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By Louis A. Ruprecht Jr., Georgia State University  

President Obama’s Press Secretary, Jay Carney, put it this way: “The President believes that everyone who serves the American people by working for this government needs to hold themselves to the highest standards of public service.” 

Mitt Romney was pithier; he said he’d “clean house.” 

A thoughtful US citizen might well wonder what they were referring to, sadly enough, because there are so many scandals to choose from. 

There is the GSA scandal, first of all: Hundreds of thousands of dollars squandered by a federal bureaucracy for lavish entertaining in Las Vegas and the Napa Valley. The outrage expressed for this one is already bipartisan and utterly emotive. 

But there is also the Secret Service scandal, involving (at present counting) twelve Secret Service officers who engaged in some lavish entertaining of their own, in Cartagena, Columbia, several short days prior to the President’s visit. Here the enquiry had less to do with the expense, and more to do with the sex. Apparently, a number of Secret Service officers had hired escorts—prostitutes, thank you very much—for a late night party at their hotel. 

Conspicuously absent from this list of potential scandals is the report printed by the Los Angeles Times that US service personnel in Afghanistan have been at it again, this time photographing themselves with severed body parts they claim belong to Taliban suicide bombers. 

So we’ve got a choice here, and we’ve got it all: money, sex, and violent disregard. 

My concern has to do with the sinking sense that I know exactly which one of these stories has legs. The military story is already half-forgotten 24 hours later. Apparently those people “who serve the American people by working for the government” get a pass. 

The GSA story has legs, especially as we learn more about what exactly transpired in Vegas and Napa Valley. The money can’t all have been for psychics and for clowns. 

The story that is sure to last is the Secret Service scandal. Because there’s sex involved. Sure, it’s sex somebody allegedly paid for, but nobody is alleging that a US government agency paid for it. These boys paid for their own party. It’s not a violation of public funds that’s at issue here; it’s sex, pure and simple. 

It is dismaying that the sexual obsessions of contemporary US culture could so completely stack the deck against caring about what, by any reasonable moral accounting, is the worst of these three. 

Ever since Homer first channeled his Muse, the mutilation of the enemy corpse has been a symbol of the very worst of which humanity is capable. And such violations almost always carried consequences, immediate ones. As we continue to turn a blind eye to what our own moral callousness vis-à-vis a perceived enemy, alive or dead, implies, invocations of “the highest standards of public service” will continue to appear to be as hollow and hypocritical as our enemies take them to be.

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Louis A. Ruprecht Jr., Georgia State University

One of the dangers in reporting on the Republican presidential primaries, and now the looming presidential election season, is that national issues and agendas drown out any real connection to more local issues and concerns. I was reminded of this again last week as I drove through heavily wooded back roads of Alabama, and saw signage on trees relating to the primary election they held in back mid-March. Over and over again, I saw the name: Roy Moore. 

It was a familiar name but it took a moment to recall why. Roy Moore was elected as the Alabama State Supreme Court Justice in 2000. He infamously arranged to have a two-ton granite display of the Ten Commandments placed in the rotunda of the Alabama Judicial Building the next year. He did this in the middle of the night on July 31, 2001, without consulting the other Supreme Court justices. Moore was ordered by a US District Court to remove the monument and refused to do so. His eight colleagues overruled him, and the Ten Commandments monument was removed from the rotunda and taken on a nationwide fund-raising tour. Meanwhile, Alabama’s Judicial Ethics panel voted unanimously to remove Moore from his position on November 13, 2003. 

Moore ran unsuccessfully as a Republican candidate for state governor in 2006, losing by a 2 to 1 majority to the incumbent governor, Bob Riley. He tried again in 2010, but came in fourth with only 19% of the Republican vote. In 2011, Moore formed an exploratory committee to consider a run for the White House, but decided the odds were long, even by his risk taker’s standards. 

And now Moore is back, running for his old job as Chief Justice of the State Supreme Court. And while he has promised not to try to restore the monument, his views on the very tenuous separation between the Christian religion and the southern states is very clear. 

This time, Moore won his bid, and so now he will be on the ballot as the Republican candidate for State Supreme Court Justice in November. Moore has indicated that he does not wish to pick this fight a second time, and that the centerpiece of his understanding of judicial responsibility is how to adjudicate fairly and efficiently in a time of massive cuts in state spending in all social sectors, but especially for courts and policing. 

Fair enough, but his re-election website  tells a very different story, a story that makes the Ten Commandments monument, the subsequent debate it generated, and his eventual dismissal all central to his entire judicial philosophy. Moore’s own providential career, as he suggests quite clearly, has always hinged on the Ten Commandments. As the six-and-one-half minute video on his website makes clear, when God brought his future wife into his life in 1985, and shortly after they married, she was given the responsibility for decorating their new home. She placed a copy of the Ten Commandments prominently on the wall of that home. 

Later, when Moore took up his duties as Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice, he elected to bring that wall hanging into his courthouse. That decision prompted an immediate push-back from the ACLU, and the video suggests that this was what inspired Moore to up the ante by placing a much larger display in the rotunda in a manner that would be literally impossible to miss. His martyrdom to the cause of an inseparable church and state serves, he suggests, as “a reminder of our nation’s Godly heritage,” as well as of “the divine foundation of this nation.” Moore himself points to the real unity of his judicial career as a “long battle to recognize the sovereignty of God,” and to call the country back to its true identity as “one nation under God.” It is striking that the very next phrase of that pledge of allegiance—”indivisible, with liberty and justice for all”—is omitted from the video on his website. 

It really almost has to be that way. For Roy Moore is divisive, intentionally so. And he speaks far more of God and religious rights than he does of liberty and justice for the non-Christian citizens in our midst. That seems a distinctly backward set of priorities for the chief justice in any state to possess in the twenty-first century. 

Make no mistake about this; this is a big election with real legal and cultural and religious consequence. And it serves as a reminder of why we need to pay attention to more than just the presidential entries on the ballots, come November.

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Kate Daley-Bailey, Religion Nerd

“TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — The death toll from severe storms that punished five Southern U.S. states has jumped to 269.” 

This is the opening statement from Weather.com‘s article, “Tornadoes Cut Path of Destruction,” which documented the devastating tornadoes that hit Alabama on April 27^th, 2011. 

The article itself did not surprise me… but the comments from the website’s respondents most certainly did. What I found most intriguing was the theological language being used on this modern media site, one explaining scientifically natural weather phenomena and includes no reference to any theological agenda.  Here are just a few examples:

God loves us so much and He is trying to get our attention one more time before He judges the earth. He wants us to live and not die. Wake up, people.

I pray God’s protection during this difficult time. May He give us His peace, comfort, and strength.  Romans 12  

Many such comments were directed towards those affected by the storms, letting them know that people were praying for them and the affected region. However, there were a few indicating that those people spared from the wrath of the storms felt that God had spared them for a reason. Other remarks used thick theological language indicating that these disasters are signs from God, of the ‘End times,’ and have been sent by God to call Americans to repentance. 

Representing another audience entirely, some challenged these theodicies. Theodicies offer religious justification and explanation for why evil (deadly tornadoes) exists in the world: if God is all knowing (knows that innocents are being killed), all powerful (has the power to intervene to protect said innocents), and is all good (loves his human creations), then why doesn’t he intervene and stop such disasters, which often happen to good, God-fearing folk? Of course, some commentators anticipated this tough theological problem, and either worked to resolve it, or berate those who might raise it in the first place, insisting that:  

God is the only reason more weren’t killed.  Be thankful it wasn’t your family. 

Don’t get upset people. Just pray for this very lost person! 

I wonder if that was what the people thought when Noah built the ark?  I believe!:  D and I am so glad he is preparing a place for me.. Sure don’t want that smoking place, do you? 

Yes, hopefully [people] like you, low life ass crack scum, will go first……I’ll pray for that. 

Wake up in hell and I think u will change your mind. 

Dear Lord, Please bless the people who walk with the breath you gave them and down you with it in the same. These people need a guiding light as they have become lost in their path. Please protect their families as they are lead into Hell by the sinners of the lands. In your name we pray, Amen.

God does exist. He wants America to repent of their sins and turn to Him. John 14:6 Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.” 

Satan has turned many against God, including many of the posters on here. Questioning the existence of God is EXACTLY what Satan wants you to do…Satan …causes all the bad in the world, not God. Stop blaming the one who gave you life and put the blame where it really belongs!

These responses seem to be drawing on various starting assumptions about the nature of God: 

• God does exist and He is using natural disasters to chastise certain people so they will repent and return to God;
• God is the source and catalyst of natural disasters, but is also the reason more people were saved;
• God is sending these disasters as signs of the ‘End times’;
• Satan (the originator of evil) challenged God’s authority and now stalks weak humans attempting to destroy their faith in God; those who pose non-religious explanations for such events are themselves lost sinners in the grip of Satan and are headed for Hell unless they repent and believe.

The source of my wonder here is the eagerness to assign these natural disasters to an all-loving supreme being, the loathing directed at nonbelievers, and the medium through which these ideas are being conveyed. While these views are as old as monotheistic belief itself, what I find surprising is the social platform through which commentators offer such a stark and uncompromising theology… The Weather Channel.

Weather Religion?  

The connection between religion and weather is actually not as unusual as it may appear at first glance.  Many of the earliest theorists have argued that the origin of religion lies in its relationship with the natural world. Max Muller, a 19^th century German linguist and one of the “founding fathers” of the comparative religion, argued that, “all religions, primitive or otherwise… have their origins in the personification of natural forces and objects and the ‘myths’ that arise from these personifications.” 

This view, Naturism, holds that, 

humans gain a sense of the divine from natural phenomena: sun, moon, stars, mountains, rivers, thunder and lightning, storms, the seasons, animals, and plants. Faced with such an inspiring, mysterious, frightening, and awesome natural world, humans endowed nature with supernatural qualities. (Rodney Stark, 24-5) 

Some scholars have supported sociological, anthropological, and psychological analysis of what they claim is the human creation of the supernatural and religious, via the personification of natural phenomena. Other scholars, however, have advocated for a view of ‘religion’ as a separate category all together. For these scholars, religion is separate, and human experience of the sacred is a ‘real’ experience, and not merely a byproduct of language, social construction, human anxieties, or psychological dysfunction. 

Mircea Eliade, an adamant supporter of the categorical separation of religion from other disciplines and oft labeled ‘high priest’ of the ‘history of religion’ model mentioned above, opens his hallmark work, The Sacred and Profane: The Nature of Religion, by praising the work of a German scholar by the name of Rudolf Otto: 

Instead of studying the ideas of God and religion, Otto undertook to analyze the modalities of the religious experience… Passing over the rational and speculative side of religion he concentrated chiefly on its irrational aspect. For Otto had read Luther and had understood what the ‘living God’ meant to a believer. It was not the God of the philosophers- of Erasmus, for example; it was not an idea, an abstract notion, a mere moral allegory. It was a terrible power, manifested in divine wrath. (8-9) 

Otto rejected the idea that the ‘holy’ or ‘sacred’ is necessarily moral or rational.  For Otto, the ‘numen’, the ‘holy’ minus moral and rational aspects, is awe-inspiring, mysterious, terrifying and ‘wholly other.’ Due to the ‘wholly otherness” of Otto’s ‘numen,’ all language falls short to accurately express it in its totality.  

Despite the limitations of language, humankind has borrowed the imagery it has used to describe the most mysterious, terrifying, and ‘wholly other’ phenomenon humans have encountered—nature.  Otto’s description of the divine as terrifying and ‘wholly other’ and Muller’s view of religions as originating in the personification of natural forces, although hardly comforting, do seem to find some resonance in the Hebrew Bible’s description of the holy and powerful god of the Hebrews, Yahweh. 

The Jewish Weather-deity? 

Walter Gerhardt Jr. in his article, “The Hebrew/Israelite Weather-Deity,” presents a persuasive argument that the Hebrew God “is expressed in Biblical literature as an “allegorized idiom” of the weather phenomena” (130).  According to Gerhardt, the Hebrew God, known as YHWH, “is the personification of environmental forces and energies of weather indigenous to the Sinai/Edom and Syro-Palestinian geographic locales” and is often described using “the precipitive elements of the rainstorm” (130). Gerhardt presents Moses’ encounter with the deity on the holy mountain as an excellent example of this, emphasizing the dense cloud shrouding the mountain (133). Gerhardt highlights how YHWH thunders from heaven and “scatters lightning” (138). 

Indeed, the Hebrew Bible, known the TaNaKh to Jews and the Old Testament to Christians, is chock-full of disastrous natural events as well as sometimes contradictory explanations for them. One need look no further than Genesis to find stories where natural disasters are being attributed to the God: Noah and the flood, the fiery destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, are two of the most commonly referenced events. In Exodus, Moses encounters God via a startling viewing of a burning bush, represents Him before the Egyptian pharaoh, witnesses ten horrific plagues used to motivate the pharaoh to relent, experiences the parting of the ‘Red Sea’ which in turn “saves” the Hebrew slaves but wipes out pharaoh’s army, and negotiates the terms of the covenant with the Hebrew deity while on a holy mountain surrounded by a lightning storm. 

Luther’s God of Lightning 

The Hebrew Bible, noted above, is not just a sacred text for Jews but for Christians.  Christianity, historically, grew out of an apocalyptic and messianic sect of Judaism in the 1^st century, Common Era. The earliest followers of Jesus believed him to be the ‘messiah,’ a long anticipated political and religious savior meant to overthrow the Romans and restore the ancient kingdom of Israel. These earliest followers came to this conclusion about Jesus’ identity by finding what they interpreted to be prophetic statements in the Hebrew Scriptures. Early Christianity inherited the Hebrew Scriptures and added their own writings about Jesus and the early church to them to make their own Bible. So, it is worth asking whether the weather-deity of the Hebrew Bible persisted as Christianity developed out of Judaism. 

Christians inherited not only the scriptures of early Judaism but also many of the theodicies buried in the scriptures themselves which give various justifications for why ‘evil’ exists.  The book of Job itself provides numerous explanations, though none are conclusive, as to why disaster had befallen Job and his family, although the text states that Job was blameless in the sight of God.  The book of Job ends with the Hebrew God appearing to Job in a whirlwind, another destructive weather-related phenomenon. 

