• Share this on Facebook
• Email this to a friend?
• Share this on Reddit
• Stumble upon something good? Share it on StumbleUpon
• Tweet This!
• Send this page to Print Friendly
• Digg this!
• Email this via Gmail

By Kenny Smith, Emory University

Unsatisfied with an average lifespan of 70 odd years?  Consider the emerging tradition of Transhumanism which seeks to convince traditional religions to open their minds (and souls) to fusion with the technological.

See, for example, “The Cyborg Buddha,” which explores the possibility that the goals of Buddhism (freedom from suffering) might well by grafting organic and technological components in a new and improved humankind. Yes, they’re serious. 

Hoping to attract the attention of “nones” (i.e., the 18% of Americans who have no use for “organized religion”), one chaplain contemplates “disorganized religion… I’d take the Ten Commandments from the Jewish faith, but I might not be able to keep them in their original order. I’d bow toward the east like the Muslims, but I might lean more toward Minot, North Dakota. Like Christians, we’d look for a Second Coming of the Messiah, but we’d hit the snooze button to wait for the second trumpet.”  Psychological research links religion with increased levels of self-control. So, does this make the whole disorganized thing more, or less, likely?  

In what is bound to be far more controversial research, a cluster of attitudes frequently associated with religious and political conservativism (hierarchy, resistance to chance, racism, bigotry) have also been correlated with lower intelligence scores. 

Don’t have Jedi powers yet?  Don’t worry, just purchase a Vodaphone.  But whatever you do, do NOT turn to the bark side.

You-Tube is said to be “raging” with responses to Jeff Bethke’s “Why I hate religion, but love Jesus,” video.

At the CCN religion blog, one writer predicts that Gingrich’s past marital woes will be no problem with Evangelical voters, and he was of course correct.  

Apparently, there are atheists in foxholes, and they want better protection of their freedom to disbelieve without harassment while serving in the armed forces.  

One writer for Skeptic magazine predicts the demise of Scientology. The primary factor?  The church’s growing inability to control information, control members, and intimidate critics in the age of online social media.  In Hollywood, CA, the local Scientology center offered invitations to come over and watch the NFL playoffs.  In Tampa Bay, visitors to the county fair were greeted by Scientology volunteers handing out self-help materials, and Scientology volunteers likewise participated in public celebrations of the MLK Jr. holiday.  

An emerging American subculture of “preppers” prepares for the apocalypse by stockpiling food, arms, ammunition, and survival supplies.

What does the apocalypse look like for surfing devotees?

In Arizona, some legislators seek to mandate high school courses that study the Bible and its influences upon Western culture in study, while banning ethnic studies (e.g., of Latino Americans especially) on college campuses.  

In North Carolina, one lawmaker hopes to bring back public executions by hanging, something the whole family could enjoy together (as happened at the last public hanging in America in 1936, which attracted some 20,000 spectators). More, he hopes to begin with abortion providers.  

In New York, the NYPD has been widely criticized for its overblown training film, intended to “educate” officers about Islam in America, “The Third Jihad.”

• Share this on Facebook
• Email this to a friend?
• Share this on Reddit
• Stumble upon something good? Share it on StumbleUpon
• Tweet This!
• Send this page to Print Friendly
• Digg this!
• Email this via Gmail

By Kenny Smith, Emory University

Explore artistic renditions of Christ-figures blended with the extraterrestrial, technological, and trans-human.  Star Visitor theology, anyone?  A journalist ponders the odds of extraterrestrial encounters, arguing that UFO-based religions require as much faith as any other.  

Rev. Ed Young’s “24-hour live streaming online bed-in,” in which he and his wife discussed healthy Christian marriage and sex, ended in a minor eye injury.  With Young’s recent “sexperiment,” Marc Driscol’s new book about Christian sex, and a thriving Christian sex toy industry, some believe that Evangelicals have become overly preoccupied with the topic. 

Complaining that America has become a place where “school children are prohibited from wishing our troops Merry Christmas,” Rick Perry has called for a “next great awakening” making America “that shinning city of a hill” and sweeping away the social/political hegemony of secularists and liberals.  

For Muslim American Republicans, Ron Paul’s libertarian commitments make him the candidate of choice.   Among the next generation of American Muslims, religious careers (e.g., as imams) are emerging as a popular option.  

A day in the life of a lazy Jedi. 

Dudeism, “the slowest growing religion in the world,” boasts some 150,000 ministers worldwide. But one would-be Dudeist wonders “if a woman can really crack the Dudeist way. While I’ve met plenty of Dude-ish men over the years, many women, it seems, have trouble slacking off.” Indeed, this is a point Dudeists have pondered for some time now. 

In preparation for the NFL playoff game between the New England Patriots and the Denver Broncos, a group of self-identified witches in Salem, MA gathered to “raise energy” and help the Patriots in their battle against Tim Tebow’s Christian magic.  After the Broncos’ crushing defeat, some Christians have begun to wonder whether it’s wise to hook religious faith to sports fandom.   

In Hungary, Wiccans, Pagans, and other religious minorities, are struggling against constitutional changes that delegitimize their traditions.   In North Carolina, expansive notions of “religious freedom” that entitle Christian religious organizations to bring their literature into public schools suddenly “vanish” when a Wiccan a mom shows up with a spell-book.  

One young rapper offers a You-Tube-futation of last week’s “Why I Hate Religion But Love Jesus” video, 

while another offers a Muslim version.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=YNGqrzkFp_4

An Atheist’s defense of religion, Alain de Botton’s, Religion for Atheists: A Non-Believer’s Guide to the Uses of Religion, is critiqued as historically interesting but theologically shallow. 

If only 9% of Americans identify religion as “the most important thing in their life,” why is it so important in our politics?

An American Rabbi argues that 2012 is the year for “Occupy Religion,” since it, much like Wall Street, “does not work for enough people.”  In Israel, the question of ultra-conservative religion, the role of women, and the control of public spaces, may be reaching a crisis.

Tired of playing Angry Birds? Try Angry Brides, “a Facebook game in which you play an angry Indian wife who bludgeons her husband with frying pans and shoes,” wracking up “anti-dowry points.” Yes, it’s bizarre.

Or, to explore more fully the virtual genre of spousal abuse, check out Domestic Violence: The Video Game (which presumably teaches children not to engage in such behaviors).

In Nashville, TN, the local Church of Scientology is distributing its well-known “Way to Happiness” guide throughout the community, a book offering “21 precepts that point out that… without the survival of others, neither joy nor happiness is attainable.” Over the years, some 95 million copies have been handed out in 180 countries and 100 languages.

