Mandela and the World Cup Trophy

Peter’s been on a roll here @ WaC while I’ve been down in Atlanta this summer trying my hand at ministry. I did, however, find some time for some theological and ethical reflection for the the beginning of the World Cup. The good people at ReligionDispatches.org allowed me to share.

Check out the article: Soccer and the Sublime in the Shadow of Apartheid.

Rather than comment on my own writing – as if this shameless post isn’t narcissistic enough – I’ll let you enjoy or critique as you see fit. Since RD doesn’t have a comments section for essays anymore, feel free to use WaC as your comments hub.

Happy World Cupping, friends.

pd

The Catholic church in Boston is in trouble again.

The Boston archdiocese of the Roman Catholic church has gotten itself into trouble again. The current troubles revolve around children, the church and sexuality. Unlike previous years, however, this imbroglio is not about clergy sexual abuse.

Boston’s ABC affiliate carries this story about Michael Pakaluk’s column of June 4. The column argues against allowing the child of a same-sex couple admission to a parochial school. The reasons given are all patently absurd: the child would be more likely to bring pornography to school, since same-sex relationships are inherently more eroticized than heterosexual relationships; the same-sex parents of a child should not be called “parents” unless there is a biological relationship; etc.

I wonder if Pakaluk would object to adoptive heterosexual “parents” bearing that title. They have no biological relationship to the child in their care either. If procreation is the bulwark against purely eroticized relationships between adults, does that hold for the biologically infertile? Logically speaking, the adopted child of a biologically infertile couple should be barred admission from the same school on the same grounds as a child of a same-sex couple.

To deal with the 800 pound gorilla you may have noticed over in the corner of the room, I’ll add the following statements. The Catholic church in Boston has no legitimate moral standing to discuss sexual morality. I lived in Boston while the horrors of the abuse scandal were coming at long last to light. I read the reports in the Boston Globe that would later become the book “Betrayal”. I attended Mass with my Catholic wife at the one church she could bear to enter in the entire archdiocese.

Not only are Pakaluk’s arguments laughable from the standpoint of reason, but they are hate-filled stereotypes akin to blackface performances and the unedited cut of Disney’s “Song of the South”. That this was written by a faithful Catholic is disappointing but unfortunately not surprising, given the pulpit-level view of sexuality prevalent in that church. That it was published in the official newspaper of the archdiocese at the epicenter of the greatest moral failing of Christianity since its relative silence in the Holocaust is infuriating, hypocritical and nearly unforgivable.

A priest, a terrorist, an FBI agent and a covert alien on TV's "V"

I have written before about the TV show “V” and its use of religious people and imagery in a plot about aliens visiting the Earth with sinister intentions. In the wake of continued coverage of the Times Square bombing attempt, and the continuing links between the failed bomber and some radicalized militant strain of Islam, this week’s episode seemed more sinister. Allow me first to recap some salient points of the show.

An alien race who looks to be human and is called the Visitors, or V for short, arrives unannounced in major cities around the world. They declare themselves to be “of peace, always” but a few bright-eyed Americans aren’t so sure of their good intentions. Sure enough, the V are up to no good and are actually lizard-like creatures in human skin. Their claims to be peaceful are hypocritical at least and apocalyptically sinister at most. Our heroes are a TV-friendly rag-tag bunch: a terrorist, a V who has turned against their sinister machinations, an FBI agent and a Catholic priest.

This week’s episode has our heroes blow up a shuttle which they thought would be full of only evil aliens. It seems that they’ve been misinformed, as all they find in the wreckage is human remains. But wait! There’s a twist: the V learned of their plans and put 20 or so already dead humans on the shuttle instead. The guilt of our heroes is assuaged, and the priest–who had quit over the shuttle blowup–comes back to the group. Here’s where a strangely coded message comes in. Are we talking about space lizards or Muslims here?

Anyone who has studied the Islamic faith or even spoken with its adherents will be able to tell you that the official and orthodox rendering of Islam is that it is a religion of peace. People like Faisal Shahzad do not represent mainstream Islam any more than the Hutaree Militia represent mainstream Christianity. Note, however, the similarity between the message of the evil-doers on the show (“We are of peace, always”) and the message many of us try to express about Islam as a peaceful religion despite what some would do in its name.