Such stories have not been lost on prominent Christian theologians, such as the architect of the Protestant Reformation, Martin Luther. Luther suggested that his own entrance into monastic life was driven by a terrifying experience he had during a violent thunderstorm. Protestant Christianity has been deeply marked by Luther’s description of how the Christian God used nature to His own ends. As Craig Martin writes on Luther’s perspective in an article titled “The Ends of Weather: Teleology in Renaissance Meteorology” found in The Journal of the History of Philosophy: 

… He also interpreted “fruitful weather” as proof of God’s love for humanity.63 Thus, in the Sermons on Luke 21, while rare events were ominous or apocalyptic, fair weather might signal God’s protection.”(275) 

Many Protestant Christians today, especially those of an Evangelical nature, like many Christians found in the South Eastern United States, still hold to this correlation between nature disasters and God’s will.

Evangelical Christians in the South

According to a survey given by The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, regarding the “most religious states” in the U.S. (based on four criteria: “the importance of religion in people’s lives, frequency of attendance at worship services, frequency of prayer and absolute certainty of belief in God”), Southern States consistently lead the states in self-claimed religiosity.  According to their data: 

“More than eight-in-ten people in Mississippi (82%) say religion is very important in their lives… In some other Southern states including Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana, Tennessee, and South Carolina, at least seven-in-ten people say religion is very important in their lives.”  

The U.S. Religious Landscape survey, also from The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, estimates that 50% of the U.S.’s Evangelical Protestant Christian population lives in the Southeastern region of the country.  

Not surprisingly, Evangelical Protestant Christians make up 49% of Alabama’s state population (the national average is 26%).  Mainline Protestants represent 15%, historically black Protestants make up 18% and Catholics only make up 6% of the states’ population (while nationally they represent 24% of the population).  Jews, Orthodox and other Christians, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Muslims, Mormons, Buddhists, Hindus, separately, at most, represent 1% of the state’s population.  A group labeled “unaffiliated” make up 8% of the state’s population. 

An article in the Christian Century titled “Most don’t blame God for disasters,” presents the following statics based on a poll by Public Religion Research Institute in partnership with Religion News Service after the devastating earthquakes and tsunami in Japan: 

“Nearly six in ten evangelicals (59 percent) believe that God can use natural disasters to send messages—nearly twice the number of Catholics (31 percent) or mainline Protestants (34 percent) who so believe. Evangelicals (53 percent) are also more than twice as likely as the one in five Catholics or mainline Protestants to believe that God punishes nations for the sins of some citizens.”(14)

Why the Weather Channel?

Now, the most compelling question of all… why the Weather Channel.com?  Why are these comments showing up in an unlikely platform?  Why did these respondents feel the need to post such overtly religious comments on such a seemingly “secular” website?

 The reasons may be multifold. The Weather Channel’s website specifically does NOT offer theological reflections on natural events. While science is often credited with telling us how the world works, religion has often presented us with reasons, adequate or inadequate, for why the world works as it does. The desire of respondents to find meaning, and not just logistical analysis of how weather works, may be why they felt the need to provide meaning to these disasters. 

However, while the Weather Channel does not specifically offer theological explanations for natural disasters, this doesn’t mean that the site doesn’t attempt to capitalize off of the deep-seated desires of the population to feel “in control” over weather events. 

Monitoring the conditions which might lead to dangerous weather does not equate to controlling the weather but scientific analysis and advanced technological weather-monitoring equipment which result in weather ‘forecasting,’ may be feeding the same desires for control that religions have often offered to the population. 

Nicole Fleetwood, in her article “Failing Narratives, Initiating Technologies: Hurricane Katrina and the Production of a Weather Media Event”, explains how some viewers may be turning to various technologies to feel in control, which I would argue is one of the desirable characteristics institutionalized religion offers:

“On some level, meteorological technologies give the power to predict the future. We are able to witness the storm as weather media event from its inception as tropical storm to its naming to its levels of categorization to its arrival. The detailed sophistication afforded the viewer promises to lower our risk by increasing preparedness. Marita Sturken argues that computer visualization technologies, such as Doppler radar, ‘are used to convey the sense that weather-tracking technologies can actually help to control the weather itself.’” (772) 

Perhaps the reason the Weather Channel’s website has become a platform for commentators to process grief, send condolences and prayers, and work through theological concerns is due to the fact that the meteorological technologies, like religious and spiritual theodicies, provide some sense of control and order in times of chaos.

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By Maureen Dempsey, RNC-OB

Just what exactly is a slut?  According to Rush Limbaugh, because Sandra Fluke thinks that all insurance providers – even those with a religious objection – should provide coverage for contraception, she is a slut.  “She wants us to pay her for having sex,” Mr. Limbaugh claimed, “what does that make her?  A slut, right?  A prostitute.”  To Mr. Limbaugh the word slut signifies a bad woman – a woman with no value.  And sexual activity is the criterion that Mr. Limbaugh is using to determine value.  Does she have sex? Yes?  Then she is bad.  No sex?  Then she is good.  

The word slut has always signified a woman of low value in the English language.  However, the definition has narrowed over the years.  The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) is a massive etymological work that not only defines words, but also provides examples of early uses of words.  The OED defines slut in two distinct ways: “as a woman of dirty, slovenly, or untidy habits or appearance,” or “a woman of a low or loose character; a hussy.”Historically, a woman could be judged a slut by either her untidiness or her sexuality. Both definitions of the word slut – untidy woman or sexual woman – imply a system in which a woman’s worth is determined by her potential value (either as a housekeeper or as a wife) to a man.  

When a man uses the word slut, he is evoking a world in which women are not full citizens.  He is declaring his power. He is demarcating his territory.  He is asserting that he has the privilege to determine the worth of that woman.  Why is Mr. Limbaugh so threatened by Sandra Fluke that he must publicly disparage her?  Because prescription contraception shifts the power away from men by temporally moving the decision to use birth control away from the sex act.  This is important because when the use of birth control has to be negotiated at the moment just before the sex act, the likelihood that it will be used goes down. 

The use of a condom requires a man’s consent.  Women can use prescription contraception without a man’s consent.  This simple fact is at the heart of the current hullabaloo over contraception.  It is the real reason that no women were allowed to testify in the congressional hearing on birth control.  It also inspired the attempt to require a trans-vaginal ultrasound before abortion.  

In the last few weeks, the question of contraception coverage has been portrayed as a religious issue, a financial issue, and a moral issue.  But the real issues here are power and impotence.

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Maureen Dempsey, RNC-OB

Friday morning, on the Huffington Post, the first story to catch my eye was this: “David Albo, Virginia Lawmaker, Says Wife Wouldn’t Have Sex Because Of Transvaginal Ultrasound Bill.”  As I clicked on the headline, I thought, this is going to be good.  And the gentleman from Fairfax didn’t disappoint me.  I watched a three-minute video of Mr. Albo describing to his fellow delegates how he tried to seduce his wife with a combination of red wine and the Redskins on big screen television.  They were on the sofa, he was snuggling up to her while changing the channel, things were heating up…when he inadvertently stopped on MSNBC and saw his name plastered across the 46-inch screen and heard his colleague, David Englin, repeatedly using the term “trans-vaginal.”  After a few minutes of this, his wife excused herself and went to bed alone. 

Mr. Albo obviously went to some effort to plan the description of this failed seduction.  He set the stage visually.  At an appropriate time in the story, he played some sexy music.  However, when the moment came for him to describe what he and his wife saw and heard on the TV, his story telling technique fell apart.  He couldn’t bring himself to say the word, “trans-vaginal.”  He got part of the word out and then the rest of the sentence dissolved into incoherent gibberish.  “Trans-V this and Trans-V that,” he said next, using a guttural tone of voice – the kind of voice people use when they think they’re saying something dirty.  

Now I was confused.  What had turned off Mr. Albo’s wife?  Originally, I had thought it was her solidarity with other women – her disgust at the thought that the state might require this unnecessary, uncomfortable, and invasive procedure.  But now I wondered if she wasn’t just disgusted at the blatant use of the word, “vagina.”  I decided to see if I could find any other information about this story online.  The first retelling of the story I found, at www.dailycaller.com, referred to “the unfortunately named, ‘trans-vaginal ultrasound.’”  Apparently the Albos aren’t the only people uncomfortable with the word vagina. 

Why is vagina so hard to say?  Why is it “unfortunate” to use the term vaginal to describe a medical procedure that occurs in the vagina?  Why does the gentleman from Fairfax use a special, bawdy tone of voice when he refers to “trans-V this and trans-V that?”  Why is this story even funny?  I have a theory.  I do not know Mr. Albo personally.  But he and I attended high school in Virginia at roughly the same time.  I think I knew guys like him.  A smart guy, a funny guy, a mostly proper guy.  He couldn’t say vagina because what he was really talking about was pussy.  He was telling a story – an ironic story, a bawdy story – about how he didn’t get any pussy because of his involvement in some notorious pussy-related legislation.   

This is important because when men who can’t say the word, “vagina,” get together with other likeminded men to discuss contraception, the discussion ends up being about sex, about pussy, rather than about women’s health.  I encourage all men, but particularly those involved in the legislative process, to practice saying the word, “vagina,” every day.

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Louis A. Ruprecht Jr., Georgia State University  

Riding through some winter-soaked mountain villages in the hills of Corfu with a friend, I passed a gorgeous and surprisingly large Byzantine church, surprising to me because we were in the middle of comparative nowhere. 

 “What church is that?” I asked her.

 “The Church of Saint George,” she replied. 

And it suddenly hit me: these people invoke saint’s names the way Protestants invoke denominations. The Church of Saint George, the Church of Saint Spyridon, the Church of Saint Stephen, the Church of Saint Catherine, the Church of the All Holy Mother of God… all Orthodox churches, and all different too. 

On a casual drive through any major American metropolis, you’ll see a similar string of various and varying Christian churches. I’ll take my home city of Atlanta as an example. If you drive down the central section of Ponce de Leon Avenue, a Lutheran Church is followed by a Mormon Church, then a Melkite Church, then a Presbyterian Church, and then an Antiochene Church, all within under a mile. On Peachtree Street closer to downtown, the situation is even more dramatic: two Methodist churches, one Episcopalian, one Lutheran, one Presbyterian, one Catholic, one Baptist and one non-denominational, all within one city mile. 

This is actually a fascinating situation, the significance of which is easy to miss. Every one of these “denominations”—even ones like the Catholic and Orthodox churches that technically claim to be the church universal and not a denomination—is believed to have the right to a place on that public street. They belong on the street. That doesn’t mean that I, in my church on Sunday morning, have to believe that your church’s doctrines are legitimate; clearly, what is preached in these various pulpits on Sunday morning are incompatibles. But I believe in the legitimacy of the church’s presence on the street, whatever I may think of what goes on inside. We are neighbors, after all, and that’s just being neighborly. 

We tend to take this form of denominational pluralism for granted, and hence we often fail to realize historically how it came to pass, and politically what it means. Historically speaking, English and American (and other) streets began to look like this in the 1700s, after 150 years of seething religious conflict between Protestants and Catholics had burned a lot of the older streets to ash. By the early 1700s, it had become clear to most people that the fact of religious pluralism was not going to go away. Protestants and Catholics, most of them at any rate, no longer held onto the hope that one more argument, or one more pitched battle, was going to turn the tide in their favor. No more once-and-for-alls. Religious differences were here to stay. And the new political challenge was how to allow for and accommodate that pluralism, not to deny it or try to make it disappear. 

To see the power and the novelty of the religious rapprochement symbolized by the new  denominationalism, we need look no farther than that most eloquent spokesperson for the European Enlightenment, Voltaire. Exiled from France to England between 1726 and 1728, they were English streets like Peachtree that grabbed the philosopher’s attention. Here is how he described it in his Sixth Philosophical Letter: 

If there were only one religion in England, one would have to fear despotism; if there were two, they would cut each other’s throats; but they have thirty, and they live happy and in peace. 

“Happy and in peace”… that’s the dream of an effective secular politics that takes religious pluralism for granted. 

But now comes the twist. Something else had happened to England between the early 1500s, when the trouble and the beheading began, and the early 1700s when thirty different religions seemed like a happy compromise. Namely, England got richer. A lot richer. 

The British Empire and British Navy, sure. But think the East India Company. Think the global commerce that empires are designed to protect. To the eye of many a wealthy British burgher, religious wars were simply bad for business. 

I’d like to suggest that we see something similar happening in the United States in this election season. Until fairly recently, the field of Republican presidential hopefuls looked a lot like Peachtree Street in Atlanta: an evangelical Protestant who used to be Lutheran, who was born in Iowa and lives in Minnesota; a lukewarm Mormon who was born in California and recently returned from China; a lukewarm Baptist who was born in Tennessee and lives in Atlanta; a fiery Roman Catholic who was born in Virginia and lives in Pennsylvania; an evangelical “born-again” Protestant who was born and raised in Texas; a Mormon who was born in Michigan but who has lived and worked all over the place; a former Baptist who used to be Lutheran and later converted to Roman Catholicism, who was born in Pennsylvania but also lives near Atlanta now; and a nominal Baptist who was born in Pennsylvania, lives in Texas, and almost has to be an atheist to be consistent with his Libertarian philosophy. What power could be more absolute and unchecked than God’s, after all? 

Now that is one complicated American street. And sure, we’re down to just four candidates now, but the situation is no less complicated for the reduction: one lifelong Roman Catholic; one Roman Catholic convert; one Mormon; and one quasi-Baptist Libertarian. And let’s face it, we’re really down to two: a lifelong Mormon and a Roman Catholic convert. So who represents the religious mainstream of the United States? The point is, there isn’t one. There never really was. Because religious wars are bad for business. 

None of this is to say that religion does not matter, deeply so, to some of these candidates and to some of their constituencies. There are a great many evangelical and fundamentalist churches in which the idea that the Pope is Antichrist is preached on a regular basis, and these tend to be the same churches that argue forcefully for the view that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints is an heretical Christian offshoot. But precious few of these churches argue that a Catholic or Mormon church does not belong on an American street. Their right to exist is fairly settled. 

Can a Mormon or a Catholic run for president? Of course they can. In this election cycle, they are being asked to run against a US President who was born in Hawai’i and lived in Chicago, who was not raised religiously, but who came to a fairly loose and undefined Christian faith that is Protestant in its basic tenets, and whose middle name (Hussein) leaves some still confused about his true religious identity. 