• Share this on Facebook
• Email this to a friend?
• Share this on Reddit
• Stumble upon something good? Share it on StumbleUpon
• Tweet This!
• Send this page to Print Friendly
• Digg this!
• Email this via Gmail

By Joanna Brooks, Religion Dispatches

Patrick Mason is the Howard W. Hunter Chair of Mormon Studies at Claremont Graduate University and author of The Mormon Menace: Violence and Anti-Mormonism in the Postbellum South (Oxford University Press, 2011). He is the nation’s leading scholarly expert on anti-Mormonism. I spoke with him this morning about the controversy surrounding Mormonism at last weekend’s Values Voter Summit.

RD: Last weekend at the Values Voter Summit, Robert Jeffress, Senior Pastor at First Baptist Church of Dallas, introduced Rick Perry as a “genuine follower of Jesus Christ” and later characterized Mormonism as a “cult” to reporters. Help us understand the history behind anti-Mormon sentiment in the American South.

PM: Mormon missionaries were proselytizing in the American South from before the Civil War, and wherever Mormonism went, anti-Mormonism followed. Some of it was basic theological opposition to Mormon doctrine presented in tracts, books, pamphlets, and so forth. That’s reasonable in a free marketplace of ideas, and Mormons have certainly said that other churches were wrong. Theology is fair play.

But something changed around the Civil War. In 1857, LDS Apostle Parley P. Pratt was killed as retribution for alleged polygamy. And that’s the spark that motivated the rise of violent anti-Mormonism: the perception that Mormons were coming to steal women and corrupt Southern womanhood. After the Civil War especially, Southern manhood was defined in large part through the protection of Southern womanhood. This rationale helped whites in the South justify the lynching of African-Americans. It drove anti-Mormonism as well: not just theological difference, but the fear that they’re coming for our women.

That helps me understand the edge I hear in the contemporary caricaturing of Mormonism as a “cult.” It’s not just theological differentiation. There’s an edge to the accusation. It’s a residue of the anti-Mormon violence of the nineteenth century.

Yes. Once Mormons drop polygamy in the late nineteenth century, anti-Mormon violence stops. Violent anti-Mormonism disappears, whereas African-American lynching does not. But latent ideas of Mormons as polygamists continue to dominate the Southern imagination.

Usage of the word “cult” as a descriptor for Mormonism picks up steam in the 1960s as a reaction to new religious movements like the Moonies, Jonestown, Scientology, and so forth. It also indexes a feeling of eroding religious authority on the part of mainline and evangelical Protestants who have had a custodial relationship to culture in the American South. Beginning in the 1960s, with greater secularism, there comes a sense that this Protestant custodial relationship is under threat. “Cult” becomes a catch-all phrase to catch new and unrecognizable religious movements.

And then in the 1970s and 1980s comes the rise of what I describe as “organized anti-Mormonism”: people who make careers producing anti-Mormon print and video content and networking distribution of anti-Mormon content with other pastors and media figures.

In the early 1980s, Ed Decker produces a book and a video titled The Godmakers. In Salt Lake City, Jerald and Sandra Tanner in establish Lighthouse Ministries and produce sophisticated anti-Mormon literature based in historical research. Interestingly, it parallels the rise of the new Mormon history and new historical consciousness among Mormons, giving a historical gravitas to the anti-Mormon movement. People like the Tanners go back and look at nineteenth-century sources and find esoteric aspects of Mormon tradition—Anglo-American folk magic, temple ceremonies, esoteric teachings of Brigham Young—and they say, “That’s not recognizably Christian.” That’s where Jeffress is coming from. He comes out of a tradition that says there are so many things coming out of Mormonism that do not seem to fit within Christianity as it has been constructed over the past hundreds of years. Then, the LDS Church counters by asserting that we are, of course, Christian. The two camps largely talk past each other.

It’s comparable in some respects to what Catholics have experienced, then? The word “Christian” has been instrumentalized to mean Protestant, or perhaps even more specifically evangelical Protestant, and then used to convey or withhold legitimacy.

This was the language that was used against John F. Kennedy, too. And Mormons have a bit of an uphill climb. But there are people out there like Richard Mouw, who wrote a very nice post at CNN this weekend. Mouw is very careful in how he uses theological language. He says, effectively, let’s be rigorous and not just throw words at one another.

It should be noted that anti-Mormonism is also a term that gets used carelessly in Mormon communities. Folks who differ on one point or another, or criticize the tradition at all, sometimes get called “anti-Mormons” by very rigid LDS Church members, and the term has edge.

Yes, among Mormons, anyone that says anything a little different is subject to being called an “anti-Mormon.”

Final question. Jon Huntsman called the weekend’s controversy a “sideshow.” Mitt Romney responded to it all by maintaining his dignity and criticizing Bryan Fischer. Both candidates seem to be determined to avoid getting caught up in a century-old mess of misunderstanding. What advice would you have for Mitt Romney?

I think Romney is handling it about as well as he can. He learned lessons from 2008. He knows he can’t win by making religious arguments or trying to get up there and defend his faith as an apologist. What he’s doing is defending himself personally as a believer. He’s saying he believes in Jesus Christ and that his faith is central to his identity. That’s a message that people on the Christian right should be able to hear. For him to even attempt to get into an educated conversation about how Mormonism fits within historical Christianity—that’s not his job, and no one should expect him to do that. A certain hardcore element on the right is never going to accept him. He knows that. He needs to write those people off. There’s nothing he can say or do to convince them. Shrug it off. There are bigger issues that need attention.

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

Joanna Brooks has been named one of “50 Politicos to Watch” for her coverage of Mormon life and politics. She’s also an award-winning religion scholar. Find more of her writings and podcasts here.

• Share this on Facebook
• Email this to a friend?
• Share this on Reddit
• Stumble upon something good? Share it on StumbleUpon
• Tweet This!
• Send this page to Print Friendly
• Digg this!
• Email this via Gmail

By Kenny Smith, Emory University   

Imagine Evangelical Christians who reject militarism, consumerism, and cultural triumphalism, in favor of social justice, environmentalism, and religious reconciliation with other faiths. They might represent the coming norm.  If so, will these new Evangelicals distance themselves from religion?

www.youtube.com/watch?v=1IAhDGYlpqY

The future may be a ways off yet, as recent studies of American ministers note one major area of disagreement prevails: not creationism, nor the belief in the literal truth of the Bible, but whether or not the earth is 6,000 years old.    

In Texas, Rev. Ed Young, often known as the “sex preacher” because he urges married heterosexual Christian couples to have far more sex than they typically do (every day if possible), is offering (along with his wife) a full 24-hour discussion about healthy sexuality and marriage streamed live from a bed atop Rev. Young’s church.   

