppies would we be if we didn’t fell that loss?  But, how dare we hinder their progress on the Path just because we can’t stand to let them go?  That is the height of selfishness!  By letting our loved ones go with love and compassion, we elevate ourselves on the spiral of life/death/rebirth as well.  We will be with them again.  And their echoes remain to guide us along the Path until our time to rejoin them.  Dry your tears, my friends.  Though our loved ones go before us, they are the lucky ones!  And one day, we will be tenderly and joyfully caught up in their love and laughter again.  Of that, I have no doubt.

How can we know there is life after death?  We know our bodies decay.  What about that which makes us us?  A small, but increasing, number of scientists theorize that consciousness is related to, but not dependent on, the material brain. One scientist has even found that the brains of people who have had near-death experiences closely mirror those of nuns and monks, who are considered spiritual adepts.  I have my own theory on what happens to us when we die.  As Kahlil Gibran said, “we melt into the sun;” or, according to my theory, we melt into the All That Is.  Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor, the neuroscientist who suffered a massive stroke chronicled in My Stroke of Insight, said, “Our bodies are portals for energy.”  I believe that which makes me me is the energy that comes through that portal, and that energy is part of God/dess.  When our bodies cease to function, and are thoroughly used up, our consciousness is freed to join that of the All from which we came.  So, death is nothing to fear!  It is to be adoringly and joyfully anticipated, yet not sought.  We have so many lessons to learn here, after all.  Life is a journey to be savored, and the final awakening is the reward for a path well-traveled.

Think of who you were before you were born.  That is who you will be again.

Yes, indeed, this is a joyous time of year!  Happy Samhain!

********************************************

Lady Arsinoe’s Bio:

I was initiated into the Wiccan spiritual tradition as a First Degree in 1993.  Over the years, I continued my studies and increased my involvement.  In 2000, the members of OakSpring (www.HouseOfOakSpring.org) separated from Ravenwood to go our own way.  In 2006, I became the High Priestess of OakSpring, with my husband serving as High Priest.  OakSpring is large by Wiccan standards, and has been blessed to own and maintain our covenstead on 38 acres of woodland in the Metro-Atlanta area.

Like most Wiccans, my mundane life is similar to anyone else’s:  I go to work each day (for a large engineering firm), bear with traffic, and go home to relax with my family and pets.  Living a magical life isn’t always about the spells; it’s about living in a way that is harmonious with Nature, the Universe, and ourselves.  I do my best to live in accordance with Wiccan principles every day of my life.  I think that is the best way to show the world what Wicca is all about.

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By Kenny Smith

Dr. Kelly J. Baker is a lecturer in Religious Studies and Americanist Studies at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Seemingly indefatigable, she has written for numerous academic and popular publications, has two additional books and several scholarly articles currently in the works, serves an editor for the award-winning American Religious History blog, oversees panels and groups within the American Academy of Religion and American Studies Association, all the while teaching a full-load of university-level courses each semester, raising a young daughter, and encouraging aspiring graduate students at other institutions.

A glance at her resume suggests a broad range of teaching and research interests: world religions in America, apocalyptic and Rapture-oriented movements, the figure of the zombie in contemporary culture, religious intolerance in the South Park series, and of course, the early 20^th century rebirth of the Ku Klux Klan and its relationship to “mainstream” American religion and culture, precisely the focus of her new book, Gospel According to the Klan: The KKK’s Appeal to Protestant America, 1915-1930  (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2011, 326 pages). 

Like all good historical work, this book complicates our understanding of the past, and thus also the present, by bringing to light previously overlooked and under-appreciated narratives. Specifically, Baker explores the print and material culture of the early 20^th century Klan: for instance, Klan newspapers such as the Imperial Night-Hawk and the Kourier Magazine, Klan robes and hoods, photographs of Klan initiations and gatherings, etc.. Most historical accounts, she explains, present the early 20^th century Klan as an extremist movement driven solely by concerns for racial and nationalistic purity, to the obvious and often brutal exclusion of African Americans, Catholics, and Jews. Thus the Klan appears as a paramilitary organization on the margins of mainstream American society, one that had little to do with the dominant religion of the time other than the coincidental affiliation of virtually all Klan participants with one Protestant denomination or another. When we take seriously what Klan leaders and spokespersons actually said, wrote, and did, however, a very different portrait emerges. 

The Klan’s political philosophies and practices, Baker argues, were inseparable from their Protestant Christianity. It is not simply the case that Klan leaders made use of Christian symbols and language, but rather that Klan philosophies and activities were predicated upon their understandings of the biblical text and the Protestant tradition. This is evident in what Klan leaders wrote (e.g., that “As the Star of Bethlehem guided the wise men to Christ, so it is that the Klan is expected more and more to guide men to the right life under Christi’s banner” 35), in what they wore (robes featuring crosses), and the rituals they enacted (e.g., erecting crosses, lining up in the form of a cross, reading the biblical text as a mandate for racial purity and superiority). 

More, Baker argues that the Klan is best understood not as vigilantes on the fringes of the social order, but as articulating (and implementing) what the majority of white Americans accepted as obviously the case.  As Baker demonstrates, the Klan was a broad, demographically and geographically diverse social, political, religious movement that competed, to some degree successfully, for a central position in the national consciousness and mainstream culture.

In helping to tease out this relationship, Baker points to the modern-day case of the Rev. Terry Jones, who in recent years garnered considerable media attention for threatening to burn (and then actually burning) a Qur’an in public. While a relatively small percentage of Americans will themselves publicly burn Qur’ans or join groups that do, studies consistently suggest that Jones’ attitudes toward Muslims reflect the opinions of large portions of the American public. Like Jones’ hatred of Islam, the Klan’s attitudes were mainstream, not marginal. 

Perhaps most controversially, the book’s final chapters explore the cultural legacy of the Klan as a “brand or style of religious nationalism,” and inquire as to its relationship to 21^st century forms of American conservativism, especially as it appears in the rhetoric of Glenn Beck and the Tea Party.  Baker acknowledges that “[b]inding people and movements to the Klan is an effective tool to showcase nefarious intentions and legacies,” and thus should be done with considerable caution. (263)  Still, there are important historical continuities. Beck and many in the Tea Party, she points out, express a distinctly Christian nationalism that seems bent upon the exclusion or marginalization of religious/cultural others, and the desire of much media coverage to paint Beck and the Tea Party as located on the fringes of American society recapitulates our long-standing assumptions about Klan history. 

I have called Gospel According to the Klan a brave new book. This is so for two important reasons. Firstly, Baker has exposed something about American cultural history that many of us may not wish to see: namely, that both religion and mainstream society participate in the ugly, even violent, side of American nationalism. To reveal this in a clear, detailed, and sustained argument can provoke precisely this ugliness.  As Baker explains in the book’s afterword,

I received my first death threat for [while writing for the American History Blog] simply suggesting that Americans need to recognize the place of Christianity and religion more generally in domestic terrorism and the larger hate movement. (252)

Secondly, Baker has also exposed something unpleasant about the rest of us, those who do not concur or sympathize with Terry Jones and feel repulsed by exclusionary religious nationalism (Christian or otherwise): namely, that we have a tendency towards forgetfulness, and towards imagining American history and the American mainstream in ways that reflect our own preferences.  

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By Joseph Laycock

Last month, Jose Maldonado of Guadalajara Mexico claimed he found and captured a fairy.  The 22 year-old unemployed bricklayer was picking guavas when he spied a twinkling object that he at first thought was a firefly.  The object allegedly turned out to be a tiny humanoid creature (apparently female) with gossamer insect like wings.  Maldonado explained, “I knew that it was a fairy godmother.”   The creature died not long after its discovery (disturbingly, it is not clear how the fairy died after it was captured) and its discoverer put it in a jar of formaldehyde.  Word of Maldonado’s fairy in a jar spread throughout his neighborhood of Lornas Verdes, one of the poorest and most dangerous regions of Guadalajara.  Soon, thousands of people were arriving, standing in line for up to an hour to see the fairy.  Being unemployed, Maldonado asks for a donation to see his discovery.  His neighbors have also capitalized on the situation by selling photographs and key rings with the image of the fairy for 20 pesos ($1.60) as well as food and beverages to those waiting in line. 

Skeptics are quick to point out that the creature in Maldonado’s jar looks remarkably like a plastic toy that can be purchased in shops throughout Mexico.  It resembles a super-hero more than a fairy, wearing a red and yellow costume with thigh-high boots and gloves.  Its right arm is extended in a commanding pose.  It seems difficult to imagine that anyone would mistake this object for organic matter, let alone a fairy.  However, some visitors were quite convinced of the fairy’s authenticity, even weeping for news cameras as they emerged from Maldonado’s home. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQd_va6NIOc

In March 2006, a similar case occurred near Mobile, Alabama, where residents reported seeing a leprechaun in a tree.  The leprechaun appeared in Crichton, a predominately black neighborhood.  Soon the Internet was abuzz with clips of Crichton residents making remarks such as “Where da gold at?” and “Could be a crack head that got hold to the wrong stuff and it told him to get up in the tree and play a leprechaun!”  These portrayals of African-Americans led conservative pundit Bill O’Reilly to remark that news coverage of the Crichton leprechaun was racist.  The strangest figure to emerge from the leprechaun flap was a man interviewed wearing a camouflage t-shirt under what appeared to be a bulletproof vest.  He explained that his armor could ward off spells.  He also brandished “a special leprechaun flute” that had allegedly been in his family for thousands of years.  (The flute looked suspiciously like a section of sprinkler pipe).  This leprechaun warrior had apparently come to Cricthon “just to help out.” 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nda_OSWeyn8

One of the most interesting things about these incidents is that ethnic communities––Mexican Latinos and African Americans––claimed to see supernatural creatures from the folklore of the British Isles.  This appears to be a testament to the power of mass culture.  Maldonado most likely learned the concept of a “fairy godmother” from Cinderella—an ancient folktale that has been thoroughly appropriated by Disney studios.  In this sense, Maldonado’s fairy represents what sociologist Alan Byrman calls “Disneyization,” a process in which a corporate behemoth effectively “colonizes” the imagination and “emotional labor” of America and the world.  Similarly, the residents of Crichton are probably familiar with leprechaun lore through the endless array of faux Irish products and ads that our consumer culture rolls out every March for Saint Patrick’s Day.  And at least a few Crichton residents were likely familiar with the horror film “http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j5KtD_rmi6w

in the Hood” (2000), in which one of the little people seeks vengeance on Ice T, who has stolen his magic flute and used it to become a gangsta rap star.  (After watching this film, the man in Crichton with his bulletproof vest and leprechaun flute is suddenly put into context). 