(Mitt, Newt, Barack… they’ve all got funny names this time around.) 

There is a lot more to this campaign than religion and a lot more to North American religious pluralism than doctrine. It’s about the right to happiness and the quest for peace. Both of which are good for business. 

In 1980, Ronald Reagan presided over a powerful new coalition that linked long-entrenched business interests with a conservative Christian social agenda. That coalition proved formidable for a decade. Since then, the Christian conservative members of the Republican coalition—those who are honest with themselves, at any rate—have begun to wonder if they weren’t being played all along. Whenever the chips are down (as they are now) and a choice between economic conservatism or religious conservatism is demanded, then the Party goes with business. 

Saint George or Saint Spyridon doesn’t really matter here. What we have learned since the South Carolina primary, and re-learned in Florida and Nevada, is what matters most in this moment of deep economic unsettlement. Mitt Romney declared an income of $21 million last year, the vast majority of it from investments. Newt Gingrich declared an income in excess of $3 million, the vast majority of it suspicious-sounding. 

In other words, these are very wealthy men who are very political and very, very well-connected. And this is what their Party represents.

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Louis A. Ruprecht Jr., Georgia State University 

The Super Bowl continues to be one of the most visible and influential cultural events in the United States. For that very reason, it always warrants a closer look. This year was no exception, but what the look reveals is unexpected. 

Two years ago, the big story was not about the game, but rather about the advertising. The family of Tim Tebow was alleged to be involved in an anti-abortion advertisement that would suggest that they had considered aborting Tebow, in order to put a face on the loss of potential represented by abortion. The ad proved to be pretty benign, but the controversy lingered. The whole debate was shot through with religion.

Last year, the main story was the epic battle between two quarterbacks and two styles of quarterbacking. Aaron Rodgers won that contest with Ben Roethlisberger, securing the victory for his team and the MVP award. I read this story mythologically, suggesting that Rodgers played Odysseus to Roethlisberger’s Achilles and that what we saw was cleverness and elusiveness beat out brute strength. The religious valence was there (it always is, where myth is involved), but you had to dig for it.

This year, unsurprisingly, all the hype was about politics and regionalism; it is an electoral year after all. Governor Chris Christie offered the pithy observation on the Sunday talk shows that “the Giants train in New Jersey, they play in New Jersey, and most of their players live in New Jersey. The only thing New York about them is the NY on their helmets.” That being said, the Giants, whether belonging to New York or New Jersey, and the Patriots, belonging emphatically to Boston, are both identified with one of the two historic centers of American Independence, the Boston to Philadelphia corridor (northern Virginia was the other, but none of their teams went far this year). So it was figuratively as well as literally a contest between patriots and giants. 

Political pundits before the game reveled in the predictive symbolics of Super Bowl championships: the Patriots beat the Carolina Panthers in 2004, and the Republicans took the White House (Patriots quarterback Tom Brady was a vocal Bush-supporter that year).  The Giants beat the Patriots in 2008, and the Democrats took the White House (Giants quarterback Eli Manning did not weigh in publicly on that presidential campaign).

Yet the real story in the pre-Super Bowl build-up this year concerned Eli’s brother, Peyton Manning. The Super Bowl was played in Indianapolis, in the home stadium of the elder Manning’s Indianapolis Colts. Speculation continues as to whether Peyton Manning’s storied career (four times named the NFL’s Most Valuable Player, as well as the MVP in his team’s 2007 Super Bowl victory) is now over. Manning was sidelined for the entire 2011 season with a neck injury that required several surgeries and the fusing of some vertebrae; his rehabilitation has been agonizingly slow. 

Some fear that he will be unable to return to the game, and others fear that he will be traded from the Colts organization in the off-season, so that the team can begin to re-fashion itself for the post-Peyton era. Peyton Manning will be 36 years old on March 24^th. 

Football is not for the faint-hearted, and it is rarely a game for those older than Peyton Manning is now. The average career for a professional football player is roughly six years (not three as commonly reported). Quarterbacks can last quite a bit longer than that (who can forget Brett Favre’s decision to return to the game he loved for one season too many?). But football simply is not a game for old men.

The half-time show—fully one half hour long now, and an entirely independent ritual feature of the Big Game—tells another story. The Super Bowl organizers regularly select older singers/performers for their half-time theatrics: the Rolling Stones, the Who, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band. When the organizers did go for youth, in the guise of Justin Timberlake and Janet Jackson, a notorious wardrobe malfunction and FEC sanction were the results. 

This year it was Madonna, who performed admirably, and played artfully with religious forms. She entered the stage as Cleopatra, a priestess surrounded by her male court, in an explicit inversion of the gender stereotypes of most Super Bowl advertising. And she ended the performance with a rousing rendition of “Like a Prayer.” But she was wearing four inch heels, and has lost a half step over the years; her demanding choreography was awkward and she had trouble with the stairs. It took a moment, but you gradually came to realize that this timeless rock diva is now 53 years old. And so in the half time show, we were watching her gradual transformation into an elder priestess of sorts. Cleopatra with experience; the good don’t all die young.

Something similar happened in the second half of the game, after Madonna’s departure. Like last year’s Super Bowl, the game was billed as another epic contest between two quarterbacks and two quarterbacking styles. Tom Brady is cool, almost aloof at times, utterly unflappable under pressure, and possessing balletic grace and surgical precision. He shattered Joe Montana’s record for the most consecutive completions in a Super Bowl (16 in all).

Eli Manning is quite different, flashier when he is on, but far more inconsistent. Unlike Brady, he emotes, frowning shakes of the head at each at every three and out. His boyish face makes him look like a high schooler at times; his mind seems to wander, and when it does, his passes fall short. But then there come the flashes of real brilliance. Manning can be admirably self-deprecating, possessing an endearing aw-shucks quality evident in his repeated reference to his teammates as a family. He just turned 31 years old in January, and does not look it. Tom Brady, who will be 35 in August, does.

Every great quarterback is only as great as the receivers who help make him so. Both teams had assembled extraordinarily gifted receivers, bruising tight ends and wickedly fast wide receivers. But several of the Patriot receivers were playing hurt, and that arguably is what lost them the game. But so, too, did age. 

The game seesawed back and forth all night, neither team able to get separation on the scoreboard. As anticipated, the game would go down to the last play. 

But how it did so was instructive. With time running out and the Giants well within field goal range, the plan was to take the clock down to near zero, to keep Tom Brady off the field. But running back Ahmad Bradshaw could not counter his habitual drive to score, failed to stop himself, and tumbled ass-backwards into the end zone with just under one minute left in regulation. Manning was yelling at him not to cross the line as he fell. Ahmad Bradshaw is just 25 years old.

It had all the makings of a typical Patriot comeback, born of vast experience and a seasoned general leading the way—the long march down the field with precision passing and nonpareil management of the clock. And it might have worked out, had two receivers in a row not dropped balls thrown to them. Wes Welker’s drop was almost shocking, given how sure-handed he has been. He is just 29 years old. 

So it all came down to a last “hail Mary” pass (think Madonna) to the end zone as time expired. Brady’s pass was true, the ball tipped in and out of one receiver’s hands, and arguably the most talented of all the Patriot receivers, tight end Rob Gronkowski, might have snagged it before it hit the ground. But he was playing with a badly sprained ankle that visibly hampered his running all night long.  He is just 22 years old.

In the end, the evening belonged to Eli Manning, who was named the MVP of the game. He was asked how it felt to win this game in the stadium that was symbolically his brother’s house. Eli was not having it; he deflected the question by noting that it feels good to win this one anywhere. He was not going to talk about his brother, nor about Tom Brady, this evening. He has one more Super Bowl victory than his brother now, and one less than Tom Brady. He is mature, seasoned, a man. He has entered that rarified window in the world of professional sports where his intelligence, experience and emotional maturity are married to physical gifts that have not begun to taper off. The window from ages 30 to 36, say, when certain supremely gifted souls come into their own. 

Something happens then. Many religious traditions speak to that fact. Aristotle suggested that a person was incapable of serenity, the real goal of the philosophical life, until he has reached that significant spiritual age. We watched young men compete with mature men, in order to play out life lessons better understood by the elders. And in so doing, we celebrated what all rituals, religious and otherwise celebrate: that we are all links in a sacred chain of meaning, whose significance must be explained to us by those who have gone before.

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By Kate Daley-Bailey

My family’s religious affiliation is best described as ‘recovering Catholic.’ While we often say this in jest, I find it compelling that although we may be disillusioned with the papal abuses, restrictive doctrines on women in the priesthood, birth control methods, and various other concerns, my family members who have broken with the church still often identify as Catholic.  I think of my Catholicism like some Jews describe their Judaism. Judaism is often described as a religion and a culture… and while many people associate Judaism with the purely religious aspects, Jews who no longer practice the religious prescriptions of their religion may still identify as Jewish.  My family often gravitates toward other Catholics, recovering or those still within the Church.  We might be done with the Catholic Church but we refuse to give up Catholicism.

My sisters were both raised in Catholic schools and our family was greatly involved in our local Catholic Church.  My father had actually broken off his engagement with my mother to become a priest.  His stint in seminary was short and soon he realized he could be a good Catholic, be married, and have children.  He later became a federal prosecutor and worked tirelessly to cleanse the judicial system of corrupt judges.  He took my sisters to mass every morning before school.  The local nuns and priests were much like an extended family to us. When our family went to see Star Wars, we had a least one nun in tow.  My father spent hours debating philosophy with the parish priests, gave a great deal of his salary to the Catholic Church, and he truly believed in the letter of the law, which often frustrated my mother who is more pragmatic in nature.  My family sometimes jokes that he was an uber-Catholic… or as the comedian Jim Gaffigan calls it ‘a shi’ite Catholic.’ Along with this rigid and yet often compassionate view of the world came a somewhat simplistic theodicy: God was good, God demanded that you be good, and God rewarded and protected you if you were good.

This theodicy pretty much held… that is until my father died tragically in a plane crash and my mother was left to raise three young girls (14, 10, and 4) on her own.  I believe many of my father’s Catholic friends who had subscribed to a similar theodicy were very shaken by my father’s untimely death.  My mother is a petite, beautiful, unassuming woman… but she is tough as nails underneath.  She had to be to survive the financial and emotional fallout which crashed down upon her after my father’s death.  Much of the community rose to the occasion. We were inundated with condolences and letters of support.  My mother once told me that so many people had showed up to the funeral that people were standing in the back of the church… all waiting to pay their respect to my father.

My sisters’ reactions were understandable… their anger and grief engendered within them a rebellion.  The theodicy of ‘If you are good, God will protect you” was shattered and there was no way to put it back together.  Over the years, both of my sisters (although no longer officially part of the Catholic Church) in some ways still identify with Catholicism.  My oldest sister, an artist, fills her home with various shrines to saints and ancestors and saints’ images manifest in almost all of her artwork.  She is extremely compassionate and careful… something that comes across in her work.  Everything she touches becomes beautiful and magical.  Much of her work (which involves tedious bead work and hours of prepping materials and the construction of the designs themselves) conjures up a world in which the theodicy mentioned above is alive… there is much light and much darkness but goodness always prevails.  There is still wonder in her world… and still hope despite the darkness.

My other sister internalized much of the trauma of my father’s death.  Her anger manifested itself in detachment: For many years she was not really ‘there.’  Her return to the world has been painful for her… but this all the more highlights her tenacious will to see goodness in the world.  She constantly invests in her betterment… physically, socially, emotionally, and spiritually.  Her practice is not dogmatic or burdensome… but rather focused on pragmatism and meaning.  In her practice, I see great empathy for others who are withdrawn as she once was.  

My mother perhaps represents all of these qualities… a combination of the recovering Catholic ethos and the pragmatic practice of betterment and compassion.  Her grievances against the church are justifiable and her critiques of the Church are often linked to the hypocrisy she sees in the men who run the Church in the name of God, who do not know the suffering of a widow, have never had to soothe a grieving child, or feed, cloth, and house her children without an income.  My family is still recovering… and in some ways we are still Catholic. We do not tithe, go to confession, or care what the Pope says… we are not part of the Catholic Church but we refuse to give up the part of ourselves that is Catholic.

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By Heather Abraham

Two years ago, on New Year’s Eve morning, I boarded a MARTA train at 7AM and began my journey to an office job in downtown Atlanta.  Before the train reached the first stop, an inebriated man approached me and grabbed both of my breasts.  All the while repeatedly screaming, “Mamasita!”  I punched the man in the forehead, knocked him to the ground, stepped over his body, exited the train car, and entered another.  For the remainder of the trip, I sat and reflected on the strange way I was ending the year and the robotic manner in which I reacted to my attacker. 

Twenty minutes later, I exited the train at the Five Points Station and found myself in the middle of a freak show; Peachtree Road was in the chaotic process of transforming itself for the New Year’s Eve celebration and Peach drop.  As I walked past the myriad of vendors setting up for the event, I was treated to dozens of off color comments and a few “men” who thought it appropriate to attempt physical contact.  By the time I reached the front of my office building, I had fought off several perverts. 

Thankful to have reached my destination, I entered the revolving doors of my office building only to be ripped backwards onto the street.  Startled, I found myself in a vice like grip of a mystery predator.  Before I could react, the security of my building ran to my rescue and beat the man from me.  He escaped down the street and I shakily continued on to my office—desperate for a moment of silence and a hot cup of coffee.  After the customary office greetings, I retreated to my office where I sat sipping a steaming cup of Joe and reflected, again, on the bizarre events of the last day 2009. 

Thirty minutes later, I was summoned by security to return to the scene of the attack.  The predator had been captured shortly after he pulled me from the revolving doors.  He was found by the police and the security from my building, “dry humping” another startled woman up against a nearby office building.  He had attacked five unsuspecting women that morning, all before 8AM.  I spent the next half hour meeting the other women he had attacked, filling out complaint forms, and talking to the police. 

Two years have passed and on each anniversary, I remember the bizarre morning of sexual harassment and physical assault as I sip my coffee from the safety of my home. 