A skeptic considers the possibility that he is a “star-seed,”and a California psychotherapist offers a (free) online questionnaire designed to measure the degree to which human beings have been genetically and energetically “upgraded” by Star Visitors, and hence become star-seeds whether they know it or not.  

In Clearwater, Florida, after 13 years of planning and building, the Church of Scientology prepares to open its new $145 million, 377,000 square foot “Flag Mecca” building, where wealthy Scientologists will receive “infinite power.”

In Salem, Missouri, a local library has been slapped with a lawsuit after blocking patrons’ online access to Wiccan and Native American websites on the grounds that they constitute “occult” and therefore “criminal” sources of information. 

Young Christian celebrities, most notably Justin Bieber (sporting his new Jesus tattoo), Tim Tebow (with his unlikely win over the Pittsburg Steelers), and Demi Lovato (Disney star) may be making the Gospel cool for generation Z-ers.   Speaking of Tim Tebow, a new Japanese anime video would seem to have it all: terrible things done to Tebow, Jesus and Satan dueling on Xbox, NFL executives cynically cashing in on football/Christianity, and an Atheist running amok. 

www.youtube.com/watch?v=rxF1VoJwFf4

The “countdown” to the Mayan apocalypse of 12/21/12 began on 12/21/11, and we’ve already had a Christian minister make a late-May rapture prediction (not Harold Camping).  So, if you’re stressing out about the upcoming apocalypses, try new Island Time, a “lightly carbonated relaxation product [that] uses melatonin, valerian root and rose hips to provide a relaxing effect,” specifically recommended for allaying end time anxieties. “As we get closer to the end of the world people are going to feel a lot more stress,” says Matthew Tuttle, CEO of Tuttle Wealth Management in Stamford, CT, “people need to come to terms with the end of everything and the fact that they can’t do anything about it. [This drink] can’t save the world but it can make people more relaxed” about it!  And while you’re at it, put some Island Time on ice for the “annihilation of humanity” party slated for Friday December 21, at 11:10pm, and don’t forget to RSVP on Facebook!  

For hungry Jedi looking for guidance on their fast food journey, check out Darth Vader and Jedi Burgers.  Is the Jedi spiritual path poised to really take off in America, becoming a faith for everyone?  

Is American the Mecca of “make your own religion?”  

The National Atheist Party calls for “no government favoring support of religion,” though they have also taken positions on other issues such as “gay marriage (for it) gun control (tighten it), abortion (a woman’s decision), immigration (reform it), energy (green it), and the economy (legalize recreational drugs to create revenue and jobs).” So far, they have 7,500 hundred registered members and a chapter in all 50 US states.   While young Pakistanis have not quite arrived at this point in their politics, some are “adopting Atheism and openly questioning the existence of a God,” perhaps as a way of pushing back against “the rise of Islamist militancy in Pakistan as well as access to social media and other technological tools that allow people to share and explore new ideas.” Good luck with that.  

In West Virginia, the state government plans to invest gambling revenues in this year’s “Jesus Fest” celebration.  

In Great Britain, recent studies suggest that traditional religion may in fact be on its way out, with half of the adult population claiming no religious affiliation whatsoever, and over half of those who do identify as religious saying that they never attend religious services.

• Share this on Facebook
• Email this to a friend?
• Share this on Reddit
• Stumble upon something good? Share it on StumbleUpon
• Tweet This!
• Send this page to Print Friendly
• Digg this!
• Email this via Gmail

By Claude Fischer, Made in America 

In their best-selling 1980s book on the tensions between community and individualism in America, Habits of the Heart, my Berkeley colleagues Robert Bellah and Ann Swidler, along with three other coauthors, described the version of religion that a woman whom they called Sheila had described to them. She believed in a faith of loving and being gentle with oneself; she labeled this theology “Sheilism” – “just my own little voice.” The authors of Habits saw her declaration as an expression of a growing tendency in America toward isolation and self-absorption raised here to an ethical principle.  (The term “Sheilaism” is now so well-known it has its own Wikipedia entry.)

There were and are other signs of a make-your-own religious boom. Outside of the standard religious structures, we see the excavation of old, pagan traditions like Wicca and the construction of hybrid, New Age faiths and Eastern blends with practices such as yoga and Kabalistc mysticism. Inside standard religious structures, variants such as independent churches, new liturgies and rituals, and even re-defined theologies have emerged. Some religious leaders describe all this as “cafeteria-style” faith: take what you like and disregard the rest. (And there is a Wikipedia entry for “Cafeteria Christianity,” too.)

Such religious inventions may well have burgeoned in recent decades, especially since the 1960s. Getting good numbers to test that assumption would be difficult, especially when so many “new religious movements” are informal and some even hostile to becoming formal institutions. But one thing is clear: This is not new. 

Old Time Religions

The 19th and 20th century witnessed the creation of many American-born religious movements that remain with us such as Scientology, Krishna Consciousness, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and Reconstructionist Judaism, and yet earlier, Christian Science, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (Mormons), Disciples of Christ, and Seventh-Day Adventism.  Yet, many more, whether invented here or imported, have come and gone – or come and stayed under the radar.

During the early 19th century, in particular, America was Awash in a Sea of Faith, as an important book by Jon Butler is titled (subtitled,Christianizing the American People), by which he means that America was flooded by all sorts of religious campaigns and frenzies. Some, like the Mormons and the Baptists, developed into major and lasting institutions; many more flared up and burned out. Many “faiths” of the day were roughly Christian; others were magical, quasi-pagan, or cult-like folk beliefs. It would take until late in the century before most Americans were conventionally “churched” in the way we take for granted today, a convention that really did not solidify until the 1950s.

Even Sheilaism, a self-defined individual faith, is not new. For example, in the early 19th century, a Mrs. Lucy Mack Smith of New Hampshire decided, as others like her occasionally did, to follow her own reading of the Bible rather than her church’s interpretations. Eventually, she persuaded a minister to baptize her as, in effect, a Christian of her own individual denomination. Her son Joseph later founded the Mormon faith.

“No Religion” Faith

In 2002, Michael Hout and I published a study that drew remarkably widespread attention and replication. We tracked the increasing percentage of American survey respondents who, since about 1990, chose the last option in this question: “What is your religious preference? Is it Protestant, Catholic, Jewish, some other religion, or no religion?” In 2010, 18% picked that option, up from 7% c. 1990. Recently, Robert Putnam and David Campbell expanded on these findings and arguments in American Grace.