But fairy panics are not just for poor communities or the culturally colonized.   The first such incident of the twentieth century occurred in Cottingley, England, in 1917, when 17 year-old Elsie Wright and her cousin, Frances Griffiths, produced a series of photographs of themselves surrounded by dancing fairies.  Much like the Maldonado fairy, it is difficult to imagine how anyone could have believed these pictures to be authentic.  In the previous century, “spirit photography” had amazed the world by using double exposures to produce translucent images of ghosts.  Wright and Griffiths, however, did not bother to doctor the film—they simply drew faeries onto cardboard cutouts and posed next to them.  Nevertheless, a number of Spiritualist and Theosophical groups endorsed the photos.  Sir Arthur Conan Doyle became the greatest advocate of the Cottingley fairies and continued to argue for the authenticity of the images for the rest of his life.  In his book The Coming of the Fairies (1922), he suggests that the world may soon come out of its secular worldview as scientific evidence emerges for the existence of fairies and other supernatural beings.  He writes:

It is hard for the mind to grasp what the ultimate results may be if we have actually proved the existence upon the surface of this planet of a population which may be as numerous as the human race, which pursues its own strange life in its own strange way, and which is only separated from ourselves by some difference of vibrations.

It has been nearly a century since Max Weber declared that the world has become “disenchanted.”  How then can we account for the continued fairy panics?

It would be a mistake to assume that the crowds forming to see a dead fairy godmother or to catch a glimpse of a leprechaun firmly believe in supernatural beings.  For most, this is a form of entertainment.  Media scholar Annette Hill suggests that “paranormal media” such as ghost-hunting shows invite audiences to go through a “revolving door of skepticism and belief.”  In evaluating claims of the supernatural, we are actually engaging in a process of self-discovery by defining ourselves on a continuum from skeptic to believers.  Hill also suggests that we enjoy putting our assumptions about reality to the test.  Paying to see a fairy in a jar is not unlike purchasing a lottery ticket: the consumer gets to experience the brief possibility––inspecting the fairy or scratching the ticket––that his or her life could change dramatically.  Doyle had already begun to contemplate a world where fairies are a scientific fact, much as someone scratching a lottery ticket already has a plan for how they will spend the jackpot. 

The fairy panics in Guadalajara and Crichton are also collective events with social significance.  The social upheaval they bring about resembles anthropologist Victor Turner’s notion of a “liminal situation” in which the structure and roles of ordinary society are suspended and anything becomes possible.  This explains why fairies appear to poor communities that have been neglected by the larger society.  The question, “Where da gold at?,” now the name of a website that capitalized on the Crichton leprechaun, expresses the wish of a poor community for a reversal of status.  To some extent the fairy magic works and the situations that arise during a fairy panic lead to actual Cinderella-like transformations: an unemployed bricklayer becomes a celebrity and a man with a sprinkler pipe becomes a magical leprechaun warrior.  Doyle too, hoped for such a transformation.  To him, the Cottingley fairies offered the hope of an epistemological reversal wherein the dominant worldview of scientific-rationalism would yield to a Romantic world inhabited by fairies. 

The lesson of the fairies seems to be that many of the realities we take for granted are in fact vulnerable to sudden and dramatic change.  Today, the forces of scientific-rationalism and a global marketplace appear to be unassailable facts of reality.  But these structures can be disrupted with a few cardboard props or a rubber toy in a jar.  Turner argued that liminal situations are inherently unstable and so far every fairy panic has died down.  Inevitably, the crowds disperse and people return to work.  However, it is also from these moments of collective effervescence that more permanent social changes arise.  The Tennis Court Oath that cemented the French Revolution and the gathering at Tahrir Square last January both began as liminal situations.  While a fairy panic is far cry from a revolution, it provides a glimpse of an alternative order––one that could potentially become a reality.  Even in the most stable of social orders, “the coming of the fairies” remains an inherent possibility.

****************************

Joseph Laycock holds an MTS from Harvard Divinity School and is currently a doctoral candidate at Boston University.  He has taught at a variety of high schools as well as Boston University, Tufts University, and Piedmont Virginia Community College.  He has published numerous articles on issues of American religious history, new religious movements, and religion and popular culture.  His first book is Vampires Today: The Truth About Modern Vampirism (Praeger, 2009).

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By Cathy Lynn Grossman, USA TODAY

If World War II-era warbler Kate Smith sang today, her anthem could be GodsBless America.

That’s one of the key findings in newly released research that reveals America’s drift from clearly defined religious denominations to faiths cut to fit personal preferences.

The folks who make up God as they go are side-by-side with self-proclaimed believers who claim the Christian label but shed their ties to traditional beliefs and practices. Religion statistics expert George Barna says, with a wry hint of exaggeration, America is headed for “310 million people with 310 million religions.”

“We are a designer society. We want everything customized to our personal needs — our clothing, our food, our education,” he says. Now it’s our religion.

Barna’s new book on U.S. Christians, Futurecast, tracks changes from 1991 to 2011, in annual national surveys of 1,000 to 1,600 U.S. adults. All the major trend lines of religious belief and behavior he measured ran downward — except two.

And more say they haven’t been to church in the past six months except for special occasions such as weddings or funerals. In 1991, 24% were “unchurched.” Today, it’s 37% .

Barna blames pastors for those oddly contradictory findings. Everyone hears, “Jesus is the answer.  Embrace him.  Say this little Sinners Prayer and keep coming back. It doesn’t work. People end up bored, burned out and empty,” he says. “They look at church and wonder, ‘Jesus died for this?’”

The consequence, Barna says, is that, for every subgroup of religion, race, gender, age and region of the country, the important markers of religious connection are fracturing.

When he measures people by their belief in seven essential doctrines, defined by the National Association of Evangelicals’ Statement of Faith, only 7% of those surveyed qualified.

Barna laments, “People say, ‘I believe in God. I believe the Bible is a good book. And then I believe whatever I want.’”

LifeWay Research reinforces those findings: A new survey of 900 U.S. Protestant pastors finds 62% predict the importance of being identified with a denomination will diminish over the next 10 years.

Exactly, says Carol Christoffel of Zion, Ill. She drifted through a few mainline Protestant denominations in her youth, found a home in the peace and unity message of the Baha’i tradition for several years, and then was drawn deeply into Native American traditional healing practices.

Yet, she also still calls herself Christian.

“I’m a kind of bridge person between cultures. I agree with the teachings of Jesus and … I know many Christians like me who keep the Bible’s social teachings and who care for the earth and for each other,” Christoffel says. “I support people who do good wherever they are.”

And it’s not only Christians sampling hopscotch spirituality. The Jewish magazine Moment has an “Ask the Rabbis” feature that consults 14 variations of Judaism, “and there are many,” says editor and publisher Nadine Epstein.

“The September edition of Moment asks ‘Can their be Judaism without God?’ And most say yes. It’s incredibly exciting. We live in an era where you pick and choose the part of the religion that makes sense to you. And you can connect through culture and history in a meaningful way without necessarily religiously practicing,” Epstein says.

Sociologist Robert Bellah first saw this phenomenon emerging in the 1980s. In a book he co-authored, Habits of the Heart, he introduces Sheila, a woman who represents this.

Sheila says: “I can’t remember the last time I went to church. My faith has carried me a long way. It’s Sheilaism. Just my own little voice. … It’s just try to love yourself and be gentle with yourself. You know, I guess, take care of each other. I think God would want us to take care of each other.”

Bellah, now professor emeritus at University of California-Berkeley, says, “Sheila was a jolt to some at the time. But to a lot of people, it wasn’t a jolt at all, they had been living that way for a while. Don’t romanticize the past. Fervent religiosity was always in the minority. Just because people showed up in church didn’t always mean a deep personal conviction or commitment.”

Bellah sees two sides to the one-person-one-religion trend. On the positive: It’s harder to hold on to prejudices against groups — by religion or race or gender or sexuality — if everyone wants to be seen individually.

“The bad news is you lose the capacity to make connections. Everyone is pretty much on their own,” he says. And all this rampant individualism also fosters “hostility toward organized groups — government, industry, even organized religion.”

Today, even the godless disagree on how not to believe, says Rusty Steil of Denver.

He grew up Lutheran and retained his parents’ “strong moral code,” but, he says, he couldn’t stick with “ancient myths of people trying to make sense of the world.”