I also remember that the events of that day sparked a major change in my life.  Already disillusioned with a dead-end job and having reached a saturation point with the seediness of MARTA and the dangerous characters I routinely encountered on my daily journey, I began to dream of quitting the rat race.  I quickly came to recognize the New Year’s Eve predators as a wakeup call—a sign that I had chosen the wrong fork in the road. 

A few weeks later, I got a second sign.  One that left me reeling from an odious sensory assault. 

The offensive, albeit, illuminating event occurred during a Friday evening ride home on the MARTA train.  Entering just as the doors closed, I was delighted to find a vacant seat and gratefully settled in for the ride.  Within moments, I realized something dreadful had happened on the train, as the unmistakable and overpowering smell of excrement enveloped me.  My eyes darted around the train looking for the source.  Within seconds, I had found it.  Sitting beside my seat was a McDonald’s bag that someone had apparently used as a toilet!  Overcome with nausea and the horrifying reality of riding alongside a bag of excrement, I frantically dove out of the train at the next stop. 

Thankfully, I had the weekend to reflect on this most recent of bizarre events.  My mind bounced around like a ball in a pinball machine.  Maybe it was just a bag of excrement that, at random, ended up beside an empty seat that I randomly chose?  Or, was the universe speaking to me?  Believe me; sitting next to a bag of shit will make you rethink your whole life.  I couldn’t shake the feeling that the offensive bag was warning me about my future.  Or, was it chastising me for the choices I had made?

Earlier in 2009, I had graduated from Georgia State University with a master’s degree in religious studies.  Unfortunately, the job market for those with religious studies degrees is extremely limited.  After months of searching, I finally admitted defeat and took a dead-end boring job that left me craving intellectual stimulation.  After five months of mind numbing work, I literally and metaphorically found myself riding home with a bag of shit for a companion. 

I needed to make some changes. 

In a strange way, Religion Nerd is the product of both the sexual assaults and my offensive train companion.  These events made me reflect on the choices I had made and provided me with a clear understanding of what I did not want in my life.  My future needed to be part of a conversation within the discipline I love so much. 

Within a few weeks, I had quit my job and signed up for a class with Atlanta writer and blogger, Hollis Gillespie.  Utilizing the information I obtained from Hollis’ class, “Atlanta’s Most Popular Blogging Workshop,” and the creative computer talents of my husband, Teo, Religion Nerd began to take shape.  On March 28^th 2010, ReligionNerd.com became a reality.     

So, what is the moral of this story?  Sometimes adversity inspires you to think outside the box and sometimes a bag of shit is a sign of good things to come.  

To all Religion Nerd readers and contributors, I thank you for your support and I wish you a fabulous New Year!

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By Louis A. Ruprecht, Jr., Georgia State University

Time would not rob them of their power, but would add wisdom to their strength; the Fathers would be subject to the people, and the consul to the Fathers…..Livy, History of Rome, 2.56.16

I recently published a piece at “Religion Dispatches” about the Roman winter festival called Saturnalia.  A commentator noted that I had inadvertently confused (or rather, conflated) two very different divinities in that piece: namely, the Greek figures of Cronus and Chronos. I was grateful for the opportunity this provided to say what I should have said then with a bit more care and clarity, and the detail of these reflections seems perfectly suited to the non-at-all nerdy audience at “Religion Nerd.”

So here goes.

Greek and Roman religions were religions without canonical scriptures; their mythology is notoriously complex and, to modern eyes, often contradictory.  It is important to add that this does not mean that there was no religious writing in the ancient world; just the opposite, in fact. There was an excess of religious writing.  And of religious images, as well. There is so much writing from the ancient world about the gods, in fact, spanning so many centuries, that it is well-nigh impossible to make systematic sense of it all.

Add to that the fact that Rome later adopted a great deal of Greek mythology as her own, creatively adapting all that she borrowed, and you have the recipe for some very creative confusion indeed.  My original essay at RD was thus a very brief foray into what the Puritans would have called a “religious mingle-mangle.”

The Roman poet Horace famously quipped that “Captive Greece had conquered her conqueror,” as a way to describe the newfound Roman fascination with Greek mythology in the last century before the Common Era.  But the conqueror was still a conqueror, and so the later Romans felt free to make Greek myths over in Latin dress.  As we will see, if we were to name a single religious trope that fascinated the ancient world to the point of obsession, then it was sons taking over from their fathers, often wreaking havoc on what they took.           

Which brings me, in a roundabout way, to Saturn (Cronus) and his relationship to Time (Chronos). 

Perhaps the best known version of the story of Cronus comes from Hesiod’s Theogony, his long poem about the coming to be of the old gods.  Hesiod tells us (126ff) that Mother Earth and Father Sky bore a large number of children, among them Ocean, and Hyperion, and Memory, as well as the goddesses Theia and Rhea (later on, Earth bore the Cyclopes and other Giants as well, according to Hesiod, though later authors would disagree with almost every aspect of his divine genealogies).

The youngest of the sons of Earth and Sky was also the most rebellious: this was Cronus. And so begins a story that recurs throughout the early portions of the Theogony: a father is jealous of his offspring and tries to erase them; the sons supplant the father and take his place in response. 

In this case, Sky has taken to burying each of his offspring in the Earth until she groans under the pressure of it all.  She shows her son Cronus a vicious weapon in the form of a sickle, and together they lay a trap for the Sky.  When he returns to Earth, bringing Night with him in train, Cronus castrates him; the drops of blood give rise to the Furies and more Giants, whereas the severed genitalia Cronus tossed into the Sea gave birth to Aphrodite out of the bloody foam.  As I have already noted, other Greek and Roman literary figures remembered these events very differently; Hesiod was never canonical in the ancient world. 

Still later in the Theogony (435ff), Cronus impregnates his sister Rhea, and she bears Hestia, Demeter, Hera and Zeus.  But, in strange imitation of his own father, Cronus devoured each of these children in turn, until Rhea substituted a stone for the infant Zeus, then bore him off to Crete where he was hidden away in a cave and cared for by some mysterious figures called the Couretes. This story is related by the Roman poet Lucretius in De rerum natura 2.633ff, and according to another second-century Roman writer, Pausanias, one of the major mythic events commemorated at Olympia was this mysterious saving of the infant Zeus (Guide to Greece, 5.7.6ff). 

After a year, Zeus had grown to manhood and supplanted his father, Cronus, who vomited up the other children he had devoured, initiating the reign of the Olympians.  It is hard to imagine a more inauspicious start to an alleged reign of peace. 

Yet that it precisely what the Romans did with the myths of Cronus; they re-fashioned him into a symbol of what they called “the Golden Age.” As is often the case with myths, this happened in a fairly scattershot and unsystematic way.  That’s how religious poetry usually works (in fact, in another poem called Works and Days, Hesiod himself refers to the Golden Age of Cronus–consistency from one poem to another was not considered an ancient virtue). 

In the later Roman period, the figure of Saturn was associated with Cronus, but a Cronus very different from the one Hesiod described in his Theogony. “Crooked-counseled and terrible,” Hesiod had called him (138-139).  Not so the Romans. 

The Augustan poet, Virgil, identified himself explicitly with the old Hesiodic (and Arcadian) tradition of Muse-inspired poetry (especially in his Eclogues, 6.64ff).  But when he claimed to be singing a Hesiodic song himself, he referred to Italy proudly as “the land of Saturn” (Georgics 2.173). No Greek would have referred to the Greek mainland as “the land of Cronus”; such a boast would have seemed bizarre. 

What Virgil meant by that name is complicated.  He essentially re-invented this Saturnus/Cronus figure as a mythic, and subsequently deified, king of Latium who reigned during the Italic Golden Age (Georgics 1.336; 2.406, 539; 3.93; and Aeneid 6.794; 7.49; 8.319; 12.830).  He also regularly referred to the Olympian gods as “Saturnian”… and meant it as a compliment.

It was the Roman poet Ovid who probably did the most to popularize a new Roman way of looking at the myths of Saturn/Cronus, in his Metamorphoses. This marvelous book is far more than an encyclopedia of Greek and Roman mythology; it is really a book devoted to the fundamental tropes of flux and change, themes uniquely suited to the solstice, and to the trope of becoming something other than you were, a theme uniquely well-suited to a party like the Saturnalia. 

Ovid takes this image of the sons supplanting their fathers to new poetic heights.   what we soon discover is that Ovid’s entire epic is really an extended meditation on time.  Ovid begins (1.89ff) with an account of Saturn’s overthrow.  But he remembers Saturn as presiding over the world’s one and only Golden Age; the Olympian gods who overthrew him presided over an Age of Silver, not Gold. The third Age Ovid calls an Age of Iron, and he imagines it as fundamentally inferior to Saturn’s Golden Age in every way, with rebellion against the heavens breaking out continually.  There is no belief in progress in Ovid’s topsy-turvy poetic world, this world of continuous-change-in-time.  Saturn reigned at the very beginning of all these changes, and thus he was fast becoming the god for whom the word-play between Cronus (Saturn) and Chronos (Time) began to make sense, in a Latin world that did not speak much Greek.

This is made explicit by the Roman philosopher and statesman, Cicero, in his famously aporetic  reflections on the divine, De Natura Deorum ii.64:

By Saturn again they denoted that being who maintains the course and revolution of seasons and periods of time, the deity actually so designated in Greek, for Saturn’s Greek name is Kronos, which is the same as chronos, a space of time. The Latin designation ‘Saturn’ on the other hand is due to the fact that he is “saturated” or “satiated with years” (anni); the fable is that he was in the habit of devouring his sons – meaning that Time devours the ages and gorges himself insatiably with the years that are past.

This is all important poetic and philosophical evidence for what Saturn was becoming in the Roman mind after the conquests in Greece: the symbol of a nostalgized, purer past, one lost in the fluidity of time and the frenetic repetition of conquest.  It’s a hell of a poetic message for the newly emerging empire of Augustus that was already bragging about its “eternity” (and so it’s small wonder that the emperor eventually exiled Ovid from Rome to the Black Sea, though there are debates still today about what actually prompted this).

According to Livy, the Saturnalia was established very soon after a temple to Saturn was built in Rome (History of Rome 2.21.1).  He also claimed that the public feasts later associated with the Saturnalia came quite a bit later (History of Rome 22.1.1).  It was during the time when Hannibal’s forces were ravaging the Italian peninsula, Rome’s darkest days. The divine signs were uniformly bad: javelins spontaneously combusting; shields sweating blood; soldiers struck dead by lightning; glowing stones falling from the sky; even the most sacred statues along the Appian Way and in Rome herself had broken into a sweat.  These were very disturbing developments for a people notoriously superstitious by nature.

So the Roman Senate ordered the Sybilline Books to be consulted, then made gold offerings to Jupiter, silver offerings to Juno and Minerva, called for public feasts (called lechisternium) with images of the gods reclining on couches joining the people, then ordered an enormous series of blood sacrifices for Saturn. The irony of these symbolic religious reversals could not have been clearer: blood sacrifice for the alleged king of the Golden Age, gold for the son who supplanted him, silver for his wife and daughter, iron to slay the sacrificial victims, food and drink for all the gods. That was the topsy-turvy world the Saturnalia was designed to create, and it was all born of blood.

With the advent of Christianity in the empire, another son supplanted the religion of the fathers—but only up to a point.  The trope of fathers, sons, and sacrifice would receive yet another reinterpretation as Christians began to develop their language of the divine Trinity and salvific sacrifice.  In this sense, the feast for the Second Person of that Trinity, the Son—a son very unlike the Greek Cronus, and yet very much like the Latin Saturnus–would be held at the same time that the Roman Saturn had once enjoyed his.

Cronus… Chronos… Christ. That was the mythic connection I was trying to suggest when I concluded that “Saturnalia is a profound mythic meditation on death and rebirth, the refreshing cycles of natural time that make it seem obvious to celebrate life in the deadest season of the year, and to remember our losses at the high-point of the party.”

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Related articles on Religion Dispatches:  Cronus, Chronos, and Christ  and For Saturn’s Sake, Remember the Dead

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By Heather Abraham

“Christmas Under Siege”, “War on Christmas”, “Defend Christmas“, “Stealing Christmas”, and “Somewhere Jesus is Weeping“, are just some of the provocative catch phrases that rear their ugly heads in the weeks leading up to the annual Christmas holiday season.  

For some, Bill O’Reilly, the late Jerry Falwell, and Sean Hannity to name a few, the use of terms such as Seasons Greetings or Happy Holidays are seen as an attempt to censor the religious aspects of the most celebrated of American holidays.  The annual first amendment battles involving government entities (public schools, capitals, courthouses…) displaying nativity scenes, are often described as dangerous liberal conspiracies hostile to the majority Christian population.  

In the last decade, mega retailers such as Walmart, Gap, Target, Sears, Home Depot, and Best Buy have come under attack by Christian organizations offended that these corporate giants prefer to use inclusive holiday language in their advertisements.  Others have organized boycotts of retailers who have had the audacity to recognize non-Christian holidays such as Kwanzaa or Hanukkah.  

In an attempt to counterattack these imaginary conspirators, the faith-based group Liberty Counsel continues their eight-year campaign against retailers who dare to use outrageously anti-Christian phrasing in their commercials and ads.  The wicked usage, by some retailers, of Happy Holidays and Seasons Greetings has inspired the creation of a “Naughty and Nice” list and campaign organized by Liberty Counsel for those who are “Friends of Christmas.”  

We are continuing our eighth annual “Friend or Foe Christmas Campaign,” pledging to be a “Friend” to those entities that recognize Christmas and a “Foe” to the Christmas censors.  We have just released an updated “Naughty and Nice” list, which catalogs retailers who either censor (“naughty”) or recognize (“nice”) Christmas. The list is compiled from information gathered by consumers and is updated whenever new information is received. Please print out the list and use it to decide which stores to patronize during the Christmas shopping season.  The list has been very influential in motivating retailers to acknowledge Christmas. So far this year, Best Buy has embraced Christmas and switched to the nice list, and Dick’s Sporting Goods has promised to change and include Christmas in their advertising. Liberty Counsel was the first organization to launch the “Naughty and Nice” list a number of years ago and since then other organizations have promoted similar programs.  We encourage you to report the naughty and the nice stores by sending an email to Liberty@LC.org and we also encourage shoppers to compliment the nice stores and tell the naughty ones that you will shop elsewhere.