Critically, the increase in the “no religion” answers is only weakly tied to atheism. In the 2008-10 General Social Surveys, for example, 66% of those who chose the “no religion” option nonetheless said that they believed in a higher power or God; 20% of them said that they had “no doubt” of God’s existence. And 54% of them said that they probably or definitely believed in “life after death.” (Rather than being a thought-out rejection of theism, the increase in “no religion” answers is largely a rejection of organized religion and a reaction against its growing identification with the political right.)

I suspect that many, perhaps most, of these “no religion” Americans are really “new sort of religion” Americans, seeking a way of keeping faith in something beyond the corporeal despite their skepticism toward organized religion. This may lead them to join others in new “spiritual” practices or even to a Sheilaism of some kind. In these ways, they’d be true to a long American faith tradition.

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

Originally posted on Made in America, December 20, 2011

• Share this on Facebook
• Email this to a friend?
• Share this on Reddit
• Stumble upon something good? Share it on StumbleUpon
• Tweet This!
• Send this page to Print Friendly
• Digg this!
• Email this via Gmail

By Kate Daley-Bailey, Religion Bulletin

In my two previous Bulletin posts, I discussed the efforts of prominent Nazi intellectuals (such as Gerhard Kittel and Alfred Rosenberg) who, during the 1930s, worked to buttress the German Reich through the appropriation of Christian symbols, images, and narratives. It is worth noting that Rosenberg and Kittel offered competing presentations of a Nazi Jesus and a Nazi Christianity, each of which was intended to unify the German churches and people. For Kittel, this meant the wholesale separation of Judaism and Christianity in hopes of persuading fellow Nazis that the Christian narrative was ideologically compatible with larger Nazi social projects. For Rosenberg, it meant reclaiming the image of Jesus as an Aryan warrior-chief in the age-old battle against Judaism. This present post looks at yet another attempted Nazi Christianity, so-called “Positive Christianity” in the discourse of the NSDAP (The National Socialist German Worker’s Party).

The term ‘positive Christianity,’ a vague type of non-denominationalism not beholden to any particular religious institution, makes an appearance in the 25 points of the NSDAP (set forth in 1920 by the founding party members). Point 24 is brief but significant, considering that the Nazi party is so often cast as monolithically anti-Christian. These points demonstrate an attempt to present a systematic worldview to the German population. Point 24 distances Positive Christianity from the denominational conflicts (and institutional oversight) of the day and binds it to a nationalistic rhetoric which links Christian morality with the Germanic race:

24. 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. (http://avalon.law.yale.edu/imt/1708-ps.asp)

This somewhat amorphous sense of religious community was defined primarily by its struggle against the perceived threat that German Jews were said to represent, and its concurrent desire to protect “the moral senses of the Germanic Race.” It resisted any absolute expression of institutional form… or rather had too many institutions vying to represent it. In the nascent years of the NSDAP, the party offered a synthesis of various Christian ideologies, nationalistic loyalties, and racial/cultural investments, and honed in on the characteristics and beliefs which many at the time shared, such as a belief that Jesus was not Jewish, a desire to define Christianity in opposition to Judaism, a hope for a unified and empowered Germany, and an antagonism towards Capitalism, liberalism, Marxism, and secularism.

Also referred to as ‘Practical Christianity’ or ‘Active Christianity,’ this protean tradition was meant to supersede the denominational strife in Germany and unite German Christians under one banner- the Reich. Hitler repeatedly stated that to get bogged down in theological details was political suicide and would only help Germany’s true enemy- the Jew. In Mein Kampf, he writes that Jesus as a critic of Judaism who “drove those enemies of the human race out of the Temple of God” and was “nailed to the Cross for his attitude towards the Jews.” In a 1939 speech in Munich, Hitler claimed that the party was itself more Christian in deed than their Christian critics. According to his reasoning, National Socialist Germany programs were Christian in that they “cloth the poor and feed the poor.”

For example, the Winter Relief Program (Winterhilfswerk), while not an innovation of the Nazi Party, quickly became an institutionalized part of its public outreach. With unemployment and poverty high, this program clothed, warmed (via coal and fire wood), fed, and employed many destitute Germans (in the winter months) from 1933 until the regime’s demise in 1945. Public funding of this program was ‘voluntary,’ although intimidation and shaming tactics were utilized to bolster funds. The program was also local in nature… meant to be reminiscent of the Germanic clan ideal. According to Thomas E. de Witt’s article, “The Struggle Against Hunger and Cold”: Winter Relief in Nazi Germany, 1933-1939, the first winter program received support from 1.5 million volunteers. For Hitler, the purpose of the Winter Relief Program was to create solidarity between fellow Germans as well as assist the needy, and it appealed to many German Christians who saw it as their duty as Christians and Germans to help their fellow man.

How could such a program, which appeared to engender a type of Christian brotherhood, be driven by such a ruthless regime? The answer rests in the concept of categories: for these Nazi Christians, Jews and other ‘deviant’ groups were not categorized by the Nazis as ‘brothers.’ Even Jewish coverts to Christianity were seen as problematic because for the Nazis being Jewish, just like being German, was about blood not about religious choice.

What is unclear is precisely how much social and ideological force Nazi Christianity, as opposed to welfare programs like that discussed above, actually exerted. Susannah Heschel’s book, Aryan Jesus, describes the anti-Semitism in the German churches as “the glue that united the otherwise warring factions” (7). She argues that Nazi ideology represented “a colonization of Christian theology,” one which utilized Christian anti-Semitism for its own purposes (8). Luther had already planted anti-Jewish ‘seeds’ in the church… the economic and social repercussions of the Versailles treaty simply cultivated the growth of anti-liberal, anti-Jewish, German nationalism. Thus, racializing processes had been set in place centuries before the Nazis came to power, and some scholars have suggested that it was not merely coincidence that Kristallnacht fell on Martin Luther’s birthday.

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

More of Kate’s work can be read on Religion Bulletin

• Share this on Facebook
• Email this to a friend?
• Share this on Reddit
• Stumble upon something good? Share it on StumbleUpon
• Tweet This!
• Send this page to Print Friendly
• Digg this!
• Email this via Gmail

By Kenny Smith, Emory University  

Do you think that information is holy, and that the practice of sharing it is tantamount to an act religious worship? If so, the new religion of Kopimism, whose holy symbols are those that suggest a desire to copy or be copied (e.g., “CTRL+C”), may be just what you’re looking for. According to the good news of Kopimism, all file-sharing should be made legal and copyright laws abolished, as both inhibit the free expression of religion.

It’s not just Evangelical Christians who are enjoying religiously approved sex toys at websites such as “holy hooking up,” but also Orthodox Jews  and Muslims in search of Kosher and Halal “marital aids.”  Apparently, it’s a rising part of a $15 billion a year industry.