“I don’t find much comfort in imagining there’s an all-powerful God who would allow people starving and all the natural and man-made disasters,” Steil says.

Steil calls himself a “live-and-let-live atheist,” as apart from the virulently anti-religious variety such as Christopher Hitchens or Richard Dawkins, or “those who actively promote disbelief.”

Paul Morris, an Army medic at Fort Bragg in North Carolina and veteran of six tours in the Middle East, says he has seen Christianity, Judaism and Islam in action, for better and for worse, and, frankly, he’ll pass.

Morris grew up “old-style Italian Catholic,” but says he never felt like his spiritual questions were answered. So, he says, “I just wiped the slate clean. I studied every major religion on the face of the planet. Every one had parts that made sense, but there was no one specific dogma or tenet I could really follow,” Morris says.

“So now, I call myself an agnostic — one who just doesn’t know. What I believe is that if you can just do the right thing, it works everywhere.”

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By Louis A. Ruprecht Jr., Georgia State University

You don’t have to be a Marxist to notice the often astonishing overlap between big money and big religion.  Nor to be somewhat shocked by the bigness of the whole affair. 

Consider the Basilica of San Marco in Venice, one of the most popular and most-densely populated tourist destinations in Italy, nearly rivaling its much larger cousin in Rome.  It is a striking monument in every way, not least for the bizarre mish-mash of architectural elements and artistic styles that define this most funky profile. 

It’s a beautiful monument, and quite possibly the single most famous piazza in the world, but it’s a crazy kind of beauty. 

The Church of San Marco in Venice is as much a testimony to the mercantile spirit–and the sheer rapaciousness–of the Venetians as it is to the catholicity of their faith.  Stolen columns and bronze horses, the stolen corpse of Saint Mark the Evangelist, the stolen autograph copy of this same Mark’s Gospel—all of this, and much more, eventually found a home in this most opulent jewel of this Most Serene Republic. 

The general plan of the shrine dates back to the 800s, with the floor plan of the Greek cross borrowed from the Byzantines, and the five onion domes borrowed from the Muslims.  This unique Venetian aesthetic—of semi-shameless borrowing and creative thievery—defines the unique place this sanctuary holds in the history of art and of empire, alike. 

Christian legend has it that Mark the evangelist laid over on one of the islands in the Venetian lagoon, while en route from Aquileia to Rome.  It was there that he received an angelic vision, greeting him with the words Pax tibi, Marce evangelista meus. Hic requiescet corpus tuum, “Peace unto you, Mark my evangelist; your body will rest here.”  A suspect story, since Mark’s Greek was poor and his Latin non-existent, but this didn’t keep the Venetians from carving the first half of this famous Latin phrase under the paw of nearly every winged lion that graced every major port or entranceway in the empire. 

In any event, some ambitious Venetian merchants brought the prophecy to reality when they carted Mark’s corpse away from the then-Arab port of Alexandria, and gave it as a gift to the Doge, the elected short-term emperor of the Venetian Republic, who promptly commissioned the Basilica. 

And so commenced the long, complicated story of religiously inspired Venetian looting.  The city as a whole is awash in the corpses of Christian luminaries, from Jesus’s grandfather, Zeccaria, to early Christian martyrs like Lucia and Hieronymos, to a host of later Christian officials, administrators, and saints. 

A closer look at the facade of Mark’s marvelous Venetian basilica reveals that hardly anything matches.  It is as if things were taken from anywhere and everywhere, then placed wherever they seemed to fit.  And that’s pretty much how it was.  It’s almost as if your crazy uncle set out to build a church entirely from the things he found laying around in his attic.  Columns in all sizes and shapes, gorgeously marbled stone in various colors—all of this was carted back to Venice by ambitious Venetian merchants, from places as distant as Sicily, Ravenna, Constantinople, and points farther to the east. 

But surely the crowning ornament—and the most shocking act of rapacious self-aggrandizement—came during the now-notorious Fourth Crusade, led by the Venetian Doge, Enrico Dandalo, in 1204.  The Venetians were the only power at the time with the naval resources to transport such a large land army.  And so they did, but at a cost.  They essentially took the army where they needed dirty work done: to the rebellious port city of Zara on the Adriatic coast first, and then on to Constantinople.  The city was taken after a long siege and ceded to the Franks, while the Venetians were content to load their boats with ill-gotten treasures, most notably a beautiful team of four bronze horses that now grace the front porch of the Basilica (copies of them, actually–the originals are inside).  This is when the Venetian Republic began to style itself “Byzantium on the Adriatic.”  But it was a stolen Byzantium at that. 

The creation of that far-flung naval emporium that coincided with this ambitious architectural program was remarkable, and has left a surprisingly unified architectural style on much of the Mediterranean: from Venice, all along the Adriatic/Balkan coast and the Ionian islands, through the southern mainland of Greece and the supremely important island of Crete, then continuing east all the way to Cyprus.  It is remarkable when you look at the map, how one relatively small city came into control of such a massive mercantile network (Venice was in this regard much like Singapore, five hundred years ahead of its time). 

In the name of Saint Mark, the Venetians held onto it energetically and creatively for centuries, from the Fourth Crusade to the mid-1600s.  But then the Ottomans entered the Mediterranean and essentially imitated the route of Venetian conquests in reverse–from Cyprus, through Greece, and all the way to the Ionian islands, which they never managed to secure for themselves. 

Venice bounced back briefly under the Doge Francesco Morosoni, nicknamed Peloponnesiacus, for his significant retrieval of territory in southern Greece.  But these Venetian gains came at a cost the Greeks paid themselves: Morosoni laid siege to Athens, where the Ottomans were holed up on the Akropolis, and were using the Parthenon as a powder magazine.  Morosoni knew this… and promptly shelled the place.  The explosion was heard on islands fifty miles away, locals thought it was an earthquake, and the destruction of artworks that had survived for some 2000 years was immeasurable. 

True to form, Morosoni took the treasures that had not been blown to smithereens back to Venice, such as the monumental marble lions from the Athenian harbor—the Greeks called it Piraeus and the Venetians “Porte Leone” for the statues they coveted–and installed them at the monumental entranceway to the Venetian Arsenal. 

And then, with astonishing suddenness, it all came undone.  Such a thriving business center, with its titled Senatorial class and a wealth that earned it the nickname of “the Most Serene (Serenissima) Republic”… all of this was decidedly at odds with the egalitarian spirit of the French Revolution of 1789. 

And so Saint Mark’s naval empire ended, not with a bang (though a bang was threatened), but with a serene whimper. 

An up-and-coming general in the Revolutionary French army named Napoleon was in charge of operations in northern Italy.  He surrounded the city with his artillery, like a latter-day Morosoni, and threatened to reduce the city to rubble if they did not surrender. 

“I want no more inquisition, nor more Senate; I shall be an Attila to the state of Venice; the winged lion of Saint Mark must lick the dust,” he declared.  So the city submitted, and the Venetian Republic gave way to the French Republic, and the territory of the Veneto was handed off to the Hapsburgs in 1797.  But surprisingly, Napoleon did not loot Saint Mark’s, which would have seemed like symbolic payback. 

No, he had his eyes set on Rome. 

Napoleon’s revolutionary army continued south into the territory of the Papal States.  French forces occupied Rome and looted the brand new Vatican Museum, completed just four years previously, and took everything of any value back with them to Paris. 

And so the same, mad dance began anew. 

Only this time the ill-gotten loot did not go to a church.  It went to a museum, those preeminent temples of modern times. 

When it comes to big churches, big money, big art collections, and big religion, the lions never lay down with the lambs.

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Resources for further inquiry:       

Books:

• Harry Potter and Philosophy: If Aristotle Ran Hogwarts, Edited by David Baggett and Shawn E. Klein
• From Homer to Harry Potter: A Handbook on Myth and Fantasy by Matthew T. Dickerson and David O’Hara
• Secrets of the Alchemists, editors of Time-Life books
• Alchemy: An Illustrated A to Z, by Diana Fernando       
• The Philosopher’s Stone: Alchemy and the Secret Search for Exotic Matter by Joseph P. Farrell
• The Hermetic Cabinet: Alchemy and Mysticism by Alexander Roob (great images)
• Creations of Fire: Chemistry’s Lively History from Alchemy to the Atomic Age by Cathy Cobb and Harold Goldwhite
• Alchemy, The Ancient Science by Neil Powell
• Alchemists through the Ages by Arthur Edward Waite
• Isaac Newton: The Last Sorcerer by Michael White

 Websites:

• The Chymistry of Isaac Newton project-online access to all of the chemical and alchemical manuscripts of Isaac Newton.
• http://webapp1.dlib.indiana.edu/newton/reference/symbols.do
• http://www.nlm.nih.gov/exhibition/harrypottersworld/
• www.harrypotterforseekers.com
• www.mugglenet.com
• www.accio-quote.org

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By Kate Daley Bailey

Ever wondered where J. K. Rowling got inspiration for her magical world of the Harry Potter series? Did you know that Nicholas Flamel was a real man and famed alchemist, who according to mystical lore had created the illusive Philosopher’s/ Sorcerer’s Stone?  Alchemy, the ancient mystical practice of trying to turn crude metals into gold, while seemingly fantastic to modern people, was the precursor to Enlightenment Sciences and various forms of Christian mysticism.  Not purely an entrepreneurial venture, alchemy was not only viewed as a path to fame and wealth but also a spiritual practice grounded in religious symbolism.  