Thankfully, this “you’re either with us or against us” attitude is not universally embraced by American Christians.  In an article entitled Rethinking Naughty and Nice, Tim Hoiland (a self- identified Christian) argues that the Liberty Counsel campaign “is a distraction at best, and destructive at worst.”  For Hoiland, the “Friend or Foe Christmas Campaign” is 

a distraction in that the real threat to Christmas is not that secular entities and non-Christian individuals prefer to use other, more inclusive terms for a season that does in fact include various holidays (Christian and otherwise), but that Christians have often and in many ways failed to embody the true meaning and the message of the season.

And, Hoiland insists, “it serves to further cement us in cycles of consumerism, which leads to all sorts of injustice.”        

As Christian groups continue to disagree on the “War on Christmas” issue, a recent survey by LifeWay Research, a Christian organization, may shed some light on this manufactured crisis that continues to capture so many headlines.  As reported in the USA Today article, For Many, Jesus isn’t the Reason for the Season, 74% of those polled ‘”told LifeWay many of the things they enjoy this season “have nothing to do with the birth of Jesus,”‘ and only 37% reported including Jesus in their Christmas celebrations.  

LifeWay’s survey is illuminating when you take into consideration the 2008 American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS)  which reported that 76% of Americans self identify as Christian.  In other words, out of the more than 173,000,000 Christians in America (ARIS), only 37% (LifeWay) include Jesus in their Christmas festivities.  In 2005, Jerry Falwell claimed “secularists” “hate Christ” and want to “steal Christmas from America,” and yet the ARIS and LifeWay surveys reveal a story about the “War on Christmas” much different than the narrative told by Liberty Counsel and America’s fear mongering shock jocks.  It seems to me that IF there is a threat to Christmas, it is an intimate one.  So, what do you think?  Are Christians taking Christ out of Christmas?

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By Kate Daley-Bailey

“Marley was dead: to be begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that.” (Dickens 45)

Thus begins perhaps one of Charles Dickens’ most popular works. One need not be an avid reader of Victorian literature or an English major to be struck by this short story (total, its length is less than 100 pages). Even if you never sat down and read A Christmas Carol, if you live in the U.S. or Britain, you probably know the major components of the story: an elderly miser, Ebenezer Scrooge, undergoes visitation from a series of ghosts, each attempting to woo or terrify Ebenezer to reform. Who could forget Scrooge’s kind hearted clerk Bob Crachit, or his crippled and beloved son, Tiny Tim, who, despite his hardship, proclaims “God bless us, everyone!”? Among the plethora of versions of the Carol are Disney’s latest version starring Jim Carey, a modern remake starring Bill Murray called Scrooged, and, one of my personal favorites, A Muppets’ Christmas Carol. This is not even to mention the numerous black and white versions gracing TV screens every December. Upon my reading of the classic this Christmas, I was intrigued by something I had never noticed on previous readings: a woodcut image gracing the pages across from the description of Marley’s ghost. The title of the woodcut, done by John Leech, is Ghosts of DepartedUsurers. This image title haunted me because, despite the popularity of the term during Dickens’ time, one hardly ever hears the term “usurer” today. Albeit the infrequency of the use of the term today, the concepts behind “usury” are at the heart of what plagues our modern economies and religious lives. Here is the description which provided the inspiration for the woodcut mentioned above:

“The air filled with phantoms, wandering hither and thither in restless haste, and moaning as they went. Every one of them wore chains like Marley’s Ghost; some few (they might be guilty governments) were linked together; none were free.” (65)

The description of Marley’s Ghost is even more harrowing:

“The chain he drew was clasped about his middle. It was long, and wound about him like a tail; and it was made (for Scrooge observed it closely) of cash-boxes, keys, padlocks, ledgers, deeds, and heavy purses wrought in steel.” (57)

The spiritual burdens these spirits are bound by are symbols of their greed… and they appear to represent a particular type of sin greatly condemned throughout Christian history (that is until today), usury.

As mentioned earlier, “usury” as a term, is hardly a household name anymore and yet postmodern culture is greatly plagued by its effects. The term itself has developed a long history, especially among the Abrahamic traditions (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam). Interestingly, Islam still vehemently opposes “usury” and has developed special banking principals to guide devout Muslims. Like other ancient concepts, the word “usury” has been defined differently by various scholars and theologians. Usury, in its most common use today stands for “interest.” Could it truly be the case that earning interest could make someone culpable of a grievous sin in the eyes of the Christian Church? Yes and no.

For thousands of years, the Christian Church has identified “usury” as a sin… however various theologians and scholars living within these thousands of years disagreed over exactly what “usury” was and was not. A brief exploration of the term “usury” (and its multiple manifestations) may lead us to a better understanding of what was actually being prohibited by various religious communities, especially Christian ones.

In his book, Usury, Interest, and The Reformation, Eric Kerridge, gives us some insight into the intricate and sometime tedious art of trying to pin down a definition of “usury”:

“Usury or fenory is the taking of payment over and above the amount lent merely and solely in return for a secured loan.”(5)

Kerridge presents the definition explicated by the famed church father, Thomas Aquinas, to further clarify the concept of “usury”:

“To take money as the price of money lent, that is to take usury…the price for use, that is called usury.” (5)

Given this definition of “usury”, it seems that any interest on a loan is usury and therefore a sin in the Christian church. Aquinas bases his condemnation of “usury” in Biblical and Classical texts. For example, Aquinas’ view was in part dictated by Aristotle’s remarks on money:  “Aristotle… comments that money was not intended for this, but for buying and selling; usury merely produced money out of money, and so of all the ways to wealth was the most unnatural.” (15)

If one was not convinced by Aristotle’s argument against “usury”, one could always look to the multiple Biblical injunctions against “usury”:

“If you lend money to one of my people among you who is needy, do not treat it like a business deal; charge no interest.” (New International Bible, Exodus 22:25)

“Do not take interest or any profit from them, but fear your God, so that they may continue to live among you. You must not lend them money at interest or sell them food at a profit.” (Leviticus 25:36-37)

“Do not charge a fellow Israelite interest, whether on money or food or anything else that may earn interest. You may charge a foreigner interest, but not a fellow Israelite, so that the LORD your God may bless you in everything you put your hand to in the land you are entering to possess.” (Deuteronomy 23:19-20)

“Who lends money to the poor without interest; who does not accept a bribe against the innocent. Whoever does these things will never be shaken.” (Psalm 15:5)

“He lends at interest and takes a profit. Will such a man live? He will not! Because he has done all these detestable things, he is to be put to death; his blood will be on his own head.”(Ezekiel 18:13)

One might have noted that these injunctions are all found in the Hebrew Bible (which Christians refer to as the Old Testament). Another point to note is that these Biblical injunctions against interest apply only to taking interest from fellow Israelites (Jews), not other communities. Christianity, originally being a sect within Judaism, inherited these laws against taking interest but encountered a new dilemma due to the nature of the Christian community. Judaism fostered an exclusive religious and ethnic communal identity: there were Jews, those bound by the Covenant with the Hebrew god, and there were Gentiles, everyone else. Christianity, whose growth and strength depended on proselytizing to outsiders, viewed all outsiders as potential converts and thereby, potentially part of a worldwide community. The various Biblical laws mentioned above were ironically the very laws that allowed Jews to play the role of lender to European Christian communities (seen as Gentiles) and also the very same laws that prohibited Christians from playing any role but that of the borrower. The Christian New Testament is less lucid regarding the stipulations on lending and borrowing. Most theologians point to Jesus’ words as documented in the Gospel of Luke, chapter 6:35, “Lend, hoping for nothing again” as spiritual justification for legalized lending, although each may interpret these words differently. Some readers may interpret these words to mean that lending is allowed as long as no interest is charged. Others view these words as encouraging investment and others may read this passage as authorizing lending without any expectation of the principal being returned.

Unfortunately for Jewish communities in Europe and England, the livelihood that lending to non-Jews brought, also evoked a deep-seated hatred for the Jews among borrowing Christians:

“Not being Christians, they were debarred from the public exercise of lawful trades and occupations, but where allowed to practice them within their own community, which needed rabbis, physicians, surgeons, lawyers, butchers, bakers, and so on. Thus, while by no means all Jews were usurers, all lived by usury directly or indirectly, so the stigma attaching to usurers was extended to the Jews as a whole, and heightened by the general dislike of foreigners and foreign ways and beliefs.” (Kerridge 20)

In England, the words “Jew” and “usurer” became synonymous and one need only look to Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice, to see how Jews were often portrayed by Christian communities. From this vantage point it is easy, although disheartening, to see how easily the Christian condemnation of “usury”, meant originally to dissuade Christians from taking advantage of the poor, became a tool of propaganda used against Jewish communities. Dickens’ himself, although never naming Scrooge or Marley as “Jews” did include the Jewish villain stereotype, embodied in the infamous character Fagin, within his novel, Oliver Twist, referring to him many times simply as “the Jew”. However, there has been some mention of Dickens attempting to de-emphasize Fagin’s Jewish identity in later editions of the novel.

Kerridge notes that over time there are more distinctions made between “usury” and “interest”. For one thing, some writers commented that “interest” was not “usury” if it was charged as a penalty for not paying back the principal on an agreed date. Another distinction, albeit a rather murky one, is that “interest” requires that the lender or investor must share the risks of the business with the borrower or partner. The various terms linked with the concept of “usury”, such as “ochre”, “fenory”, etc., each had slightly different meanings and were often used interchangeably, making any definitive statement on the issue difficult. John Calvin, another significant Christian theologian, made a distinction between various kinds of loans and distinguished between who one could lend to based on the borrower’s economic status:

“Humanist that he was, Calvin knew there were two Hebrew words translated as “usury.” One, neshek, meant “to bite”; the other, tarbit, meant “to take legitimate increase.” Based on these distinctions, Calvin argued that only “biting” loans were forbidden. Thus, one could lend at interest to business people who would make a profit using the money. To the working poor one could lend without interest, but expect the loan to be repaid. To the impoverished one should give without expecting repayment.” Jones, Norman. “Usury”. EH.Net Encyclopedia, edited by Robert Whaples. February 10, 2008. URL http://eh.net/encyclopedia/article/jones.usury

Calvin also notes that the Latins (Romans) viewed “usura” as honorable but detested “fenory”, which he describes along with others (such as P. Melanchthon) as the “biting” kind of loan mentioned above. Cato, according to Calvin, put “fenory” on the same level as murder and described those who practiced it as those who “suck the blood out of others”(from J. Calvin, Commentarii in Librum Psalmorum, Amersterdam, 1567, p. 47, translated by Eric Kerridge). These biting and blood sucking allusions link to the negative caricatures used to demonize Jews such as the bizarre charge brought against Jews in England and Europe referred to as “blood libel”, which according to the Internet Medieval Sourcebook was the belief that some Christians held that Jews used the blood of a Christian child to make Passover matzohs.

According to Joseph Shatzmiller in his book Shylock Reconsidered: Jews, Moneylending, and Medieval Society, not only was “usury” considered a sin and a crime throughout Christian history, according to the Council of Vienne (1311-1312), it made one a heretic and made Christians and Jews vulnerable to church inquisitors (46). Despite the declaration of such councils against “usury”, many European governments had, by the 14^th century, gained from the well-entrenched credit system and profited from the Jewish moneylenders’ activities. The more criminalized lending became, the more reticent lenders and borrowers were of admitting their involvement. Lenders and borrowers had to depend on unwritten agreements, interest percentages were not documented, and payment, nonpayment and indebtedness sometimes led to violence. In his book, Shatzmiller also notes that during the Black Death of 1348-1349:

“many believed that the Jews created the pestilence, and as a result Jewish quarters were attacked by fear-stricken crowds. But even in these circumstances the populace was intent on destroying notarial records and other evidence of indebtedness, as Pope Clement IV noted in a bull of 2 October 1348” (49).

The major thinkers of the Protestant Reformation (Luther, Zwigli, Calvin, etc.) were particularly critical of what they saw as the Catholic Church’s abuses of the poor. They, like their predecessors, did not approve of “usury”, although their definitions of what “usury” entailed differed. Martin Luther, often depicted as the “father of the Protestant Reformation”, critiqued any enrichment which came at one’s neighbor’s loss:

“That is the deepest depth of greed, that just looks upon a neighbour’s want and need as an opportunity not to help him but to enrich oneself and become wealthy through one’s neighbour’s loss. Those who do that are all daylight robbers, thieves, and ockerers.” (36-37)

Although there is much argument over the terminology used and what limits should be placed on lending, perhaps Luther’s condemnation can shed some light on exactly what was at the heart of the issue—how one dealt with others, especially those less fortunate than oneself. Perhaps the condemnation of “usury” was not all about how much money was gained but rather how much money was gained on the backs of others. The sin of “usury” might be that it sees other people as a means to end, instead of an end in and of themselves. “Usury”, in this sense, is predatory and pitiless… it not only makes the borrower destitute financially but it also makes the lender destitute in spirit. Think back to the description of Scrooge, Marley and the other “usurer ghosts” depicted in Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. Take the passage where Marley explains why he is fettered:

“I made the chain I forged in life,” replied the Ghost. “I made it link by link, and yard by yard, I girded it on my own free will, and of my own free will I wore it… My spirit never walked beyond our counting house- mark me!- in life my spirit never roved beyond the narrow limits of our money-changing hole; and weary journeys lie before me.” (61)

When Scrooge exclaims that Marley was always a good man of business, Marley remarks:

“Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were, all, my business…” (62-63)

While many Christians may be reticent to abandon “usury” in the strictest sense, perhaps words such as those from the Church fathers and, in this case, Dickens, may make us think twice about what is, as Christians, truly “our business” in this world.

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By James Dennis LoRusso, Emory University  

With all of the talk about the need for jobs and income inequality, the latest figure sitting in the front car of that roller coaster otherwise known as the Republican presidential race, Newt Gingrich, once again has invited the ire of Progressives with his remarks about the poor.  At a campaign stop in Des Moines, he made the following claim:

 Really poor children,” he claims, “in really poor neighborhoods, have no habits of working.  And have nobody around them who works.  So, they literally have no habit of showing up on Mondays.  They have no habit of staying all day.  They have no habit of ‘I do this, and you give me cash,’ unless it’s illegal.