Speaking of cosmically-themed sex, a sci-fi themed brothel is in the works for Las Vegas Nevada, replete with faux Carry Fishers and “Captain Kirk’s green alien lady friend” from the original Star Trek series. Yes, prostitution is legal in several US states, including Nevada.

Michelle Bachman has apparently re-thought God’s command (back in 2006) that she seek the presidency of the United States.  No fears, though, God has let Pat Robertson in on our political futures.

In an effort to repair his reputation, evangelical minister Ted Haggard plans to appear on ABC’s Celebrity Wife Swap.  On a serious note, it’s obvious that Evangelicals are fragmenting (for instance, by their inability to agree on a single conservative presidential candidate) but are they also shifting to more liberal positions on, for instance, unmarried couples living together, abortion, homosexuality?

Scientology may offer “space drama,” with tales of lost and wayward souls hailing from an ancient galactic civilization, but it also offers rather intense institutional dramas, as instanced by a recent email sent out to some 12,000 Church members by (former) Scientology insider Debbie Cook. As Janet Reitman explains, Cook “accused Scientology’s leadership of hoarding more than $1 billion in donations; spending lavishly on new churches; punishing former executives with draconian measures; and overselling Scientology books and services to members already stretched by high-pressure sales tactics.” And by the way, the Church of Scientology does celebrate Christmas, and in fact official Scientology teachings express reverence for the founders of most if the world’s religious traditions.

Recent sociological studies of American religious affiliation have brought to light sharp increases over the past twenty years in “nones,” those claiming “no religion,” amounting to as much as 15% of American adults. Much larger percentages, however, identify as “so whats?,” that is, as folk who spend no time seeking out eternal wisdom, worrying about whether they are going to heaven, or believe that God has a plan for their lives.

In some late Christmas-wars news, Claremont Methodist Church displayed a nativity scene featuring silhouettes of straight, gay, and lesbian couples holding hands. The gay and lesbian silhouettes were apparently assaulted, which has been classified as a hate crime by local police.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=L6lB3P6Y2Lg

Do religious folk tend to have lower IQs? Some research may support this conclusion.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=UHSa2zV–xw

• Share this on Facebook
• Email this to a friend?
• Share this on Reddit
• Stumble upon something good? Share it on StumbleUpon
• Tweet This!
• Send this page to Print Friendly
• Digg this!
• Email this via Gmail

By Heather Abraham

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

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

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

www.youtube.com/watch?v=EieFdXy_HwM

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

www.youtube.com/watch?v=_JsO8SEGBiA

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

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

 JESUS responds to Rick Perry.        

www.youtube.com/watch?v=yxyEkrxsWP8

 Religious People are nerds! 

www.youtube.com/watch?v=gNtnN_DiP3o

Banned Super Bowl commercial, “Jesus Hates Obama” 

www.youtube.com/watch?v=luyGmcVMoAE

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

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

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

www.youtube.com/watch?v=DVdKQ0I35qo

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

www.youtube.com/watch?v=KT16DcHcjRA

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

www.youtube.com/watch?v=tplfas9OIFI

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

www.youtube.com/watch?v=xBpfnqcnrJw

Bill Maher talks about Apatheism—apathetic atheist.  

www.youtube.com/watch?v=momdjeHgBy4

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

 www.youtube.com/watch?v=EPZ77_vORPY

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

www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_wLYveIaaQ

• Share this on Facebook
• Email this to a friend?
• Share this on Reddit
• Stumble upon something good? Share it on StumbleUpon
• Tweet This!
• Send this page to Print Friendly
• Digg this!
• Email this via Gmail

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.

• Share this on Facebook
• Email this to a friend?
• Share this on Reddit
• Stumble upon something good? Share it on StumbleUpon
• Tweet This!
• Send this page to Print Friendly
• Digg this!
• Email this via Gmail

By Greg Carey, Huff Post Religion

This is the first installment of a three-part series.

We’ve survived Harold Camping. We survived Y2K, albeit with less distress than our ancestors survived Y1K. The world has survived end-time predictors as diverse as Billy Graham, William Miller and Jonathan Edwards. Now we face the purported final year of the Mayan Calendar.

Nevertheless, most Christian bookstores devote entire sections to the sort of “Bible Prophecy” literature that uses the Book of Revelation, among other biblical literature, to tell us that we are currently living in the last days.

Here’s the truth: no academic interpreter of Revelation understands the book as a roadmap for the future, much less as telling contemporary Christians that these are the last days. Instead, scholars understand that Revelation originally spoke to the conditions of its own time and place. It offered a specific group of first century Christians not only hope for the future but also an interpretation — a “revelation” — of the world they inhabited. In other words, the best way to understand Revelation does not require an official Dick Tracy Apocalyptic Decoder Ring. We best understand Revelation when we read it like any other ancient text, in its own historical and cultural context.

What makes biblical scholars so certain that Revelation does not provide a roadmap for the future? Two basic considerations lead us to this conclusion.

First, the book itself insists that it’s addressed to a specific group of churches to speak to their own circumstances. Let’s begin with Revelation’s introductory words (my translation, with notes):

A revelation (Greek: apokalypsis) of [or from] Jesus Christ, which God gave by means of him to show his [God's? Christ's?] slaves the things that must happen soon, and he [God? Christ?] made it known by sending his angel to his slave John, who testified to the word of God and the testimony of Jesus, everything he saw. Blessed is the one who reads aloud and blessed are those who hear the words of the prophecy and keep the things that are written in it, for the time is near. John, to the seven churches that are in Asia…

Working back, we observe several things. First, Revelation is addressed to seven churches in the Roman province of Asia. We’d locate them in western Turkey today. Identified in chapters two and three, these churches inhabited some of the major cities in the Roman Empire, including Ephesus, a top five city of the day. Second, Revelation’s author John describes the vision as speaking to things that must happen “soon” for “the time is near.” This is no minor point, nor is it to be spiritualized to mean something other than what it says. At several points Revelation reminds those ancient Christians to expect their redemption to come “soon” (1:1, 3, 19; 3:11; 22:7, 12, 20). Revelation was written not to tell us what to expect in our future but to give ancient Christians hope for dealing with their own. While modern interpreters disagree on many points, almost all agree on the basic historical circumstances addressed by Revelation.

(We’ll address Revelation’s message to those ancient believers in our next post.)

Second, we know a lot about the kind of literature Revelation represents. Revelation is an apocalypse, a form of literature with which biblical scholars have grown quite familiar. Indeed, Revelation constitutes the first book that calls itself an apocalypse. (The Greek word apokalypsisstands as the book’s very first word.)