Some modern readers view Rowling’s alchemical leanings as advocating witchcraft and thereby denounce the series as promoting what they see as an anti-Christian agenda.  Ironically, much of the alchemical history, which Rowling utilizes, is linked to Christian mysticism.  Religious critics of Rowling are not the first to be made uncomfortable by alchemy: they have been pre-empted by the Catholic Church’s Inquisition, western academia’s understandable skepticism of alchemy’s secretive and spiritual language, numerous monarchs’ laws against gold “creation” (much like current governments’ laws against currency counterfeiting), and the general public’s vision of alchemists as bumbling oddball eccentrics who were consequently labeled as religious fanatics dabbling in witchcraft, misinformed quacks, or charlatans engaged in shady business dealings and faked precious metals.

How can we know that the history of alchemy influenced Rowling work?  Rowling tells readers in the interview quotation below that she used her knowledge of alchemy to “invent this wizard world.”

I’ve never wanted to be a witch, but an alchemist, now that’s a different matter.  To invent this wizard world, I’ve learned a ridiculous amount about alchemy.  Perhaps much of it I’ll never use in the books, but I have to know in detail what magic can and cannot do in order to set the parameters and establish the stories’ internal logic.   J. K. Rowling

Rowling’s wizard world does have an internal logic and her depiction of how magic works is consistent.  While I would not recommend reading the series as an allegory of alchemy or any alchemical text, I would advise readers to view the series through the lens of alchemical transformation… and to see Rowling’s use of magic as a method or technology and not a glorified representation of magic or a endorsement of witchcraft (in its various forms).  

Rowling also repeatedly uses popular alchemical symbols and legends to advance her storylines: the legends surrounding the Philosopher’s Stone and the Elixir of Life, the symbol of the Phoenix, references notable alchemists such as Nicholas Flamel and Paracelsus, and many more subtle references to the alchemical world.

Rowling’s theme of transformation (from childhood to adulthood) embodied in the seven book series mimics an alchemist’s ultimate goal, to transform base metals into precious gold and silver and to transform themselves (from merely ‘crude matter’ to a more perfect reflection of the Creator and cosmos) and to purify themselves of the taint of human frailty.  For many alchemists, these practices were about spiritual transformations as well as physical ones.  It is often times difficult to separate the threads of mystical lore (primarily from Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) from the purely material observations these alchemists made through years of research.

Alchemy: What is it?

This question is difficult to address for a multiplicity of reasons.  Many historians debate when and where this practice actually began.  Most historians divide the practice by its place of supposed origin.  Western traditions are said to originate in Egypt and adapted later by the Greeks.  Eastern traditions are linked back to both ancient China and India.  No matter which line one follows, the “origin” of alchemy remains in the murky and mythic past.

Another complication is that the hallmark attribute of alchemical practices is that they were intended to be secret and only passed on to the properly trained and initiated.  This translates into a slew of cryptic texts and images that are intentionally enigmatic.  Many of the stories about noted alchemists themselves are more akin to legend and fable than what a modern reader might view as a historical account.  These earliest “histories” do not cite dates, present conflicting information about said alchemists, and include unusual anecdotes (reading more like hagiographies than biographies).  

Reading the texts written by these alchemists themselves is even more confounding as many of the texts are written under pseudonyms or take on the mantle of earlier, more venerated authors from the alchemical community.  For example, a text written by a second century Greek alchemist whose was influenced by Jewish and Christian mystical traditions, might write under the name of a great patriarch, matriarch, or prophet from the Hebrew Scriptures.  Not only is authorship undeterminable, the texts themselves are designed to discourage the uninitiated reader… rendering them almost impossible to decipher with any accuracy.

Etymologically, we can turn to the term ‘alchemy’ itself for some kind of hint to the tradition’s origin.  Some sources link the base of the word itself to the Egyptian ‘keme’ which means roughly ‘black earth’—believed to be associated with the fertile soils of the Nile.  Another source states that the term comes to us via the Greek word ‘chymia’ meaning ‘working with metals.’ Later alchemists will view this dark fecund muck as the much coveted ‘original matter’ from which all creation came, and see its possession as a requirement for the production of the Philosopher’s Stone.

The ‘Stone’ was thought to have the ability (when used properly) to transform base metals into silver and gold and create the Elixir of Life (which granted one health and immortality).  Once historic and linguistic inquiries have hit a theoretical brick wall, we must turn to the mythic foundations of alchemy, which is choke full of symbols, images, and terms which practitioners of alchemy used to elucidate and obviscate their art.  

The Egyptian god Thoth—god of writing/hieroglyphics and magic—is idealized as the mythic founder of the tradition.  The Greek god Hermes/Roman god Mercury—god of messages (between worlds), magic, and healing—is depicted by the western alchemical tradition as the deity most comparable to the Egyptian Thoth.  Hermes/Mercury’s iconic staff, the caduceus, represents his healing attributes and is now most frequently recognized today as an emblem of the medical profession.  While these cultures (Egyptian, Greek, and Roman) are distinct and disparate, among later alchemists, the practice of syncretism (the mixing and blending of various religious and cultural traditions) was common.

Probably the most enigmatic contributor to alchemical writings was Hermes Trimegistus (thrive-great).  While numerous texts are ascribed to this person, there is no biographical information available regarding when or where they/he lived.  Hermes Trimegistus is the supposed author of an ancient text on alchemical transformation known as The Emerald Tablet, which highlights perhaps the most consistent theme in alchemical writing: the correspondence between worlds.

 That that which is Above is like that which is Below and that which is Below is like that which is Above, to accomplish the Miracle of Unity.   The Emerald Tablet

One of the primary themes of western alchemy is the concept of correspondence… that the natural world reflects the cosmic structure and that man is a microcosm (the cosmos in miniature).  Due to the microcosm/ macrocosm relationship, harmony and balance are perceived as vital to physical and spiritual health.  Each of the planets, which according to the ancients numbered seven, corresponds to a metal, and gold, representing the sun, was the embodiment of perfection, cosmically and spiritually.

However, regal patrons turned on their pets when they felt they had not gained what was promised to them.  Some felt deceived, and rightly so, and so extracted vengeance upon their former employees and other alchemists. Alchemists who fell out of favor were lucky to escape with their lives.  Other dangers lurked in the lives of alchemists.  Although many early alchemists were religious (a number were men of the cloth), some popes (like John XXII) issued papal bulls denouncing alchemy.

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Louis A. Ruprecht Jr., Georgia State University 

He was a largely self-educated writer who surpassed many an Oxbridge intellectual in general knowledge and in wit. He was a breezy and seemingly casual world traveler who nonetheless mastered that most difficult of all genres, literary travel writing. He lacked formal military training but was the mastermind of what was arguably the most swashbuckling Allied adventure of the Second World War. While he never went to university, he was undoubtedly one of the supreme literary stylists in the English language in this generation. And he was a student of comparative religion in a way that anticipated developments in the academic study of the world’s religions by more than a generation. And now he has died, on June 10^th, in his 96^th year. 

Patrick Leigh “Paddy” Fermor was born on February 11, 1915 in England. Like many another aspiring artist, his family and upbringing were unorthodox.  His father, Sir Lewis Leigh Fermor, was a civil servant of the late empire, working for the Geological Survey of India; the boy rarely saw his father in his early years. 

His mother, Eileen Taafe Ambler (a name that would prove predestinate), was an aspiring if poorly known playwright and poet. While Paddy spent the first four years of his life in the care of family friends, and thus developed the habit of living in a completely undisciplined and relatively unregulated environment, he lived with his mother after the age of four and remained in her care after his parents’ divorce. He was expelled from more schools than many a lesser light attended, most dramatically from King’s School, Canterbury, after the revelation of a romantic dalliance with a local grocer’s daughter eight years his senior. 

This would prove to be a recurrent pattern in his life: the pendular see-saw from intense romantic involvements to long periods of almost hermetic isolation. 

At the ripe age of “eighteen and three quarters” (his words), Paddy Fermor decided to take a long walk, in lieu of attending university. He determined to travel by foot from the Hook of Holland all the way to Istanbul (a city he always imagined Greek-ly, and referred to stubbornly as “Constantinople” or “Byzantium,” its first name as a Greek colony). The trip took some years, and it gave both flavor and form to the rest of his extraordinarily long and extraordinarily creative life. 

But he did not begin to publish his reflections on the journey until fully forty years later, and that generational lapse between a youthful excursion and a mature reminiscence is a central feature in what makes his writing so singular, and the genre he created so difficult to define. 

Fermor departed in December 1933 and thus, as fortune would have it, he was deposited into the very epicenter of a world about undergo a cataclysmic geopolitical upheaval. He found himself traipsing through Bavaria just after Hitler’s ascension to the post of Chancellor. And thus he witnessed at first hand a sudden chilling in his hosts’ reception of a young man who was clearly a unusually charming representative of the very best that British culture had to offer in the late afternoon of its imperial career. 

His recollections of a first long night in a Munich beer-hall are among the most memorable descriptions in any work of history or of travel, and they fade out with his collapse into drunken unconsciousness under a table, the theft of his passport and his walking staff (adorned with metal plaques, mementoes from each of his stopping points on the way). 

Content to sleep under bridges and in countryside train-or police-stations, the young man’s fortunes shifted decisively at the Hungarian border. He fell into easy conversation at the bridge with a man who proved to be a local aristocrat of considerable means and who invited him to spend his first night in the new country in an apartment in his castle. While it was a point of pride for the young Englishman that he cover his ground on foot, the Count sent letters of introduction ahead of him by horse, and thus Paddy Fermor spent virtually every evening in the care of some local grandee, and normally under the roof of some castle or fortress. What he could not have known at the time was that he was walking through a dreamworld that was about to come undone, enjoying his guiltless dreams under rooves that were destined to be obliterated in just a few short years. 