Besides citing the implicit racism here that paints poor inner-city youth as lazy or being driven to criminal lifestyles, Newt’s critics have charged him predictably with ignoring sociological data painting a very different picture.  Even I can attest to the fact that in my previous career as a retail manager, the working poor, particularly single mothers, comprised a significant portion of my staff.  Some of these held down more than one part-time job to support their children, and they may work seven days per week, putting in nearly eighty hours of labor.  To me, these mothers spend more time on the job than many of my middle class colleagues.

Still, my casual browsing of blogs and internet comment boards suggests that a substantial number of Americans agree with him.  Why, I wondered, is this the case?  Undoubtedly, most people in this country understand hard work to be a virtue, but in Newt’s statement resides a subtle assumption: Being poor is a sign of moral failure on the part of the individual and the poor community.  The mass appeal of this belief, that poverty itself is a sign of moral deficiency, results from the particular way the so-called “Protestant work ethic” is situated in American culture.  The root of this ethic comes out of the strict Calvinist tendencies of colonial New England. 

The Dissenting Puritans that settled Massachusetts in the seventeenth century held a view that hard work signified virtue.  Earlier thinkers of the Reformation like Martin Luther and John Calvin turned Catholic notions of work as penance for sin on their head and painted every individual’s “vocation” or “calling” as a contribution to God’s creation.  Throughout the modern period, America, West Europe, and now the world has embraced the idea that work, “getting your hands dirty,” is good for you, me, and the world.

Simply pointing out how American culture appreciates hard work doesn’t really move us any closer to understanding Newt’s portrayal of the poor.  As I have already suggested, the abundant literature reveals that the poor work quite diligently when opportunity permits.  Despite this evidence, Gingrich still maintains that the poor lack this ethic.  He can say this, I suggest, because his statements tap into a deeply seeded belief in American society that work should be an end in itself, not merely a way of meeting wants and desires.   Although we do work so that we can live comfortably, we also build our character when we punch the clock.  Work, thus, is a fundamentally moral project. 

A further look at the way Calvinism frames the work ethic within a larger system of belief reveals why American’s historically explain work as a moral practice.  First of all, in the strict Calvinist universe of the New England Puritans, moral authority rests privately within each individual.  When Luther and his successors urged Christians to take up the Bible and read it for themselves, they essentially removed the site of religious authority from the priesthood and placed it directly in the hands of the layperson.  Now, in the hands of each individual lay a responsibility to acquire and embody Biblical teachings.  Consequently, a prevailing Protestant notion persists that if you fail in some way, there’s no one to blame but yourself. 

Second, Calvinism teaches that “grace” comes freely from God, who decides every person’s fate at the dawn of creation.  Moreover, no series of actions will influence this fate; all a believer can do is look for evidence that he or she is among the elect.  Believers in colonial New England assessed their own spiritual state and that of their peers in a variety of ways.  For instance, full church membership was open only to those who could publically testify to a proper conversion.  Similarly, virtuous living, including hard work, could indicate a person’s place among the elect.  Of course, even upright living was no guarantee of salvation.  But, as colonial theologian, Jonathan Edwards, clamed in his piece, Distinguishing Marks of a Work of the Spirit of God, worldly prosperity, when not ostentatious, surely implied the grace of God at work.  With this, the Puritan moral system ties the virtue of work to outward signs of grace in the form of worldly success. 

By erecting a culture that looked kindly upon hard work and the accumulation of wealth, these early American Protestants simultaneously prepared future generations to understand idleness, immodesty, and poverty as signs of low moral character.  Gingrich’s remarks resonate with the conservative base because they invoke this moral legacy.  Through the lens of these basic American values, poor children reflect a lack of moral strength.  Precisely because they live in poverty, this ethical deficit suggests an unwillingness to embrace hard work.  In short, the culture of poverty stems from indolence, itself evidence of individual moral failure. 

Moreover, even when Newt’s critics criticize him for ignoring evidence to the contrary, his supporters will continue to stand by his perspective.  Americans have inherited a belief that work must be done with the correct intentions, as an end, as a good in and of itself. Gingrich implies here that the poor only work as a means to an end, as a way of assuaging an insatiable appetite of desires.  Their penchant to resort to criminal activity illustrates what Gingrich’s poor truly care about.  They desire opulence and will stop at nothing to attain it.  According to this logic, hard work for its own sake remains an unknown ideal among the poor, because they are caught in a vicious cycle of immorality for which they can only blame themselves.   Such views cannot be overturned unless their specific histories are exposed.  Only when we acknowledge distinctively religious roots of the American work ethic do we get a better picture of why some conservative political views resonate so powerfully with the base.

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James Dennis LoRusso is currently a PhD student of American Religious Cultures at Emory University in Atlanta, GA.  His work focuses broadly on the Religious Origins of American Capitalism, specifically on Spirituality in the Workplace and the intersection of advertising theory and the study of myth.

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By Kate Daley-Bailey

American Nazis support the Occupy Wall Street Movement?

This headline ripped through the conservative news outlets like wildfire.  Christmas came early for Fox News.  My curiosity was peaked… I am a fence sitter regarding the Occupy Wall Street movement… primarily because I refuse to join a movement which will not outline its agenda and even then I am leery.  I have to know specifically what and who I am protesting.  My fence-sitting is engendered by my recent research into how the Nazis gained power in Germany and were backed surprisingly by many high standing church leaders, scholars, and much of the German population.  

You can imagine my surprise when I read the above headlines.  Was this yet another example of propaganda generated by the Fox News-types of the American media to damn the liberals of the Occupy movement?  Yes… but it was also something more for me.  Just as I cannot fathom how the general German population could have endorsed a megalomaniac and demagogic murderer like Hitler… I could not see how or why the American Nazi movement would endorse the Occupy Movement.  The agendas of these groups seem counter to one another.  So I went to the American Nazi website (and am, subsequently, on every FBI watch list).  I had to see why this fervently anti-Semitic hate group was endorsing a movement whose views were so seemingly antithetical to their own movement.  Here are two links to their websites … so you too can get on an FBI watch list

Upon reading the American Nazi endorsement of the OWS movement, I was struck by the common rhetorical devices utilized by these movements.  Of course the Occupy Wall Street movement is not homogenous and champions itself as representing the so-called ‘99%’.  The Occupy movement heralds itself as a people’s movement… much like the movement’s more politically conservative sibling- the Tea Party.

While the Occupy and Tea Party movements seem radically disparate on the surface, there are some common denominators shared between them… anger, vague slogans, fears over economic ruin and growing unemployment, outrage over a corrupt political system, untenable or nonexistent health care policies, and challenges to civil liberties.  Both groups are disgusted with corporate greed and financial manipulation.  While similar lists of grievances can be found in most modern social revolutions, these same critiques also arose during the most sinister time in modern European history.

The discourse put forth by the Tea Partiers and Occupiers show a semblance in content and tenor with the notorious 25 Point Program  put forward by the NSDAP (the Nazi Party of Germany) in the 1920s.  Published in the Nazi Party’s premier newspaper the Volkischer Beobachter  (which roughly translates as the People’s Observer) the 25 point program states that all citizens should have the right to vote and have equal rights and duties.  The state, according to this document, is required to create and maintain a healthy middle class, to dismantle large corporate entities and lease these facilities at cheap rates to small businesses, to “ruthlessly fight against those whose activities are damaging to the common interest” (profiteers and usurers were to be punished by death), to promote an education system focused on practical life skills, and to “break the slavery of interest.” The 25 point program was an attempt by the nascent Nazi party to construct a Weltanschauung, a systematic worldview or ideology, for the German Volk.

Some of the points enumerated would be more likely embraced by the politically right leaning Tea Party supporters—others might be more consistent with an Occupier mentality.  According to the Nazi’s 25 point program all non-German immigration was to be prevented, all non-Germans were to be seen as aliens, given ‘guest status,’ and could be forcefully expelled from Germany at any time.  Point 15 supports “an expansion of old age welfare” and point 17 demands “abolition of taxes on land.” Point 21 requires that the state protect the health of mothers and children and mandates physical fitness instruction of children.  Point 24 supports a freedom of religion, of sorts.  It reads as follows:

We demand freedom of religion for all religious denominations within the state so long as they do not endanger its existence or oppose the moral senses of the Germanic race. The Party as such advocates the standpoint of a positive Christianity without binding itself confessionally to any one denomination.  It combats the Jewish-materialistic spirit within and around us, and is convinced that a lasting recovery of our nation can only succeed from within on the framework: common utility precedes individual utility.

The last phrase of this point is sometimes translated as “common need before private greed.”

While the earlier points may not have been particularly troubling… point 24 brings home why we should be skeptical of all political movements which use ambiguous slogans and feed off of general discontent of the populous.  One group inevitably gets saddled with the blame…which often results in devastating outcomes.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NWwK5TBcoUY

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Further Reading 

• Concern in Israel over #OWS (Occupy Wall Street) anti-Semitism, Israel Matzav 

• Cries of Anti-Semitism, but Not at Zuccotti Park, NY Times

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James Dennis LoRusso, Emory University

Work is love made visible.  And if you cannot work with love but only with distaste, it is better that you should leave your work and sit at the gate of the temple and take alms of those who work with joy. –Khalil Gibran

Self-proclaimed “corporate mystic,” Lynne Sedgemore, read the above passage by Khalil Gibran during her keynote address at the International Faith and Spirit at Work Conference recently held at the University of Arkansas.  The conference, sponsored by the Tyson Center of Faith and Spirituality in the Workplace, itself a part of the University’s Sam Walton College of Business, gathered together an eclectic mixture of business leaders, academics, religious authorities, and spiritual teachers in hopes of generating momentum for an idea that has been gaining traction over the last few decades: that there is a place, indeed a vital need, in today’s global economy, for spirituality in one’s work. 

From corporate chaplaincy initiatives to “quiet rooms” in the office for reflection, prayer, or meditation, a smattering of businesses have begun to make room for employees to exercise their religious and spiritual commitments on the job.  The results, these advocates claim, produce greater satisfaction, a deeper sense of meaning and purpose in one’s life, and, not surprisingly, a more efficient and productive workforce, thereby improving the bottom-line and ensuring future success. 

While workplace spirituality, as the movement is known among the faithful, does hold profitability and respect for the diversity of faiths as principle aims, it also embodies a broader vision that is particularly relevant to the current global economic crisis.  The organizer of the conference and long-time supporter of spirituality at work, Judith Neal, stated concisely this larger goal.  Workplace spirituality, she maintains, can potentially change our world by transforming human consciousness across the world.  According to Neal, since the most powerful institutions in today’s world are businesses, they are the carriers of vast social change, and therefore it is within the scope of spiritually driven businesses that some of our most challenging socio-economic problems might be overcome. 

In other words, it is business that is positioned to solve the world’s problems. 

This faith in the capacity of business, when guided by spiritual principles, to reform the world elucidates an uncanny confluence of liberal social agendas and neo-conservative ideologies.  On its surface, workplace spirituality appears as an eclectic mix of religiously liberal and New Age perspectives of human beings.  An inclusive movement, participants cling to a belief in the validity of multiple spiritual paths and the dignity of every person, regardless of their lifestyle.  Moreover, leading figures of the movement often voice a worldview reminiscent of the New Age.  Judith Neal, for example, claims in her book, Edgewalkers (2006),

…that a new kind of human being is emerging on the planet and that this has major implications for business, governments, religion, education, and all of our social institutions.  These Edgewalkers are people who walk between the worlds… In ancient cultures, each tribe or village has a shaman or medicine man.  This was the person who walked into the invisible world to get information, guidance, and healing for members of the tribe. 

The Edgewalker, according to Neal, represents the twenty-first century shaman, the individual equipped with abilities uniquely suited to lead humankind through the difficulties of contemporary life. 

Neal attributes the appearance of these Edgewalkers to the socio-economic context of globalization, high technology, and the increasing speed and unpredictability of life.  Edgewalkers hold the tools to navigate these tenuous conditions, and to teach the rest of us to follow in their footsteps.  Neal cites particular business leaders as the exemplars of Edgewalking, including figures like the founder of PeopleSoft, David Duffield, and Richard Barrett, founder of the World Bank’s Spiritual Unfoldment Society, who have dedicated their careers to creating models of socially responsible organizations and spiritually sensitive workplace cultures. 

What is needed, according to such views, is nothing less than a new understanding of work: work represents a sacred act, enlightened executives and managers become servant leaders and the shepherds to the spiritual needs of their flocks, and the workplaces serve as the primary space where profound individual transformation can occur.

Given this picture, the conference on spirituality in the workplace represents more than a goal to make room for religious practice at work.  It constitutes an entirely new religious movement in its own right, conveying a world led by the benevolence of the private sector, freed from government restraints and allowed to compete openly for resources and customers.  In this world, according to this logic, those organizations best suited to meet the spiritual needs of their stakeholders will naturally obtain an advantage over their competitors because workers will be drawn to work for these firms and as customers choose their goods and services over less conscientious brands. 

It is these underlying assumptions of the movement that reveal its intimate relationship with what thinkers like Ayn Rand refer to as “radical capitalism.”  Rand and the advocates of spirituality in the workplace agree on a picture of humanity in which certain individuals, be they Rand’s people of superior intelligence or corporate mystics like Lynne Sedgemore endowed with the intuitive charisma of an Edgewalker, should be allowed to rise to positions of leadership.  This state of affairs, of course, is only feasible when the market is unfettered and society understands the role of business as dominant in human affairs. 

Even though most of the participants at the conference would take issue with Rand’s devout atheism, they nonetheless possess a worldview curiously committed to laissez-faire principles.  In fact, the marriage of a libertarian portrait of the world with notions of transcendence where workers find ultimate meaning and purpose for their lives through business activity, I would argue, actually strengthens loyalty to a radical capitalism.

John Mackey, CEO of Whole Foods, most explicitly illustrates this confluence of spirituality and free markets with his involvement with “Conscious Capitalism,” an organization closely associated with the workplace spirituality movement.  “Accelerating the Integration of Consciousness and Capitalism,” its members stake their claim as “enthusiastic advocates for free markets, entrepreneurship, and competition” but with a twist: by “liberating each person’s entrepreneurial spirit and helping that entrepreneurial spirit creatively flow toward the collective good of all humankind.” 