Between the third century B.C.E. and the second century C.E., Judaism and Christianity produced several great literary apocalypses, along with a host of related literature. See my book “Ultimate Things” for an introduction to this literature or my entry, “Apocalypses,” in the new “Oxford Encyclopedia of the Books of the Bible.”) All of these books share some distinctive features. They all relate a vision experienced by a single visionary. The visionary receives instruction and guidance from a heavenly being, usually an angel. And the vision reveals either otherworldly affairs or the resolution of history. Readers encounter what’s going on in heaven, the arrival of the messiah, and the final judgment, among other topics. Striking images that require imaginative interpretation are common to all these works. Revelation provides a classic example of an apocalypse, as it includes every one of these features.

The Protestant Bible includes only two apocalypses, Daniel and Revelation. However, the Ethiopian Orthodox canon includes 1 Enoch, perhaps the greatest of the literary apocalypses. The New Testament epistle of Jude alludes to 1 Enoch on two occasions, and at least 11 copies or fragments of 1 Enoch were found among the Dead Sea Scrolls. Several important Jewish apocalypses date from about the time of Revelation’s composition, including 4 Ezra, 2 Baruch, 3 Baruch and the Apocalypse of Abraham. Within decades of Revelation’s composition several other Christian appeared, including the Shepherd of Hermas, the Ascension of Isaiah and the Apocalypse of Peter.

Sharing many common traits, these literary apocalypses show us that the apocalypses represent a developing literary tradition, a form of ancient theology expressed in poetic symbols and sequences. If someone were to stand up in church and read a passage from 4 Ezra or Hermas, nearly everyone would assume the text was from Revelation.

On the second night I had a dream: I saw rising from the sea an eagle that had twelve feathered wings and three heads (2 Esdras 11:1, New Revised Standard Version).

The sun began to shine a bit and suddenly I saw an enormous wild beast, something like a sea monster, with fiery locusts spewing from its mouth (Hermas 23:6, trans. Bart Ehrman).

The apocalypses teach us that Revelation describes a moment of acute crisis for its own religious community, those seven churches in Asia. Like the other apocalypses, it critiques current events, even major political and cultural developments, from a divine perspective. And like the other apocalypses, it calls its ancient audience to rigorous, even dangerous, levels of faithfulness under challenging circumstances.

Revelation does not predict events in 2012 or some other future date; it spoke to our ancient ancestors in the faith, who had enough challenges of their own.

In future posts we will explore both the circumstances of Revelation’s composition and the lifestyle to which it called its audience.

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

Article written and published at Huffington Post by Greg Carey.

Greg Carey is Professor of New Testament at Lancaster Theological Seminary (PA). His most recent book, Sinners: Jesus and His Earliest Followers, pursues the role of transgression in early Christian identity. His Ultimate Things: An Introduction to Jewish and Christian Apocalyptic Literature provides a widely used textbook for courses on apocalyptic literature. His research interests include apocalyptic literature, the Gospel of Luke, and literary and rhetorical interpretation of the New Testament, and he has appeared on the PBS, BBC, Discovery Channel, and National Geographic Channel. A layperson, Greg serves as Scholar in Residence at Lancaster’s Evangelical Church of the Holy Trinity.

• Share this on Facebook
• Email this to a friend?
• Share this on Reddit
• Stumble upon something good? Share it on StumbleUpon
• Tweet This!
• Send this page to Print Friendly
• Digg this!
• Email this via Gmail

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!

• Share this on Facebook
• Email this to a friend?
• Share this on Reddit
• Stumble upon something good? Share it on StumbleUpon
• Tweet This!
• Send this page to Print Friendly
• Digg this!
• Email this via Gmail

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.”

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

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

• Share this on Facebook
• Email this to a friend?
• Share this on Reddit
• Stumble upon something good? Share it on StumbleUpon
• Tweet This!
• Send this page to Print Friendly
• Digg this!
• Email this via Gmail

By Marilynne Robinson, New York Times

• Share this on Facebook
• Email this to a friend?
• Share this on Reddit
• Stumble upon something good? Share it on StumbleUpon
• Tweet This!
• Send this page to Print Friendly
• Digg this!
• Email this via Gmail

By Kenny Smith, Emory University  

Atheist bloggers turned out in force for a record-setting $180,000 in donations for  Doctors Without Borders, to which some Christians replied “thank God!”  Not bad for a widely distrusted minority (a new study suggests that many people have more faith in the ethics of rapists!)  While fighting Christianity, Atheists wonder whether they should be fighting Wiccans and Neo-Pagans as well. They are, after all, religious.

In Santa Monica, CA., where a lottery determined who would have access to “vandal-proof, cage-like areas surrounded by chain-link fencing” in which to place their public holiday displays, Atheists won 18 of 21 such spaces, with just two going to a coalition of churches, and one to a Jewish group.  

In New Jersey, American Atheists billboards suggest that “free thinkers’ can be found in every family, if we only bother to look.  Conservative Catholics have responded with an “adopt an atheist” campaign aimed at helping those suffering from atheism to “recover their inner [and no doubt Catholic] self.” 

 The Evangelical group, American Family Association, released its long awaited list of merchants said to be friendly to and hostile to Christianity. “The litmus test is whether retailers use ‘Merry Christmas’ or ‘Happy Holidays’ in their ads. The latter is considered offensive because it takes away the focus on Jesus…”  For some potentially real Christmas warfare, visit the South and North Korea’s DMZ, with its three steel Christmas trees, “adorned with lights and topped with crosses,” and surrounded by barbed-wire.   

In Long Island, New York, two high school students were suspended for “Tebowing” in the halls, deemed a safety hazard. 

In Omaha, Nebraska, Christian, Jewish and Muslim groups are coming together to form a 35-acre “tri-faith” campus.  

Lowe’s has removed its commercial spots from TLC’s “All American Muslim” after complaints by Christian anti-Muslim groups such as the Florida Family Association,  and a petition drive to smack down the retailing giant has already begun.  

For those weary of waiting for an image of Jesus to miraculously appear in their morning toast, $31.95 buys you a Jesus Toaster at Burnt Impressions.com, which turns out miracles on demand. “Press a button and save a couple of souls, Jesus!” Don’t wait, though, they’re selling 50-100 daily while supplies last.   

Some have tried to understand Newt Gingrich’s “war on Sharia,” his experimentation with various Christianities, and his Dickensian view of the poor.  For the first time in American history, voters in Republican presidential primaries may have to choose between two non-Protestant candidates, a Mormon (Romney) and a Catholic (Gingrich, assuming this lasts through the primaries).  

A Canadian judge has ruled that smoking marijuana is not a religious act, even if participants understand their practices in explicitly religious terms, for instance, as partaking of the “tree of life… to share a collective consciousness, which is an aspect of God… a common belief in countless mystical traditions.”