That’s not where the between-the-lines messages begin or end. In the show, a few good people with God on their side (remember, there’s a priest!) are fighting an evil that hides among us and looks like us but isn’t even human. Their foe professes to be peaceful, but is in fact quite sinister. Their foe sees no value in human life, but our heroes have deep consciences. The priest quit fighting when he thought he had been involved in killing innocent humans. One more thing our heroes have done? They have tortured an enemy combatant to get valuable information that might save lives.

If I were a more cynical person, I might watch for Dick Cheney’s name in the end credits of the show. After all, how different is the conflict between humans and aliens on this fictional program than the conflict described by our government and media when speaking of terrorism? The enemy says that they are peaceful, but they are not; the enemy can look like anyone; the enemy isn’t even really human; we value life more than they do; we might have to get our hands dirty and permit torture to get information out of them. It’s either the hawkish line on Al Quaeda or the plot of a weekly sci-fi show.

So why does this matter anyhow? We turn to TV fictions to escape the fears and stresses of our daily lives. When we are fed a veiled narrative about what most of our nation sees as an existential struggle, those messages can seep in. I am not proposing that this program is outright propaganda. What I am saying is that the line of argumentation advanced by the government and media about the struggle with terrorism is so pervasive that it echoes through our recreation time. I don’t know if this show was purposely written to tap into that anxiety or if the anxiety itself makes these themes pop out from wherever they might hide.

I’d be interested in hearing other people’s takes on the intertwining of fiction and non-fiction narratives in the comments.

Links:

• V on ABC
• V on Hulu
• “Evidence Mounts for Taliban Role in Car Bomb Plot” NYTimes.com
• “Money Woes, Long Silences and a Zeal for Islam” NYTimes.com

The Christian Legal Society of Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco lost its sanctioned status  (as well as its funding) because of the groups exclusive bylaws.  That’s because for over 20 years Hastings College has honored an “all-comers policy.” “Any student group is entitled to official school recognition, as long as the group accepts all comers.” The Christian Legal Society obviously is not doing that, and the loss of their funding and sanctioning has prompted them to protest that they are the newest example of organized discrimination against freedom of religion. “The core of Monday’s case is whether religious beliefs can trump a neutral school policy that applies equally to everyone.”

This is nothing new. Remember last year’s blow up on the same issue: yes, Carrie Prejean? She suggested the same thing.

Carrie Prejean

She said on stage at the Miss America Pagent that she believed marriage was exclusive to the union of a man and a women. Perez Hilton was not happy. Prejean was quickly not awarded the coveted tiara, and she suggested that the reason she did not win was because she was Christian. She subsequently went on a Palin-like tour bemoaning the loss of Christianity and freedom to express those Christian rights to dehumanize others. How unfair, right?

I mean, what’s the point in being Christian if you can’t demonize others?

It’s up for debate which of these cases has more impact on our wider society obsessed with pop culture. You’d think Supreme Court, but then you would underestimate the influence of the Miss America Pagent. No, seriously.

What I hope Carrie and the Christian Legal Society might one day see is that it is not Christianity that is under attack but their ideological exclusivity that dehumanizes others all to stroke a misguided egoism, which is trimmed in Christian language but not at the heart of Jesus’ message.

MIKE PETERS / DAYTON DAILY NEWS

Maybe its the longer warmer days that have me in more amicable spirits, but I couldn’t find a spark of anger when I heard Glenn Beck’s latest protest, encouraging people to leave churches that promote social justice — which all mainline churches do.

You know, Peter, I want to thank Glenn Beck more than scourge him. Maybe I’m banking too heavily on people’s ability to think rationally, but these are the comments for me that write him out. I can’t muster the anger to engage something so incredibly nonsensical. I can, however, see this as an opportunity to draw people’s attention to the term social justice, what it means and how it has become ideologically amorphous to the point that–as you so suitably put it–Glenn beck can throw sewage at it.

The term, though it has many manifestations in multiple socio-political arenas, essential entails an effort to correct those structures that allow for systemic and systematic poverty. Nothing, I would argue, seems more appropriate to the teachings of Jesus. Now, however, the term has become so common place that people confuse it for the likes of charity.

Currently President Obama, in full campaign form that has been absent for far too long, is urging the American people to support healthcare reform. Glenn Beck originally promised he would leave America if it passed. We can only hope, but as my grandfather used to say, “you can hope in one hand and…” I think you know the rest.