As he admits in his book, Be the Solution (2009) , Mackey enjoins a philosophy of “personal empowerment,” built through years of engagement with spiritual practices such as yoga, meditation, and A Course in Miracles, to his professional decision-making.  When he spoke out http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sYcFCyZC8Sc

President Obama’s Affordable Care Act in 2009, Mackey’s resolve stemmed from a belief that business has a higher purpose for which government intervention can only serve as an impediment. 

This broader relationship between neo-conservatism and workplace spirituality seemed lost on the participants at the International Conference for Faith and Spirit at Work.  What was missing was vigorous critique of the movement’s implications: that if work is the source both for material and immaterial well-being, and this source is anchored to particular organizational goals, little room is left for any fundamental critique of the supremacy of the market.  Instead, the conference proceeded under one assumption: that the integration of spirituality to the workplace was a good and even vital goal for the future of business and human life in the twenty-first century.  Such worldviews potentially mute democratic forms of action, replacing it with a benign faith in big business as the saving grace for us all.

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

James Dennis LoRusso is current PhD student of American Religious Cultures at Emory University in Atlanta, GA.  His work focuses broadly on the Religious Origins of American Capitalism, specifically on Spirituality in the Workplace and the intersection of advertising theory and the study of myth. 

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Louis A. Ruprecht, Jr., Georgia State University 

I suppose it was inevitable. Since nature and the military both abhor a vacuum, the recent announcement of the military draw-down in Iraq almost inevitably meant that we’d soon be re-deploying our military forces somewhere else.

Still, the northern coast of Australia came as something of a surprise. President Obama announced yesterday that 250 US Marines will soon be shipping off for rotating six-month tours at an Australian military base on the north central coast of the island, near a city called Darwin. Their numbers are expected to escalate to 2500 in fairly short order, along with military equipment and long-range aircraft.

Since they’re headed to Darwin, it was also probably inevitable that this announcement, something of a curiosity on the evening news cycle, would be read as an exercise in the geopolitics of “survival the fittest.” In this case, the new troop deployment is seen as a symbolic check on growing Chinese influence in the region, especially noteworthy after several recent incidents prompted by the Chinese Navy’s intrusion upon the territorial waters of several neighboring states.

So the whole thing has been read as a check on Chinese power.

Perhaps it is that, but it is surprising that no one consulting the map has noticed what stands in between Darwin, Australia and the Chinese mainland… namely, the most populous Muslim country in the world, Indonesia. 

It is unclear that the Australians would accepted a deployment that had been framed for them in anti-Chinese terms. China is one of Australia’s biggest trading partners and they seem far less worried about an emergent China than American pubic officials have been of late.

But the Australians have been active and enthusiastic supporters of the War on Terror, and this deployment–assuming it is aimed at Indonesian-backed South Pacific terrorist networks more than the Chinese Navy–serves that purpose nicely.

This is not about a new threat but an old one. It is not about an emerging Chinese threat, whether miliary or economic at all.

No, this is about al-Qaeda and Islam.

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By Kile Jones, Claremont School of Theology

On February 28, 2011, I attended a meeting of Atheists United at the Center for Inquiry (CFI) in Hollywood, California.  It was a typical day in southern California—sunny, beautiful, without a cloud in sight—when I pulled into the parking lot of the CFI.  On a nearby mountain you could see the famous Hollywood Sign looming in the distance.  The CFI is located next to a Mexican Pentecostal Church and a Christian Science Reading Room, proof of the religious diversity in Los Angeles.  

From the outside, CFI looks like more like a warehouse than a Church.  Its electric sign, found on the street corner, not only announces headlines and CFI news, but also provides one of the only ways of detecting the building.  While in the parking lot I was approached by the treasurer of Atheists United, Norm, who politely asked me if I was attending their meeting.  Answering yes, I then told him that I was a Ph.D. student at Claremont School of Theology.  To this he comically asked, “What are you, an Episcopalian Priest?”  With a few chucks and giggles I proceeded to tell him that I was one of the only atheists who attend Claremont School of Theology.  Having come to hear Dan Barker talk, Norm told me that Mr. Barker could not make it and that somebody else would be presenting.  Although surprised, Norm’s friendly nature calmed my disappointment.    

Walking into the building, past a tranquil patio with “Einstein the Atheist Dog” (a very sweet animal) tied to the fence, I noticed that the inside was much more adorned than the outside.  There was a bookstore, an information and welcoming counter, tables where food is eaten after the service, a book table with almost all of the books required for my Atheism and Secularity course (i.e. Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris, Zuckerman, etc.), a food counter with various waters and sodas, and a golden thread with the names of “Heroic Freethinkers” painted around the top of the inside wall.  These thinkers included: Giordano Bruno, Galileo Galilie, Baruch Spinoza, David Hume, Charles Darwin, Thomas Paine, Robert Ingersoll, and Bertrand Russell.  Upon viewing this tribute, I was struck by a rich sense of the history and tradition of unbelief.  

Inside the “Steve Allen” theatre, a room at the back of the building where the service takes place, the narrative of a beautiful interior falls apart.  This theatre had orange walls, electric wires dangling around, and looked more like a run-down Improv stage than an actual theatre.  It was humble, and may have been breaking fire codes.  The theatre seating was comfortable, and coffee in the theatre was apparently acceptable (I never asked but I never got reprimanded), and compared to sitting through a Catholic Mass on wooden pews, it was rather relaxing.  The microphone kept cutting out, the sound could use improvement, and it was apparent that they needed an electronic make over.  These failures of production stand in stark contrast with many Evangelical Churches that have concert sound, high tech equipment, and professionally trained sound engineers.  It was clear that they do not have anywhere near the amount of funding an average Christian Church has. 

When I entered the building, two members of Atheists United greeted me with bright smiles.  They asked me if I had attended before, if I wanted to sign up for email updates from Atheists United, and handed me a nametag that I quickly filled out and stuck to my chest.  You could hear various groups of two to four people discussing topics from the separation of Church and State, to Richard Dawkins, to the weather.  The people were friendly, non-confrontational, and appeared to have a sincere interest in those who attend their services.  Most people seemed to know each other, but you could tell that this was less so than the usual small, intimate Church.  When I found out that they only meet on the last Sunday of every month, it made sense why this was the case. 

While sitting at one of the tables writing notes before the service, I was approached by the Vice President of Atheists United, Ingemar.  The first thing I noticed about him was his Swedish accent and friendly demeanor.  I talked with him about Atheists United, the CFI, Church and State relations in Sweden, and religion in contemporary America.  I told him that I was taking a class with Dr. Phil Zuckerman at Claremont Graduate University, which appeared to have perked his interest.  He mentioned how Dr. Zuckerman had just spoken at their meeting, and how enjoyable and stimulating his talk was.  After a loud call announcing the beginning of service, reminiscent of a Christian herald publicly announcing Church service to his puritan neighbors, I entered the theatre.    

In my estimation, the 35 or so people who were in attendance were 95% white, 60% men, 10% were couples, with 50% of the crowd over the age of 35.  They were primarily lower middle class.  There was only one child and one teenager present.  This makes sense given the fact that religious persons have more children than atheists.[1]  The clothing they wore was casual and relaxed, probably no different from what they would wear any other day of the week.  From the view I had sitting in the back, I noticed that most of the men were balding.  The women dressed as humble as the men.  According to contemporary standards in the culture of southern California, they were lacking in make-up, nail, and hair work.  This stands in contrast to the attire worn by those attending the Mexican Pentecostal Church next door.  The Pentecostals were in their best Sunday suits, dolled-up for the Sabbath.  I was thoroughly surprised by the “blue collar/working stiff” atmosphere, since I had previously found out that the majority of self-identifying atheists are white, middle class, males.[2]  Having a building in Hollywood may have also unconsciously contributed to this suprisement. 

At the opening of the service, the President of Atheists United, Bobbie, made a few announcements.  She mentioned an upcoming “tabling” training that teaches people how to manage an Atheists United table at local fairs and public events.  She also mentioned how this service would be recorded and made available on Ustream.  One of the most interesting and comical announcements was when Billie asked everyone in the audience to turn on their cell phones and invite someone to Atheists United.  I observed a handful of audience members actually making calls. 

As I mentioned earlier, I was expecting Dan Barker to speak, but instead it was a Thomas Jefferson impersonator who took his place.  He walked out in a purple coat, laced with white linen, and with shoes one would not wish to walk one city block in.  He held a silver chalice in his hand, spoke with a dignified accent, and received a great amount of clapping from the audience.  He had an impressive knowledge of Thomas Jefferson that was seen clearly when he recited the Declaration of Independence from memory. He mentioned some of Jefferson’s accomplishments, which I will list here: 

• Wrote Declaration of Independence in seventeen days
• Founded the University of Virginia
• Created his own amended New Testament
• Founded a Navy
• Fought against smallpox

He also mentioned how Jefferson promoted freedom of speech, freedom of religion, the separation of Church and State, the right of citizens to petition their government, and democracy.  He pointed out how Jefferson thought of Christianity as the best manifestation of religion, but believed that Unitarian Universalism would eventually become the dominant religion of the country.  He spoke of Jefferson’s distaste for slavery (even though he owned slaves and took one as his concubine), how he was opposed to factionalism, didn’t believe in standing armies, and was self-conscious and shy when speaking in public. 

The questions asked by the audience members revealed something about their interest in Jefferson.  As the microphone was passed around, audience members began asking questions.  

• (me) Why do you think that religion is essential to maintaining a civil society?
• (man) Did you start factionalism by establishing the Democratic-Republican Party?
• (older woman) What about slavery?  Why did you own slaves?
• (man) Did you commit adultery with a slave woman?
• (me) Did God grant us rights, and if so, how can they be thought of as natural?
• (woman) What about Tripoli and North Africa?
• (man) Could you tell us about your fall out with John Adams and your eventual reconciliation?
• (man) What would you say to the Tea Party?
• (fellow student) How would Jefferson have thought about Islam?
• (woman) How did you become President?

To the audience’s pleasure, each of these questions was answered with historical dates and facts.  He never avoided a question and answered each of them fully, even if it made Jefferson look bad (like the question about slaves). 

The dialogue between the speaker and the audience had a certain feel about it.  The questions showed how the audience was generally critical of the Tea Party, Republicans, conservative politics, and religious zealots.  This made sense to me, since 32% of those who mark “none” as their religious affiliation are registered Democrats, and 43% of them are registered Independents.[3]  Finding a politically conservative atheist is a difficult task.  The people in the audience were generally interested and focused, even though I found one older man sleeping during the service.  The speaker had many jokes to say, and the audience seemed to appreciate it.  A couple of the older women had trouble turning the microphone on, and the audience had to direct them by yelling, “Turn the microphone on!”   

After the speaker finished, Bobbie made another couple of announcements.  She mentioned the family who brought the only child, thanking them for coming and mentioning the child’s name, to make sure the audience remembered it.  Bobbie went on the mention a recent article in the men’s magazine GQ, where Billy Ray Cyrus mentions viewing a highway sign with his daughter, Miley Cyrus, sponsored by Atheists United.  Apparently, Mr. Cyrus commented that the sponsored highway sign might as well have read: “You will now be attacked by Satan.”[4]  Bobbie, in comical fashion, responded by saying, “As long as all Christians are as convincing as Billy Ray Cyrus, we atheists have nothing to fear.”  She also mentioned how interesting it is that the CFI “speaks for the devil.”  Chuckles were heard throughout the theatre. 

When the service was over, Bobbie announced that there would be Dominos pizza, free of charge, for everyone to enjoy.  She said it was free because, “we [Atheists United] value community.”  Due to time constraints, I had to leave without any pizza. The service had been interesting, intellectually stimulating, and presented an admirable picture of what atheist meet-ups ought to look like.  In my opinion, many religious believers would enjoy the people at Atheists United, even if they do not agree with their beliefs.       

If asked to suggest any changes to the meeting, I could only answer with superficial, financially related critiques.  They would be twofold: revamp the electronic and sound issues, and repaint the inside of the theatre.  Besides these, I cannot think of anything else I would have changed about the meeting.  The drive home to Claremont was just as enjoyable.  A close friend and I discussed the meeting and compared it to other religious services we have attended.  We both agreed that, in contrast to many Christian services in southern California, the Atheists United group was less funded, less fashion-focused, and had significantly less kids and teenagers.  It was also more personal and intimate than large church meetings and mega-church services. 

In conclusion, the Atheists United meeting I attended bore out most of the limited statistics on atheism.  It showed me a concrete manifestation of atheistic beliefs.  Although the service mirrored many of the statistics on atheists, the people in attendance were more than mere statistics.  They were unique individuals, in a unique location, with a unique ethos.  To put it frankly: they bore out most of the statistics, but in their own unique way.  I thoroughly enjoyed the service and would ask other religious groups to see the positive elements at play in meetings like Atheists United.  These atheists—usually considered to be in opposition to any and all religion—actually form a pivotal role in the religious and philosophical diversity of southern California, and the greater world.

Originally posted on State of Formation

******************              

Kile Jones, 28, holds a Bachelors of Theology (B.Th.) from Faith Seminary, a Masters of Theological Studies (M.T.S.) and a Masters of Sacred Theology (S.T.M.) from Boston University.  He also holds a Certificate in Science and Religion from the Boston Theological Institute.  He is current pursuing a Ph.D. in Religion at Claremont Lincoln University.  

Mr. Jones has been published in Zygon: Journal of Religion and Science, Philosophy Now, Free Inquiry, World Futures, Human Affairs, and the Secular Web.  He has presented at Conferences around the United States and the United Kingdom, particularly at Trinity College Dublin, University of York, Harvard Divinity School, Plymouth State University, Boston University, and Claremont Graduate University.  He is the Founder/Editor-in-chief of Claremont Journal of Religion.  His interests include religion and science, atheism, secularism, and philosophy of religion.  He also reviews books for Reviews in Religion and Theology (RRT) and is a Contributing Scholar for State of Formation, an academic blog for emerging religious and ethical leaders.  He maintains his personal blog at: www.kilejones.com

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By Louis A. Ruprecht Jr., Georgia State University 

In an essay I recently published at “Religion Dispatches,” I used Gary Laderman’s fascinating concept of “Republicanicity” as the launch-pad for the suggestion that what separates developments in the Republican Party from anything happening among the Democrats is simply this: the Republican Party is undergoing a battle to define its orthodoxy, a battle that has no direct parallel to arguments and power-struggles taking place on the political left. 