There’s a new Jedi Order in town, and their website offers links to a host of other Jedi communities and resources. More, the Jedi are showing up in larger numbers and in more places.  In the Czech Republic, for instance, where nearly half of the country’s 10.5 million residents are not affiliated with religion, some 15,000 have listed their religion as “Jedi Knight.” 

We all know there are UFO-based religious movements, but is the search for extraterrestrial intelligence itself a religion? Michael Crichton apparently thought so.   

The Church of Scientology recently celebrated “Human Rights Day” (the 63^rd anniversary of the U.N. Declaration of Human Rights) “with seminars, rallies, concerts, round tables, forums and festivals… and more than 80 human rights walks in 26 countries…”  

Physicists say they are “hot on the trail” of the elusive (and some say non-existent) “God particle” (otherwise known as the Higgs Boson), which would allow cosmologists to explain why mass occurs in the universe, apparently an important variable.  

In what promises to make Egypt an international party Mecca, newly elected legislators have ruled that tourists must observe a “sin free” lifestyle during their stay: no alcohol, no bikinis, no men and women swimming together. Good times!

• Share this on Facebook
• Email this to a friend?
• Share this on Reddit
• Stumble upon something good? Share it on StumbleUpon
• Tweet This!
• Send this page to Print Friendly
• Digg this!
• Email this via Gmail

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?

• Share this on Facebook
• Email this to a friend?
• Share this on Reddit
• Stumble upon something good? Share it on StumbleUpon
• Tweet This!
• Send this page to Print Friendly
• Digg this!
• Email this via Gmail

By Kenny Smith, Emory University

Whereas last year’s atheist billboard at the Lincoln Tunnel, NJ was said to be overly direct (it told you that Christian stories were myths), this year’s is said to be so tame (they ask you whether they seem like myths to you), that Catholic leaders are not responding with a counter billboard of their own.  Don’t worry, a new and much more offensive billboard is in the works!  One Christmas display that did  provoke controversy was a crucified Santa skeleton.

Alec Guinness, the actor who played the Jedi Knight Obi wan Kenobi in the first three Star Wars films, apparently preferred other mystical imaginaries as well, that of 16^th century Christian mystics.

Atheists serving in the US military are starting to ask for, and may soon demand, atheist and humanist chaplains for their foxholes!

Rick Perry’s “I’m not ashamed” TV ad apparently did shame at least one Perry supporter,  and has inspired a number of www.youtube.com/watch?v=g8sbBVOt40Q

parodies of Atheist  and Jewish varieties.

Ironically, Perry’s own holiday address to American soldiers in 2010 contained no references to Christmas or Jesus whatsoever.

BTW, Father Gabrielle Amorth, the Vatican’s chief exorcist, has ruled that the practice of yoga, like the Harry Potter films, is Satanic.

Speaking of religion and politics, folks at the Dudespaper somewhat incoherently slammed presidential hopeful, the Newt “Gingrinch Who Stole Christmas.”

40% of Americans have unfavorable views of Southern Baptists (and hence a change in the denomination’s name is likely).  Surprisingly, the denominations disapproval ratings are similar in the Bible Belt, that is, the South!

Are you considering joining, or rejoining, the Catholic family? Check out the www.youtube.com/watch?v=WujKBJc_yMg

TV commercial “calling Catholics home.” The Bible, humanitarianism, saints and the scientific method. They’re pretty darn cool.

Looking for Atheism as well as Intelligent Design? Try the Raelians.  Eric Weiner did, along with a number of other religious communities in “Man Seeks God.”  An Iranian Raelian leader, after making her faith choices public, received asylum in the U.S.

The Apple office complex, which Steve Jobs described as “like a spaceship landed”, will feature, “a 45,000-square-foot fitness center, on-campus dining… an abundance of solar panels which will generate up to five megawatts of electricity for the campus… a grove of Cherry trees, Redwoods, Ash, Maples, and Gums — along with gardens and orchards [that] will inspire productive brainstorms, meditative breaks, rejection of the world outside the campus, an unflinching devotion to the cult…” that is, the company.

1 in 5 Atheists with children attend church, and Pagans are singing Christmas carols.  What’s the world coming to?

• Share this on Facebook
• Email this to a friend?
• Share this on Reddit
• Stumble upon something good? Share it on StumbleUpon
• Tweet This!
• Send this page to Print Friendly
• Digg this!
• Email this via Gmail

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.

• Share this on Facebook
• Email this to a friend?
• Share this on Reddit
• Stumble upon something good? Share it on StumbleUpon
• Tweet This!
• Send this page to Print Friendly
• Digg this!
• Email this via Gmail

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.

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

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.

• Share this on Facebook
• Email this to a friend?
• Share this on Reddit
• Stumble upon something good? Share it on StumbleUpon
• Tweet This!
• Send this page to Print Friendly
• Digg this!
• Email this via Gmail

By Kenny Smith, Emory University

As we approach the end of the year holidays, Public Display Wars have already begun, with one Virginia county offering public space to the first ten groups/persons to apply.  An interesting solution.  The result?  As one frustrated blogger writes, “Christmas displays gone mad”: a traditional nativity scene, a sign calling Christian figures “myths” another advertising for the American Atheist League, a cryptic holiday display of the “Tree of Knowledge,” a letter dictated by Jesus himself submitted by a local resident, a crucified Santa Claus, and two signs from the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster.   

Speaking of the holidays, check out Americans’ top-10 holiday dreads, for instance, having to be nice to others.  

Why do Evangelicals tend to believe such weird things, for instance, that the earth is relatively young, having been created just a few thousand years ago? One author tries to make sense of it all.   

As winter and government crackdowns on the OWS intensify, some churches open their doors to protestors.  More, a small but growing contingent of religious communities is pulling their money from Wall Street banks, angry at such institutions’ unwillingness to do much of anything to prevent foreclosures or lend money to small businesses.  

While a Kentucky church has banned inter-racial relationships among its members,  Jedi and Sith put their galactic differences aside to marry. 

Symbols from the popular film, V for Vendetta, such as the infamous Guy Fawkes’ mask, seem to be functioning religiously for different kinds of protestors?   

Raelians: the most fun of all religious folk!  Here’s why: they always strive for pleasure, they are all young and beautiful, and they will strip naked in public.  

In Europe, Raelians are appealing to an EU court to overturn legal bans on posters depicting star folk. 

An early fall Pagan-con saw considerable unity among a very diverse group of Wiccans, Druids, Heathens, Celtic Reconstructionists and Pagan Eclectics. In taking such unity considerably further, some hope to re-establish the American Council of Witches. The U.S. Air Force has officially recognized Pagans, Witches, and Druids, with new Pagan-friendly worship spaces for cadets.   