But not yet. Fermor arrived at the Turkish border on New Year’s Day of 1935, and after a brief sojourn in Istanbul, he returned to Greece which had especially captured his fancy.  After a brief turn in the Orthodox monasteries of Mount Athos (he was there on his 20th birthday), Fermor returned to Athens, then moved to Moldova with an aspiring painter (and Romanian princess) twelve years his senior, the divorcee Balasha Cantacuzene. The couple lived for three years in a kind of somnolent artistic bliss, she painting, he writing. 

But when the War finally came in 1939, Fermor bade paradise adieu.  He volunteered for the Irish Guards and, given his impressive language skills, he was sent back to Greece to prepare for the invasion everyone knew was coming. When the Italians were repulsed in the west and pushed back into Albania, German forces were diverted from the east to the south.  After a bruising five week thrust south through Yugoslavia, they made short work of a stiff Anglo-Greek resistance, the survivors of which (Fermor among them) took ship south to the island of Crete for what proved to be the last Allied stand in Europe. 

The German invasion came initially by air, and remains to this day the largest air invasion in military history.  The outcome was uncertain for five days (they lost more men in a week than they had in the entire French Blitz), but when German parachutists secured an airport on the western side of the island, they enabled the shipment of tanks and artillery in support. And thus Crete too was lost. 

Fermor fell back with the survivors to Egypt, where he rode out the rest of the War as an organizer of the guerilla resistance on Crete.  It was there, in a legendary bar called “Tara,” that Fermor and some friends first cooked up the caper for which they would become famous.  They parachuted into Crete in April 1944 and arranged for the kidnap of the German general in charge of the Cretan occupation.  Alas, by the time they got to Crete the murderous General, who had been the original object of their designs, was gone and had been replaced by the somewhat more benign Heinrich Kreipe. 

The group ambushed Kreipe’s car as he was leaving his headquarters at the “Villa Ariadne,” built by the noted British archaeologist, Sir Arthur Evans, as the headquarters for his excavation of the Minoan palace at Knossos.  Much to Fermor’s chagrin, the driver was spirited away from the vehicle and summarily shot.  Kreipe was put on the floor with a gun to his head, and Fermor, dressed as the General himself, passed through more than 20 checkpoints in the capital city of Herakleion before running the General’s car up to the northern coast. 

The plan was to abandon the car there and to make it appear that they’d been picked up by British submarines.  In reality, the northern coast was too dangerous for the British navy, so the men walked the General over two mountain ranges to the southern coast where they had scheduled a pick-up. 

Everything went wrong.  The radio broke down.  Then Kreipe fell and broke his arm.  Given the unexpected delays, they missed their rendezvous and were forced to hide out in mountains crawling with German patrols.  Finally, they secured a second radio, arranged a second pick–up, and got the General off the island nearly one month after his capture. 

Fermor never wrote a word about this affair, nor surprisingly enough, about his beloved Crete (his only contribution to this literature was a translation of the charming eyewitness report of a local messenger, George Psychondakis’s The Cretan Runner in 1955). One of Fermor’s fellows, William Stanley Moss, did write a short account of the kidnap, Ill-Met By Moonlight, which was later turned into a film in 1957 (with Dirk Bogarde playing a dashing and funny Paddy Fermor). 

After the War, and after some more time in Athens, Fermor left in 1949 for a long cruise by sail through the French Antilles.  He was accompanied by a Greek wartime companion and by his beloved Joan, the woman who would later be his wife.  They traveled for nearly a year and the book that resulted, The Traveller’s Tree (1950), immediately established Fermor as a writer on whom to keep an expectant eye (the only novel he ever wrote, The Violins of St. Jacques [1953], was set in a similar Caribbean setting under the looming presence of a volcano that brings the book to a strange and jarring close). 

This first book shows Fermor at his best both as a traveler and as a person of uncommon eloquence, wit and charm.  But of equal importance was the clear declaration of his utter fascination, not just with history, but with religion. 

Three long chapters devoted to Haiti make this plain.  As an organizer of a guerilla resistance himself, Fermor had keen insights into the dynamics of the Haitian War for Independence.  He understood well how the imperial interests of the French collided with those of the freed people under Toussaint L’Ouverture, and he accepted the horrific violence of reprisal and counter-reprisal as a murderous fact he neither supported nor avoided.  But of far greater interest are his observations about the Afro-Caribbean religious synthesis we know as “Voodoo.” Fermor describes his own unmistakable and unapologetic addiction to the evening “drumming and rumming” ceremonies, so aesthetically rich in music and dance, collective performance and spirit possession.  His observations are on a par with Levi-Strauss, another European expatriate from the War, whose Tristes Tropiques had just been published two years before.

And now the pattern recurs.  Fermor left his friends for another stint in a monastery, a Benedictine monastery in Normandy this time.  He’d gone there to write up his notes from the Caribbean, but he ended up so fascinated by the monastic life that he wrote a short book about it, a luminous meditation entitled A Time to Keep Silence (1957).  His reflections on what living in a different order of time is like make a significant contribution to the literature on monasticism and meditation, alike, rivaling those of another one of his direct contemporaries, Thomas Merton. 

Fermor’s finest books came next, and both were devoted to and inspired by, his beloved Greece. The first one, Mani (1958) is dedicated to the rough-hewn mountains south of Sparta where he would eventually build his own home; the photographs by Joan Eyres-Monsell offer a powerful supplement to the text, including a memorable excursus on Byzantine icon painting that shows how lightly and how lovingly he could wear his enormous erudition. 

Fermor moved to the Mani in 1964, when he and Joan purchased some land on a splendid coastline and designed their own home in local stone (thus settled, the two finally married in 1968—truly a life-companion, she died in 2003 at the age of 91).  Roumeli, Fermor’s elegant first meditation on the northern regions through which he’d walked thirty years earlier, appeared in 1966.  A chapter on the Byzantine residue in contemporary Greek culture is nonpareil, and shows him at his anthropological and linguistic best. 

Fermor did not write explicitly of the walk that started it all until many years later—forty years, to be precise.  He claimed that it was a mixture of humility, anxiety, and winsomeness that kept him from the task.  And while he planned to devote three volumes to the trip, only two of those volumes ever appeared.  A Time of Gifts was published to great acclaim in 1977, and includes that bacchanalian description of the Munich brewhouse.  Between the Woods and the Water, his delicately nostalgic recollections of Hungary and central Europe, appeared in 1986. There is rumored to be a complete draft of the long-awaited third volume, but his publishers will not confirm this. We can only hope that it is so. (Desperate to break the logjam of his writer’s block, they commissioned another short travelogue, Three Letters from the Andes (1991), that shows what made him so masterful as a traveler, equally at home in public archives and on mountaintops at fourteen thousand feet).           

Patrick Leigh Fermor represented the swansong of a supremely confident, if fading, empire as well as much that was best, and noblest, about her heyday.  Cosmopolitan in spirit, uncommonly gifted in languages and in music, a lover of poetry and folksong in equal measure, his table was legendary for the quality of the conversation and an impressive dipsomania (a term that often found its way into his writing). 

It was while working on an excavation in western Crete that I first read the two volumes describing his walk in the 1930s.  Some of the local workers informed me that he was living in Greece, in a Peloponnesian town called Kardamyli (it is mentioned in the Homeric poems).

So I packed up his books, two bottles of the notorious Cretan grappa called tsikoudia, and made my way to Kardamyli. 

I waited all day, as there appeared to be no one in the house.  Resigned by day’s end, I left the bottles with an appreciative note and began the long trek back into town.  Then the skies opened—a very rare event in Greece in the summer—that lasted all night.  I took refuge in a local hillside shrine dedicated to St. George.  I lit a lamp, drank a bottle of wine, and rode out the deluge.  The next morning broke bright and clear, so I returned one last time to the house at Kardamyli. T he bottles were gone, but there was still no sign of the man.  Dispirited, I left for good.  Then came a booming voice shouting my last name, and the legendary 85-year-old came scampering up the hill with the impressive stride of a man less than half his age.  He indicated that he was working just then, but that he’d be delighted if I’d join him for lunch. 

His table was all I’d heard it was, and more.  One could imagine the likes of former Cretan comrades like Xan Fielding who’d graced this same table, but still more all the writers and poets, like Bruce Chatwin, Freya Stark, Philip Toynbee, and of course Lawrence Durrell.  Paddy and Joan were equally interested in religion, and equally well-informed on the topic, so my profession was my ironic first point of entry.  We spoke at length of Haiti and the Afro-Caribbean, of the unique curiosities of North American Protestantism, but mostly they were interested, as I was, in the continuities between Classical and Christian culture.   

Hours passed, and bottle after bottle fell, emptied, to the carpet.  Finally, Paddy and Joan confessed the need for a nap, and set me down on a canape in their library, one of the world’s truly splendid rooms.  I took a long swim, reveled in my good fortune, and looked forward to dinner. It was more of the same, lasted late and then, the sky opening for the second time in as many days, Paddy drove me back into town in a hilarious staccato four-wheeled imitation of the scamper I’d seen him undertake earlier in the day.  “Write what you see,” he smiled, then he was gone. 

I was asleep within five minutes of finding my seat. 