In short, a plurality of voices, sharing little more than a name in common, is currently in the process of sorting out a platform to which all bearers of the name might reasonably agree. 

I compared this to developments in the period of early Christian formation, since what we have learned in recent years is that orthodoxy doesn’t come first; heresy does. Put another way, the diversity of opinions all going by the same name, ‘Christian’, eventually created an untenable situation in which everyone recognized that all of the positions then bearing the name were no longer compatible. All Christians might refer to Jesus of Nazareth as “Christ” and as “Son of God,” or even as the Second Person in the Divine Trinity, but as for what those names meant and how they were to be imagined, opinions diverged wildly. 

The gospels were composed as one attempt to answer two burning questions lying at the heart of this new movement: Who was he? and Why did he die that way? Their answers differed as well, and in John’s case, his answers were put in such a way as to reject the other three gospel versions (Jesus never prayed in Gethsemane, according to John, because Jesus never doubted or wavered. He and the Father were one). 

It is important to keep in mind that these debates were never just debates about theology; they were political debates about who would control the movement, and that question always hinged on access to money, among other things. 

One of the most shocking examples of how wide a range of beliefs within a single movement can be may be found in the so-called Gospel of Judas.  In this gospel, we are informed not only that Judas never betrayed his Lord, but that he was actually the most favored disciple, deemed so trustworthy that he was called upon to perform the most difficult task of all: ensuring the death of his master.  In so doing, Jesus assures him, “you will release the man within me.” Jesus is apparently referring to the spirit that is housed a bit uneasily in a bodily frame. Hence Judas did not engage in an act of betrayal, but rather in an act of deliverance and liberation. 

Who was he? A Knowledge Savior, come to earth to show us the path to liberation. Why did he die that way? To illustrate the fact that death is the release into spirit, not a loss and not a tragedy. To render the most tragic kind of death imaginable as an anti-tragic triumph was the clearest symbolic way to make this point. Naturally, the other gospel writers (those who identified with other members of Jesus’s inner circle) had a hard time with that. Particularly because the people making this highly counter-intuitive argument were rich elites whose belief that they alone had access to secret knowledge made them the most obvious candidates for leadership positions in the movement.

Turn now to the fascinating attempts at defining party orthodoxy that we have witnessed at the last several Republican debates. 

All of the candidates share the name ‘Republican’, but that is about as far as their agreement extends. The two central questions around which this entire election cycle will pivot is, Who are we? And How did we let Obama take the White House? Answers to any given question seem ultimately to be addressed to one or both of those prime party directives. 

A fascinating moment in the Tea Party debate came when Governor Perry’s orthodoxy was challenged in light of an executive order he issued requiring all Texas schoolgirls to receive a vaccine for the sexually transmitted virus responsible for cervical cancer. The other candidates went through an orgy of recrimination, conniption after conniption all designed to call his orthodoxy (and his moral judgment) into question. 

His Abstinence Only credentials were questioned. His Libertarian credentials were questioned (especially by Michelle Bachmann’s sudden discovery of the importance of, well, a woman’s right to choose). And his medical judgment was questioned (in one of the true howlers to come out of that debate, Bachmann’s since-retracted claim that the vaccine caused mental retardation in at least one instance). 

Who are we? And how did we let Obama take the White House? With reckless sniping and self-serving Know-Nothingism such as this, one suspects. 

But none of this captures the essence of what is unfolding. Much as in the case of early Christian formation, arguments over orthodoxy were not just arguments about theology. They were arguments about money and power. Yes, Luke tells us that the early Christians pooled their resources and gave each according to his need. But the next thing Luke tells us is that some Christians kept their money in hiding and when this was discovered, Peter—through a terrifying exercise of power—called them out publicly and witnessed the couple drop dead as a stone. 

The real story of the executive order issued by a man who also appeared to revel in the 234 executions Texas has performed on his watch is a story about money, Merck money in this case. Yes, as the Governor insisted, the Merck corporation donated $5000 to his gubernatorial campaign (and he was offended, he sniped, that Sister Bachmann would suggest that he could be influenced by such a sum–he’s not that cheap, it would seem). 

Indeed he is not.  Merck donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to a Republican Governors group he chairs, and more besides.  And they produced the vaccine to which every child in Texas was required to submit. And so on: you line my pockets, I’ll line yours.  Despite his repeated poor performance sin these debates, Rick Perry continues to raise money like a juggernaut. And he is not lining his coffers with $100-200 contributions from the hoi polloi; no, he is after the big money.  His campaign is currently running on enormous infusions of cash from a select few corporate interests committed to his candidacy.  It is striking that his arguments and ideas have nothing to do with their support; his behavior in the state of Texas does. 

Judas is not only the most maligned figure in the New Testament; he is the disciple about whom there was always the greatest confusion.  In the New Testament itself (the Gospel of Matthew versus Acts of the Apostles), we see two very different views of the man.  In one version, he regretted what he had done, threw the money back in the faces of those who paid him for his betrayal, and committed suicide.  In the other, he took the money he was paid for his betrayal, bought himself a plot of land, then dropped dead as he walked through the fields surveying his profits.  Outside the New Testament, as we have seen, he was remembered not just as a disciple, but even as the favored disciple, the man with the most difficult job in the entire movement. 

I am suggesting that, while we have not quite reached the magic number 12 in the current Republican field (at least not yet), Rick Perry is currently playing the role of Judas to the tormented advocates of orthodoxy.  His latest problems—aligning himself with a minister who referred to Romney’s and Huntsman’s faith as a “cult”—seem to place him slightly at odds with other followers of the Lord. 

The name for the group that penned gospels like the Gospel of Judas was “Gnostic.” It derived from the Greek word for “knowledge,” and they got the reputation for being Christian know-it-alls.  But they were also notoriously among the wealthiest and well-connected of Christians. 

Taking the longer historical view, then, Rick Perry appears as the new Judas-figure in a movement uncertain about its path. As for whether his gospel will become the new Republican orthodoxy, I have my doubts. The Gnostics may have appeared to be in the ascendant for a time, but they lost their influence in the end and were eventually declared heretical. This much is certain, if Governor Perry manages to sell his heterodoxies, then the real story will be the money it took, not the theological arguments he expressed.

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By Louis A. Ruprecht Jr., Georgia State University 

I suppose it was inevitable that the evangelical push-back within the Republican Party would eventually make Mormonism an issue, no matter how hard the Republican establishment tries to make it go away. 

And now it’s come at last–an entire week of Republican presidential hopefuls being asked point-blank if they think a Mormon (read: Mitt Romney) is a Christian. Only the fierce insistence that Tuesday’s debate be limited to economic questions kept this pot from boiling over again (though Jon Huntsman couldn’t resist one quick snipe at Rick Perry, who appeared befuddled all night anyway, and Michelle Bachman couldn’t resist the suggestion that Herman Cain’s 9-9-9 plan, if turned upside down, becomes the number of the Beast). 

What’s been striking all week is, first, that presidential hopefuls like Herman Cain and Newt Gingrich have toed the traditional line of secular Liberalism: religion is a private matter, they say; no one knows the heart of another, and it’s not the business of politics to decide who is a Christian. One would find this most welcome line of reasoning more plausible if they’d said the same thing when the question of whether Barack Obama is a Christian was a front-page news story. 

Others who have flirted more openly with the fire that is right-leaning evangelical ire, and the belief that America is the Christian city on the hill–like Rick Perry and Michelle Bachman–will need to have more than a canned reply to this question, and that is why we haven’t heard more from them yet. They’ve got to figure out how to triangulate the Christian base they need with the Party establishment’s clear desire not to let this election get railroaded by religion.

Which leaves us with Mitt Romney and Jon Huntsman, two highly credible presidential possibilities who are self-identifying Mormons. Romney’s strategy for making this whole debate a winner for him is to seize the opportunity it provides to show evangelical Christians where their beliefs clearly coincide: in the view that America is indeed the biblical city on the hill, and that God has granted the US a unique destiny in world affairs. Our sacred duty, therefore, is to maintain the US’s singular status as a solitary military and economic superpower. Huntman’s views will be more nuanced; he has broad experience in China, after all, which complicates that simplistic aspiration a lot, and that is probably why we haven’t heard from him yet. 

But the Democrats have remained on the sidelines, by and large, content to watch what they hope will be another round in the Republican arena, where carnivorous presidential hopefuls eat each other’s young. This is a missed opportunity. 

Since the Republican hopefuls have opened the door on this question, Democrats should force them to walk through it. The question that is being asked when we wonder aloud if Mormons are Christians is whether other religious groups are allowed to staple their own beliefs and writings onto another religious community’s sacred scriptures. Is it enough if Mormons, with a new scripture they claim to be compatible with the Christian Bible, say that they are Christians? Do other Christian groups get to say that they are not?

Framed that way, it’s a far more unsettling, but also a far more interesting, question. After all, this is precisely what Christians did to the Hebrew scriptures and to Judaism. They stapled their own scriptures (which they called “New”), as well as their own strikingly un-Jewish values, upon them. 

Muslims did the same thing to Christians. And then Mormons did it again. 

So let us hear more from each Republican candidate as to what they think about some of their own supporters who claim that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints is a “cult.” And let us not content ourselves with questions about whether a Mormon is a Christian. Let’s go all the way and ask the obvious follow-up: do they think a Muslim is a Christian? 

Presumably, the answer will be No.  Then the question becomes: how is a Mormon any different? 

What becomes clearer when the debate is framed this way is that the difference between Mormons and Muslims is that Mormons are home-grown; they are indubitably, recognizably American. And that is what this debate has really revealed: the fact that a new kind of religious nationalism has emerged in the United States in the past thirty years, and that the Republicans have embraced it even as the Democrats have resisted it. 

Let the debate be framed that way, and it is a winner for the Democrats, every time.

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By Louis A. Ruprecht Jr., Georgia State University

At the same time that the US Supreme Court issued a second stay of execution in one week in the state of Texas, it permitted the execution of Troy Davis to go forward in the state of Georgia. And at 11:08pm on Wednesday, September 21^st, some four hours after his scheduled 7:00pm execution time, Troy Davis was indeed killed by a state-administered lethal injection. 

The range of emotions and the swirl of debates generated by this confusing juxtaposition are layered and complex: a white Army recruiter accused of rape and murder is spared, at least for now, while a black man accused of killing a police officer is not.  Both men insisted on their innocence throughout their circuit of appeals. 

I mention skin color because it is a part of the story of state-administered death no matter how we try to discuss the thing. The very fact that our system is organized to ensure that race is not a factor speaks eloquently to the fact of race’s inescapability in our judicial system, especially for the young black man. 

Yet I am less concerned with racial justice than I am with procedural justice. The manner in which Troy Davis met his end raises new and different questions about the death penalty in the United States. 

On September 21^st, Troy Davis had his second purported his last meal.  He elected to have the same meal that his fellow death row inmates had–not because he did not expect to be executed, but rather as an expression of solidarity with them. The execution of a person with a strong case for clemency is, as one can imagine, an emotionally devastating event for that state’s death row population. There is a hopelessness in the air for weeks after. 

Troy Davis was permitted to spend six hours with his family on the day of his scheduled death, a final private conversation.  He was then given some private time to himself and even permitted unusual access to music. He had his final meal between 4:00 and 5:00pm, then was prepared for death. 

But at the eleventh hour, and for the second time in his life, Davis’s execution was put on hold as the US Supreme Court asked to review the evidence one more time.  No doubt his hopes soared; certainly the hopes of the crowds gathered in vigil in Atlanta and Jackson, Georgia did. Those hopes were dashed just a few hours later when the High Court decided not to intervene in Davis’s case, and so he died just a few hours after he had expected to die when he awoke Wednesday morning. 

This is all very unusual. 

The fact that Troy Davis was convicted and sentenced to death twenty years ago in 1991, the fact that he suffered the double jeopardy of two last meals in his strange life behind bars, and the fact that his execution was once again delayed at the very last moment are all facts to which the vast majority of Americans across the political spectrum are opposed.

Supporters of the death penalty consider this endless round of appellate review excessive, almost as if we care more for the rights of the accused than we do the victim. Opponents of the death penalty consider this cruel as well as unusual, and thus a violation of the 8th Amendment to the US Constitution. No one can be happy with the manner in which we administer the ultimate penalty in this country. 

But the fact is that we will never be able to administer it any other way. The US Supreme Court has consistently held that the penalty of death is qualitatively different than any other kind of penalty and therefore subject to review unlike any other kind. Any prisoner sentenced to death has automatic rights to appellate review at multiple levels. Any prisoner sentenced to death in this country will languish on death row for a decade or more; will experience the surreal days and nights in which scheduled death dates come, are postponed, and return. As unusual as Troy Davis’s case may seem to us, it is in fact rather normal. 

The simple fact is that, given the constitutional commitments to individual liberty and due process of law—commitments for which we are justly proud—we will never be able to administer the penalty of death in the way other countries that have it—like China, Iran and North Korea—can. They do it fast, with little if any subsequent review. 

When I first became interested in the death penalty some decades ago, a famous case of serial execution took place in China. As a way to deal with the escalating problem of highway robbery, the government took 6000 men accused of the crime and shot them all together in a single morning. Highway robbery decreased dramatically. 

The point is that we can never administer the death penalty in that way. That is a very good thing; it is what makes us modern. It represents what is best and noblest in our system of justice. And it is in this sense that the death penalty is practically incompatible with the norms and the systems of justice that have emerged in Europe and the US in modern times. 

The only reason Socrates had time to talk with his friends while awaiting execution was the fact that Athens was celebrating a religious ritual during which the city was not permitted to kill anyone.  Had he been sentenced to death at any other time, he would have been killed immediately.  When Jesus was brought before the Roman civil administration in Palestine, he was tried, sentenced, tortured and killed all in a single afternoon. That pre-modern form of state-sponsored killing is no longer our own. 

We are trying, then, and failing, to administer a penalty that made sense in other times and makes sense in other parts of the world, as if still made sense in our own. The indignities and inhumanities that are born of those paradoxes and contradictions came into very sharp focus under some very harsh light last week. 

And it is in this sense that some of us may hope, however cautiously, that Troy Davis did not die in vain.