Looking for a Jedi Master to train your children,  or a Jedi Temple on Twitter?  

African American Atheists talk about the difficulties involved in “coming out” to friends and especially family. “We Are theism” campaign urges atheist folk generally to “come out.”  

Scientology continues to do well among celebrities, as Kelly Preston praises the Scientology-inspired weight-loss program, Organic Liaison, though meanwhile the Church is getting hammered in much of the mainstream press for some very disturbing charges, while also attracting the attention of some rap artists.    

If you’re worried about the end of the world arriving in 2012 because the Mayans predicted it, maybe it’s time to stop worrying.

• Share this on Facebook
• Email this to a friend?
• Share this on Reddit
• Stumble upon something good? Share it on StumbleUpon
• Tweet This!
• Send this page to Print Friendly
• Digg this!
• Email this via Gmail

By Kenny Smith 

In an intriguing piece written for the Sunday, June 27 New York Times, journalist David Segal traces out some of the early consequences of President Obama’s October 2009 announcement that federal law enforcement will no longer prosecute users and suppliers of medical marijuana, provided they are in compliance with state laws. In Colorado, where a November 2000 amendment to the state constitution legalized medical usage, the grass-roots response has been immediate and potent:   

hundreds of [marijuana] dispensaries popped up and a startling number of residents turned out to be in “severe pain,” the most popular of eight conditions that can be treated legally with the once-demonized weed. More than 80,000 people here now have medical marijuana certificates, which are essentially prescriptions, and for months new enrollees have signed up at a rate of roughly 1,000 a day…. [In] cities like Boulder, an affluent, whole-grain kind of college town… the number of [marijuana] dispensaries… is larger than the number of Starbucks and liquor stores combined.  

What should we make of such a state of affairs? Surely some of these 80,000 cases involve severe physical distress. But aren’t many simply a matter of Coloradoans wanting to get high, a lot? Of course, even if this is in fact the case, it does not rule out the possibility that there are important religious dimensions at play. Getting high a lot might well perform important religious work. 

As the great scholar of religion Huston Smith pointed out some four decades past, that consciousness-expanding substances become intimately bound up with the sacred should hardly surprise us. Psychoactive compounds, albeit in varied forms, are indigenous to nearly every geographic region in which human civilization has flourished. Accidental ingestion, he argued (not uncontroversially), may have given rise to humankind’s first religious visions, doctrines, and traditions! (Smith, “Do Drugs Have Religious Import?,” The Journal of Philosophy, 1964) Indeed, many indigenous peoples, such as the Native American Church, continue costly legal battles with federal and state governments in an effort to regain (or preserve) their right to make use of sacred substances such peyote and cannabis.  

But we need not look to indigenous traditions. A number of new religious movements have come to see the ritual use of cannabis products as central the religious quest. The Church of the Universe, founded in Ontario, Canada in the late 1960’s, teaches that marijuana provides a vital “calming influence,” helps to focus and “direct [one’s] thoughts without interference from negative forces,” allows for an experience of communion with the natural world, and overall “makes life worth living.” http://www.iamm.com/belief.htm Though this group is not specifically Christian, some who are have likewise produced interesting blends of biblical spirituality and cannabis use, yielding a religious path that emphasizes “getting high for Christ.” The Religion of Jesus Church, founded in Hawaii (also in the late 1960’s), holds that the sacred ingestion of cannabis, 

fosters the… personal experience in knowing and doing the will of God and serving the human brotherhood…. Through his indwelling spirit of truth and idealistic beauty, the Prince of Peace is able to be your personal spiritual life partner showing you the ideal way of living as you tread the pathway of spiritual growth…. Such is the religion of Jesus.  

More recently, in the 1990’s Reverend Roger Christie founded the THC Ministry: Hawaii Cannabis Ministry. In addition to helping congregants develop a biblically-grounded “Cannabis Spirituality,” this group also “helps to protect you from arrest, prosecution and/or conviction of ‘marijuana’ charges–wherever you live–starting as soon as you sign-up, become ordained and receive your ministry documents.” Membership is free. Applicants need only “be over 21 and sincere.” http://www.thc-ministry.org/  In the summer of 2010, Christie hopes to plant new Cannabis Christian Ministries across the U.S., beginning (of course) in Colorado Spring, Colorado.

Like all religious communities, these groups interpret their inherited religious resources in ways that reflect their most basic commitments, which in this case means the centrality of cannabis.  According to Christie, “what did Moses do after kneeling by the burning bush? He smoked it… Moses was healed by the burning bush,” which is said to be one of many biblical references to sacred weed.  As the scholar of Chinese religion, Jonathan Herman, has often remarked, “it does not matter so much what scripture says; what matters is how it is interpreted.” And our most important commitments typically constitute the lens through which we read scripture. This helps to explain why scriptures yield such varied interpretations, each of which seem self-evident to those who support them.

Setting aside for the moment admittedly unusual religious groups, could legalized cannabis come to function in ways comparable to other culturally sacred substances ritually consumed each day in the workaday world or with family and friends at dinner parties, picnics, baseball games, and holiday celebrations, such as Budweiser, Coca-Cola, Marlboro, MacDonalds, or Starbuck’s coffee? For at least some persons and communities, one suspects this is already the case, and that the economic dynamics of further legalization efforts will only serve to broaden the ways in which cannabis products manifest within the larger culture. As Segal explains,

Americans spend roughly $25 billion a year on marijuana… which gives some idea of the popularity of this drug. Eventually, we might be talking about a sizable sum of tax revenue from its sales as medicine, not to mention private investment and employment. A spokesman for the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws says hedge fund investors and an assortment of financial service firms are starting to call around to sniff out opportunities.

Currently, thirteen other states (such as Rhode Island and New Jersey), as well as the District of Columbia, have already passed medicinal marijuana laws and are poised to initiate dispensary programs similar to that in Colorado. Given the longstanding connection between economics and the sacred within American cultural history, it is worth taking seriously the possibility that, with widespread economic success and increased availability on the horizon, cannabis may well become a sacred reality for a great many Americans, putting down roots alongside baseball, apple pie, Budweiser, Coca-Cola, Starbuck’s and (after a good case of the munchies) more apple pie.

See Religion Nerd article by Heather Abraham: Cannabis Cafes of Amsterdam

Sources

• David Segal’s article in NY Times:  http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/27/business/27pot.html?ref=todayspaper
• Religion of Jesus Church: http://www.hialoha.com/konagold/church/sacrament.html
• http://www.gazette.com/articles/expand-100645-burning-hopes.html