We corresponded periodically after that.  His cards were always, charmingly equal parts word and image.  He had an endearing habit of bordering his notes with images—of clouds and birds in flight, mostly.  Knowing that he should be the one to write a book about Crete, but knowing that he had no time (or inclination? it was never clear) to do so, I told him that I might have a go of it.  He was enthusiastic, sent me postcards suggesting books I should read, inevitably things I’d neither known nor heard of before. 

He was a man of uncommon generosity, sing-song creativity, sparkling eloquence, in all of the ways that matter most a true gentleman.  We will not see his like again.  He wrote what he saw. And what he saw was mesmerizing.  But his life was ever a pendulum swing between writerly seduction and long, hermetic silences.  Having seduced so brilliantly with his prose, he has walked ahead of us yet again, eyes open, into the Great Silence.

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By Kate Daley-Bailey

I have the perfect gospel for Glenn Beck; a Saxon retelling of the Christian gospel with Jesus as a warrior chieftain written in “song” or epic form in the early part of the 9^th century CE and was supposedly used to convert the pagan Saxons, after they had been conquered and forcefully baptized by Charlemagne.

This rendering of the Jesus story is no direct translation of a canonical gospel rather it is an actual retelling of the Jesus story. As an expert on the Heliand, the title of this Saxon gospel, G. Ronald Murphy, J.S. describes the text as “a reimagining of the gospel.” Murphy writes that the Heliand’s author, whose identity is still a mystery, “rewrote and reimagined the words and the events of the gospel as if they had taken place and been spoken in his own country and time.”

It is a synthesis: Murphy emphasizes this unique blend of seemingly disparate attitudes and belief systems by saying that the text is a “contemplative integration of Northern-European magic, sooth-saying, wizardry, fatalistic warrior values, personal mysticism, and the Christian gospel story give it compelling power and charm.” 

Murphy

Murphy describes the likely intended audience of the gospel as those in “the meadhall and monastery.” He also suggests that the intent behind the reimaging of the gospel story was NOT so that it could be used in church services but rather so that it could be used to explain a seemingly foreign story in a familiar context. Murphy writes that the epic poem appears to have been “intended to bring the gospel home to the Saxons in a poetic environment in order to help Saxons cease their vacillation between their warrior-loyalty to the old gods and to the ‘mighty-Christ’.”

The anonymous author of the Heliand has reimagined the story of Jesus the Jewish messiah or Greek savior (depending on which of the four canonical gospels you read) and transformed him into a brave Germanic warrior chieftain who was hung from a tree. The text contains such song titles as “Song 14. Christ, the mighty Chieftain, chooses His first warrior-companions” and Song 36. Christ the Ruler heals the daughter of a woman from a foreign clan.” The last supper is featured in song 55 as “the last mead-hall feast with the warrior-companions. And the communion feast is depicted in song 56 as “the words of Christ give great powers to the bread and wine.” No doubt the most remarkable reimagining that the text presents is the retelling of the story of Jesus’ arrest and Peter’s reaction. Song 58. Christ the Chieftain is captured; Peter, the mighty swordsman, defends Him boldly.

Christ’s followers, wise men deeply distressed by this hostile action, held their position in front. They spoke to their Chieftain. ‘My Lord Chieftain,’ they said, ‘if it should now be Your will that we be impaled here on spear-points, wounded by their weapons, then nothing would be as good to us as to die here, pale from mortal wounds, for our Chieftain.

The Simon peter, the mighty, the noble swordsman flew into a rage; his mind was in such turmoil that he could not speak a single word. His heart became intensely bitter because they wanted to tie up his Lord there. So he strode over angrily, that very daring thane, to stand in front of his Commander, right in front of his Lord. No doubting in his mind, no fearful hesitation in his chest, he drew his blade and struck straight ahead at the first man of the enemy with all the strength of his hands, so that Malchus was cut, and wounded on the right side by the sword! His ear was chopped off, he was so badly wounded in the head that his cheek and ear burst open with a mortal wound! Blood gushed out, pouring out of the wound! The cheek of the enemy’s first man had been cut open. The men stood back- they were afraid of the slash of the sword.

Then the Son of God spoke to Simon Peter and told him to put his sharp sword back into its sheath. ‘If I wanted to put up a fight against the attack on this band of warriors, I would make the great and mighty God, the holy Father in the kingdom of heaven , aware of it so that He could send me so many angels wise in warfare that no humans to stand up to the force of their weapons. No human army, however huge, could ever stand against them nor afterwards still be in possession of their life-spirits. But the ruling God, the all-mighty Father, has determined it differently: we are to bear whatever bitter things this people does to us. We are not to become enraged or wrathful against their violence, since whoever is eager and willing to practice the weapon’s hatred, cruel spear-fighting, is often killed himself by the edge of the sword and dies dripping with his own blood. We cannot by our deeds avert anything.

He went up to the wounded man and skillfully put the parts of his body back together, his headwounds, so that the sword-slash was quickly healed.

The gore and brutality of this depiction seems a far cry from the canonical gospel versions which simply state that Peter defended Jesus by cutting off the ear of a Jewish guard and in some of the gospels, but not all, Jesus rebukes Peter and heals the guard’s ear. Although all four canonical gospels mention this encounter, none of them include such a violent description. I’m half surprised Mel Gibson had not used this as a source text for his film of the Passion of the Christ.

Although the Germanic Jesus and Peter featured in this text may seem very odd from our perspective as modern people and we might be tempted to easily dismiss this reimagining as an anomaly in the world of Christendom… I would like to highlight that all forms of Christianity are and should be reimaginings of the Jesus story. The church fathers saw to it that four versions of the Jesus story were preserved in the Christian Canon. Each reader or hearer of the gospel story must try to imagine what it would have been like to be among the early followers of Jesus. While reimagining is necessary to make the gospel come alive in the here and now… Christians should also be aware of when this reimagining violates the spirit of the message.

Glenn Beck appears to be reimagining the gospel story in his own way and he is not alone. We seem to be experiencing a new wave of Muscular Christianity… one which, in extreme cases, violates some of the vital principles of the Christian message… primarily the Christian message of “agape”… “brotherly love.”

Glenn Beck recently is quoted as saying on his talk show that although

Jesus did identify with the victims… Jesus was not a victim. He was a conqueror…Jesus conquered death. He wasn’t victimized. He chose to give his life….If he was a victim, and this theology was true, then Jesus would’ve come back from the dead and made the Jews pay for what they did. That’s an abomination.” (See Sources)

The media fervor has been predominately over Beck’s blaming of the Jews for what “they” did to Jesus… and I admit this is very troubling especially because Beck’s admonishment of this “victim mentality” he sees in Liberation Theology sounds suspiciously close to the Nietzschean condemnation of Judaism and Christianity which was later appropriated by the Nazi propaganda machine. What especially stood out to me was Beck’s zealous statement that Jesus was NOT a victim but rather a conqueror. Does Beck subscribe to a radical Muscular Christianity view of Jesus?

Has Beck missed the “good news” of the Christian message in the gospels which exclaims that Jesus broke down the normal divisions… of Jew and Gentile, slave and master, woman and man, and of victim and conqueror? Part of the miracle of Jesus was that he was both… both victim (having died under the oppressive Roman Empire) and conqueror (having been raised from the dead and having offered hope in the face of extreme death and destruction)…100% human and 100% divine.

Obviously Beck’s comments are motivated by his view that liberal (liberation theology minded?) Christians are presenting Jesus as a Communist and a victim as opposed to a more Muscular Christian depiction of Jesus as a Capitalist and a conqueror. Perhaps we should revisit the Saxon Gospel I mentioned above to see an example of cultural and religious syncretism. This Saxon reimagining of Jesus is fascinating on multiple levels:

1. The Saxons were a warrior culture which engendered tribal loyalty, focused of magic, and fate… Jesus, in their eyes, was a Chieftain who had the power to use force but that he resisted it… for he was fated to die.
2. The Saxon culture celebrated valor and might… and the author had to think carefully about how to present the Christian message… so the Saxon gospel highlights the more masculine and mighty attributes of Jesus and his followers…. He is their chieftain and his disciples are his thanes… his warrior-companions.
3. The Saxons, despite their might, had been defeated and forced to convert to Christianity… they were a conquered warrior culture. The Saxon gospel not only explained Christianity to them in on their own terms… it also offered them a way to reimagine themselves as a conquered yet conqueror culture.

What does a Saxon gospel from the 9^th century have to do with us today? Not much on the surface but it has helped me understand a community’s ability to use sacred stories from ancient times and foreign cultures in order to understand that community’s own situation and time. However, when one uses another’s story to tell one’s own story… both are altered. These stories become inextricably intertwined. Some aspects of the sacred story are highlighted… other aspects are diminished or ignored all together. The question for American Christians is similar to the concern of Saxon Christians long ago… how do you negotiate these various identities in yourself?  How does one reconcile the powerful words of Jesus, even in the Saxon gospel, when he commands that his followers not turn violent… that “we are to bear whatever bitter things this people does to us.” Despite the Franks’ (and Charlemagne’s) victory in battle, the Saxons were reticent about adopting Christianity. The Saxons were rumored to be cannibals, were known to be ruthless warriors, and constantly rebelled against their Frankish overlords. How much of the 1^st century Jewish healer and teacher was replaced by the Saxon warrior Chieftain? How much of Jesus is left in American Christianity today? How high a price has Christianity paid to be seen as patriotic and American?

Christianity in America today is undergoing many of the same theological pressures which plagued these early Saxon Christians. Christian Militias, Gun-toting church goers, The Catholic Church’s condemnation of women priests in what was supposed to be a referendum on sexual abuse among a male priesthood, Glenn Beck’s attack on Liberation Theology as a “victim theology”… all of these movements point towards an underlying insecurity regarding the nature of Christian identity in America today. The matter of contention is not just social, political, economic, philosophical, or religious… it is all of them because what is at stake is identity.

Sources and Works Cited:

• Huffington Post article:  “Glen Beck: Jews Killed Jesus” http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/07/15/glenn-beck-jews-killed-je_n_648134.html
• Glen Beck on YouTube video:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2QttAXEGz3g

  

• The Heliand:  The Saxon Gospel, A Translation and Commentary by G. Ronald Murphy, S.J.
• The Saxon Savior: The Germanic Transformation of the Gospel in the Ninth Century Heliand by G. Ronald Murphy, S.J.

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If you ever wonder what’s the future of freethinking and who’s leading the charge; if you are curious to know what Freethinkers of today are doing to ensure that tomorrow’s secular world is on the right path; if you want to know what’s good to (free) think about these days; or, if you simply want to read a mind-bending interview, tune in to Religion Nerd for my series, Freethinking Tomorrow: In the Words of Today’s Freethinkers.

By Michel-Camille Bordeau

Parenting works in mysterious ways. It’s a complex affair for experienced, willing parents and an intimidating undertaking for those who, like myself, never prepared themselves for it, never imagined they would be fit for the task, or be given the opportunity.

Two years ago, I became a born again parent, a step-dad to an 8 year old with an incredible (free)thinking mind and a mean high kick.  Overnight, I grew a second heart—the first one being for his mother—and with twice the volume of blood stimulating my (free)thinking brain, I discovered a whole new family of anxieties that can be summed up with: ‘Seriously, don’t fark up (this kid’s life).’

Any life is precious, but that of a kid, who is half your responsibility, is a gem with so many sharp facets, that you’re always concerned you might get cut—and that regardless of the positive encouragements you receive from loved ones, your step-kid included. Still, as a (free)thinker, I had to find additional inspiration in written words.  That’s when a freethinking friend of mine with much parenting expertise recommended Dale McGowan’s Raising Freethinkers: A Practical Guide for Parenting Beyond Belief, what she called the ‘bible on parenting the (free)thinking way.’

Combining the words ‘bible’ and ‘parenting’ in one sale’s pitch to yours truly is a risky approach but it paid off. After all, I had to hope that there would be a book that deserved to be considered the bible of parenting, since the Bible itself, had little to offer in matters of non-authoritarian, non- patriarchal, post-Bronze Age parenting.  Indeed, I was looking for a book that would agree with my embryonic style of parenting, one that may include the occasional reprimand, but would not (re)enact the authoritarian-abusive parenting I grew up with.

And my hopes were rewarded. Raising Freethinkers: A Practical Guide for Parenting Beyond Belief gave me confidence that I was approaching parenting the right way, it gave me hope that I could succeed, and, my friend was absolutely right, it is the ‘Bible’ on parenting the (free)thinking way.  I had to interview Dale McGowan on behalf of my ReligionNerd friends.  I had to share his gospel.  And here it is:  

MCB: You are advocating for a child-centered, collaborative, and responsive approach to parenting–what psychologists call authoritative parenting.  Why do you think this is the best parenting model for a family of freethinkers?  Is it as rewarding for parents as it is for their children?

 DM: Authoritative (as opposed to authoritarian) parenting is centered on explanation. There are rules, and they are enforced, but they are also explained. A child is given the explicit right to question the fairness or reasonableness of a parental decision (but not to disregard it without consequence). There is also an open invitation to question authority, including the authority of the parent.

This approach helps the child develop active moral judgment rather than merely the ability to follow orders, which results in a much more powerful and effective moral sense. Best of all, it results in an independent thinker, not someone who simply parrots what authority figures (including the parent) have said.

It’s one of the most challenging parental styles, but also incredibly rewarding for the parent to watch the development of a deep, rich, complex and nuanced moral sense.

MCB: Raising Freethinkers is so user friendly that I’m tempted to claim that parenting finally comes with a manual! You conclude each chapter with an abundance of practical suggestions—reading recommendations, family activities, exercises, etc.—and it’s a gold mine for non-theist families trying to feel confident about their parenting approach.  Is it also a gold mine for theist families or do you think it is impossible to reconcile humanistic ethics and religious moral? 

DM:  Oh absolutely.  We too often put a bright line between religious and nonreligious, failing to realize that progressive religious people/parents share 90 percent of their values with us— far more than they share with the fundamentalists.  I’ve received many emails from progressive religious parents who have read Raising Freethinkers and found it entirely applicable to their parenting.

 MCB: You make it clear that ‘beyond beliefs’ does not mean ‘without a basic knowledge of belief systems.’  You even recommend that parents educate their freethinkers about religion.  What will future freethinkers gain from learning about religious practice?  And what might parents be most concerned about?

DM:  Ninety percent of those around us see the world to some degree in religious terms. If our children are to be anything but baffled by the human world around them, they must have some grasp of religion and religious ideas, period, end of sentence. They also need this exposure if they are genuinely to make their own worldview decisions.  Nothing about my own worldview means more to me than the fact that I came to it myself, fully informed but free to think and choose.  I wouldn’t deny my kids that same freedom.

Most parental concerns in this area are alleviated by a breadth of exposure to ideas and influences. There’s no greater threat to the development of a supple and capable intelligence than exclusive exposure to a single point of view—including our own.  It seems from my conversations with hundreds of parents over the years that children raised in secular homes, who are shielded from exposure to religious ideas and practices, are the most likely to end up glomming on to toxic religious expressions as the answer to a personal crisis in their teens or beyond.  The forbidden or unknown thing behind that church door suddenly becomes attractive and powerful.  Kids with knowledge of religion are far less susceptible to that emotional hijacking.  So the danger is in ignorance, not knowledge.

MCB: Parenting has gone through many positive changes in the past fifty years.  The biggest step forward has been to admit—at least in academic circles—that nothing positive comes out of authoritarian parenting.  Yet, it still prevails and, consequently, too many children continue to suffer mental and physical abuses.  What do you think will have to happen in the next fifty years, if we hope to see a cultural shift toward a more authoritative parenting model?

DM:  Authoritarianism at all levels—individual, familial, national, societal—is a response to fear.  When we are afraid, we retreat into that limbic brain.  We respond with violence, intolerance, and a whole range of other pathologies.  It’s never our finest moment.  The best thing we can do to move parents toward a more positive parenting model is to diminish fear about outcomes. It helps if parents recognize that (for example) corporal punishment produces ten different negative outcomes and that reason-based parenting tends to produce reasonable, ethical kids. The same applies above the parenting level.  We need to show that nonviolence, diplomacy, negotiation, reason, and other alternatives to aggressive problem-solving have a long history of effectiveness.

MCB: Based on the response from fans and/or critics, what changes, if any, would you consider making to Raising Freethinkers?  Also, tell us about your current projects, initiatives, etc?

DM:  Honestly, there’s not much that I would change.  We applied several lessons learned from Parenting Beyond Belief that helped Raising Freethinkers land right in the sweet spot for so many parents.  I’ve been thrilled with the reception.

My current projects include running Foundation Beyond Belief, a humanist charitable foundation with 800 members.  We feature ten charities per quarter and have raised over $145,000 since January 2010, including $20,700 for Japan tsunami relief.

I’m also working on several books, including a college-level anthology of freethought historical documents, a children’s book about natural selection, a personal exploration of religious practice from an atheist’s perspective, and a collection of Judeo-Christian myths told at last as the exciting stories they can be once you drop the sacred kid-gloves. Who knows what will see the light of day!

DALE MCGOWAN left a 15-year career as a college professor in 2006 to pursue writing full-time. He edited and co-authored Parenting Beyond Belief and Raising Freethinkers, the first comprehensive resources for nonreligious parents. Dale writes the very inspired and very helpful secular parenting blog The Meming of Life. He teaches nonreligious parenting seminars across the United States, and serves as executive director of Foundation Beyond Belief, a humanist charitable and educational foundation based in Atlanta—we are neighbors. In September 2008 he was named Harvard Humanist of the Year by the Humanist Chaplaincy at Harvard University. Last, but not least, he is such an approachable person, that we are on a first name basis. Dale, continue the hard work!

 *****************************

Michel-Camille Bordeau is the founder and author of The School of Seshata  (www.scriptotheism.net), a blog about Liberal Spirituality, a concept of spirituality based on compassion and reason, core principles of Humanistic Ethics. Michel is also a regular contributor to www.ReligionNerd.com.  He’s recently started “Freethinking Tomorrow: In the Words of Today’s Freethinkers,” an interview series about the past, present, and future [OF] secular scholarship.

Michel earned an M.A. in French Studies from The Ohio State University (1998) and is A.B.D., also in French Studies, from the University of Michigan (2001). Mid-life crisis oblige, he is returning to college in August 2011, to pursue an M.S.W. with a specialization in Mental Health & Drugs of Abuse. Before relocating to Atlanta, Michel was an Academic Advisor at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor campus, for nearly ten years. He has advised many students (and parents) on academic and life matters. He taught English, Public Speaking, Humanities, and French at various colleges and universities. In 2002, Michel published Poire Sucrée, Salée, Epicée, a short novel about a dance teacher forced to face the demons of her past. He is currently seeking representation for Seeing Purple, a dystopian novel set in Anaïs Abelard’s hometown, the New Orleans of tomorrow, also home to the power-hungry mega church known as the Calvinistry. Michel considers himself an amateur ‘atheologist,’ and writes and speaks primarily about religious determinism, atheist spirituality, and freethinking therapy.  

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By Louis A. Ruprecht, Jr.

On the day after Osama bin Laden’s unexpected death was announced by the US President, a fascinating new exhibition was previewed at the Metropolitan Museum in New York.  Entitled “Savage Beauty,” it bore more than a casual relevance to the city’s attempt to grasp the right tone in the twinned face of this assassination and the upcoming decennial commemoration of the September 11^th attacks. 

Naturally, that strange-sounding juxtaposition needs some explanation. It has something to do with the sacred. That is to say, it has something to do with an important aesthetic and religious category very popular among the Romantics: the Sublime. 

The idea was this. Beautiful things make us pause in appreciative wonder, beauty creating a mingled desire to possess or to imitate it.  Sublime things stop us short, dead in our tracks, startling us into a new awareness, and new ways of seeing.  Earthquakes and volcanoes can be sublime, as can the infinite expansiveness of deep space: it is part of Nature’s way of showing us how small we are, how replaceable, how cosmically insignificant.

In that sense, September 11, 2001 was a day punctuated with sublimity, the spiritual shock that stopped a nation in its tracks.  It was a reminder of the savage side of human nature, and of the world, a reminder of beauty’s savage underside.  Even a supernova is beautiful, if you are far enough away from it.

And yet the show at the Metropolitan showcased, of all things, a fashion designer, presenting an elegant and thoughtful combination of what were arguably the most ambitious and theatrical and sublime collections of his generation.

Alexander McQueen was born in Lewisham, South London, on March 17, 1969, the youngest of six children (and the third son) to Ronald and Joyce McQueen.  He died by his own hand on February 4, 2010.  He was only forty.

Alexander McQueen, more than any other living designer, managed to transform the runway show into performance art, and the fact that he choreographed four of these events each year for an explosive and creative span of five years speaks to the restless energy, the extraordinary imaginativeness, and the spiritual ambitions of the man.  If fashion can be conceived as High Art, and the creation of clothing as a Spiritual practice, then it will in something like the terms McQueen—created and left—in his meteoric wake.

McQueen’s meteoric rise through the ranks of a very exclusive club reads like Romantic mythology.  After attending primary school and a lackluster stint at Rokeby, he left school at age 16; he already knew that he wanted to be a designer, an artist.  He worked for two years at Anderson & Sheppard (1985-1987), tailors to royalty, then for one more year at Gieves & Hawkes (1988-1989), working mostly on military tailoring. He apprenticed himself briefly to Koji Tatsuno and Romeo Gigli.

And then he bought a one-way ticket to Milan where he stayed for less than a year (1989-1990).

What he learned in all of this was every aspect of the way in which clothes are made.  He learned cutting and stitching; he learned materials; he learned how to mix media.  He was like a painter learning how to mix paint, to stretch canvases, and draw backgrounds—all before getting an easel of his own.

Back in London and still just 21 years old, McQueen landed a coveted place at Central Saint Martins masters program; he designed his first runway show by way of graduating in 1992. It was called “Jack the Ripper,” and a woman who would become a longtime friend, Isabella Blow, recognized the genius in the thing and purchased the entire collection.

The title of this show bears some reflection, since one of the most recurrent complaints about McQueen’s work was that it displayed a kind of misogyny common enough in one version of the homoerotic fashion gaze. McQueen went to great lengths to counter this criticism by insisting that his fashion was designed to empower women.  “I want people to be afraid of the women I dress,” he said; “It’s almost like putting armor on a woman.  It’s a very psychological way of dressing.” His experience with military tailoring figured in many of his early collections.

Still, McQueen flirted more than casually with bondage, leather, and S&M in later collections. “I especially like the accessory for its sadomasochistic aspect,” he observed, and in a great many cases, his costumes included masks that hid the faces of the women he clothed entirely from view.

McQueen continued to design shows between 1993 and 1997, and he met his most important collaborator, Katy England, in 1994.  These shows garnered attention and remarkable appreciation.  One show in particular, “Highland Rape” (1995-1996), illustrates his purposes best.  Many took the name to be further evidence of his misogyny and celebration of violence against women.

McQueen found such criticism absurd, since the rape in question was clearly the rape of his native Scotland (his father was from the Isle of Skye). The show was a meditation on the Highland Clearings, and McQueen positioned himself in a stunningly original post-colonial position: as a native Scot who nonetheless adored London and cultivated his career in the capital of couture. There is great subterranean violence in his aesthetic, but no victims. The show brought him considerable and much-deserved fame.

So much so that in October of 1996, McQueen was made Chief Designer at Givenchy.  Still only 27 years old, McQueen would now design four shows a year, two haute couture and two ready-to-wear collections.  McQueen sold 51% of his interest in Givenchy to the Gucci Group in December 2000 and moved to Paris.

For the next decade, McQueen designed his own lines for his own house and choreographed shows that dazzled the eye and the imagination alike.  Women on rotating plates were ominously intruded upon by mechanical paint machinery.  Women moved on a chessboard, removing each other from action. Runway models walked through and were slowly drenched by artificial rain.

But his personal life was coming apart, Isabella Blow committed suicide on May 7, 2007, his mother died on February 2, 2010, and McQueen took his own life a week later, on February 11, 2010.

Alexander McQueen consistently identified himself as a Romantic throughout his brief career, and understood the vastly spiritual resonances of the term.  To be sure, suicide at age forty is itself a Romantic trope of long-standing. A voracious reader (he deeply admired Rousseau, Byron and Shelley, Edgar Allan Poe, not to mention Delacroix and Beethoven) , he explored various dimensions of the Romantic adventure in different shows. “Highland Rape” (and “Widows of Culloden”), as I noted, were exercises in Romantic nationalism, right down to the tartan plaids. 

It was intellectually demanding fashion, always. “With me, metamorphosis is a bit like plastic surgery, but less drastic.  I try to have the same effect with my clothes.  But ultimately I do this to transform mentalities more than the body.”

Several shows [Dante, Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious, Angels and Demons] were done almost exclusively in Gothic imagery. “Primitivism” and “Exoticism” were examined in shows [It’s Only a Game, Dance of the Twisted Bull, Natural Dis-tinction Un-natural Selection and

Horn of Plenty] where most of the clothes were made of feathers, skins, horns, West African tribal beads and the like. “Exoticism” was linked to “Naturalism” in shows where nature’s orgiastic violence was linked inextricably to the sublime.

In all of this work the essential theme was beauty’s savagery–the savagery of material, the savagery of the beauty, the savagery of love. “People find my things sometimes aggressive.  But I don’t see it as aggressive.  I see it as romantic, dealing with the dark side of personality.”

This is the most perennial of Romanticism’s many obsessions, and the chief source of its allure. McQueen had the Shakespearean line, “Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind,” tattooed on his upper right arm. That’s from A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

A posthumous show was done in Autumn/Winter of 2010-2011, and it is the line with which the Metropolitan show concludes.

Entitled “Plato’s Atlantis,” McQueen imagined it as an exploration of “Darwin’s theory in reverse.” The central theme of the collection is water, and immersion, in the wake created by the global warming and polar melting.  What kind of humanism will emerge from these depths, in a world defined by water rather than land?  What is striking is that this is arguably his most serene and beautiful show, yet the least savage.  It is an imaginary spiritual glimpse beyond, after the deluge.  Nature is sublime; in that deceptively simple statement nineteenth century Romanticism becomes twenty-first century Postmodernism.

All of it tailored to a tee.

Perhaps a poem by Pablo Neruda best captures the essentially spiritual vision in McQueen’s fashion. Here is a portion of his marvelous “Ode to a Suit”:  

• • I ask whether someday
  • a bullet
  • from the enemy
  • will stain you with my blood
  • and then
  • you will die with me
  • or perhaps
  • it may not be
  • so dramatic
  • but simple,
  • and you will gradually  get sick,
  • suit,
  • with me,
  • you will grow old
  • with me, with my body,
  • and together
  • we will enter
  • the earth.
  • That’s why
  • every day
  • I greet you
  • with reverence and then
  • you embrace me and I forget you,
  • because we are one
  • and we will go on facing
  • the wind at might,
  • the streets or the struggle
  • one body,
  • perhaps, perhaps, motionless someday.

 McQueen could be pithier: “There’s blood beneath every layer of skin.” And, as he knew well, moving that blood across the skein of skin is the human heart.  His best work was always a heart-stopper.

A Partial Summary of Alexander McQueen’s Exhibitions

• Jack the Ripper  -  1992
• Taxi Driver  -  1993-1994
• Nihilism -   1994
• Banchee  -  1994-1995
• The Birds – 1995
• Highland Rape  - 1995-1996
• The Hunger – 1996
• Dante - 1996-1997

            [Givency]

•  Untitled  – 1998
• Joan - 1998-1999
• No. 13  - 1999
• The Overlook  – 1999-2000

             [Gucci buy-out]

•  The Dance of the Twisted Bull - 2002
• Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious - 2002/2003
• Deliverance - 2004
• Widows of Culloden - 2006-2007
• La Dame Bleue  -  2008
• Eonnagata  -  2008
• The Girl Who Lived in the Tree  –  2008-2009
• Natural Dis-tinction Un-natural Selection -  2009
• Horn of Plenty - 2009-2010
• Angels and Demons  -  2010-2011
• Plato’s Atlantis -  2010-2011