What it boils down to for me is classic fear–particularly the fear that accompanies change. For many, America has been a pretty secure place and a term like social justice remains anathema, as does health care reform. As long as I can pay the increasing premiums, why should I care about changing it? The end result is that a country banking on its prosperity will fight for an adulterated form of utilitarian security that neglects the less fortunate. Benjamin Franklin once said, “Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both.”

Glenn Beck lives in a world of security, the lose of which makes his blonde hair stand on end. Social Justice endeavors on the side of liberty and equity. May we continue to fight that battle and graciously turn the other cheek to those that operate otherwise.

John Stewart takes on Glenn Beck… Again

Christianity Today, Beck hunting Jim Wallis now

Screenshot of Glenn Beck from politicsdaily.com

Glenn Beck, ultraconservative infotainer and TV host, has recently decided that “social justice” is a code word for fascism. When I first heard this news, I couldn’t believe it was not a headline from the satirical newspaper The Onion. What tortured and specious logic could he possibly employ to literally link Adolf Hitler to Archbishop Oscar Romero? Apparently, the Nazis were for social justice. Never mind that anything the National Socialist Party in Germany may ever have said about the rights of the workers came directly atop a wave of antisemitism, xenophobia and nationalism. These can hardly be called the hallmarks of Theological Liberalism, Liberation Theology, Political Theology or any church-led movements for social justice. According to Beck’s “reasoning”, Martin Luther King, Jr., Stalin and Hitler belong in the same social movement.

In general, I try to steer clear of polemic. It rarely accomplishes much more than emotional inflammation and frankly, there’s an argument to be made that it is wholly inappropriate for either Quakers or Buddhists. Given my religious identification with both those groups, it seems that neither God nor the Dharma particularly wants me to get into what I’m about to do. But all things in moderation, including moderation, at least according to Mark Twain. I hope that I will be able to separate act from actor and belief from believer here, but also beg forgiveness if I don’t manage.

Glenn Beck’s program is a cancer upon society. He employs the worst kind of populist know-nothingism to justify his racist and classist thinking and he’s got a prime-time show on the most watched cable news network in America. His program is frankly the shame of our nation. We can be better than this and we must be better than this. Redistribution of wealth is not anathema to Christianity, as Beck subtly argues. It is in fact part and parcel of Christianity. What else would it mean to care for that which is of God in the least of our sisters and brothers on Earth? If we look to the book of Acts, we see not a proto-capitalist market economy, but an anarch0-syndicalist collective. If anything is anti-Christian in the sociopolitical world, it is in fact captialist market economics.

The time for meeting polemic with reasoned analysis has passed. It doesn’t work. You cannot send reason to meet unthinking passion. For every Glenn Beck, we need a Michael Moore. It pains me to say so, as a “good theological liberal”: I’m much more comfortable on the so-called high road, but it’s hard to be on that high road when the opposition is hurling filth from the sewers.

Hard words for some hard (bodied) Christians. First, I have to take offense that you would use that picture of my father in his twenties to represent your tough guy Jesus. Not cool.

I guess I’m just enamored with the simultaneous concretizing and exaggerating that’s happening here. We use the word “fighting” pretty frequently in our culture. Now it does not always have to do with actual fighting, i.e. fists, roundhouse kicks, and as the Cobra Kai were fond of saying, “SWEEP THE LEG!”  We use the word “fight” simply to mean to be involved in a struggle. We use it lightly, like, she’s fighting for a place in line, or I’m fighting to open this mayonnaise jar. But we all know that when we use fighting in those contexts we are being hyperbolic.

We’re not really fighting, as fighting intends violence. The thing is, maybe we have learned to be hyperbolic all the time, even with regard to our religiosity.  John Stewart and the Daily Show hysterically point out the exaggerated language of blogs - all of which connote acts of physical violence.

My question is, what happens when we forget that we’re being generous, metaphorical or exaggerative with our language? Do we end up living and acting in an exaggerated fashion also? Do we literalize and embody the exaggeration?

A second thought that I have is that fighting, moreover, is not, strictly speaking, a Jesus component; it’s a survival component. When someone’s survival is threatened, fighting is a human reaction. These ministers are using violence as a means to attract younger men, but they’re doing it out of a my “back’s against the wall” sensibility, I would judge. Not because it is at the core of the Gospel.  When one’s life is in question, its fight or flight time. These ministers have just chosen to indulge in the most rudimentary instinct for survival, literal fighting. So, they are not wrong in making the claim Jesus was a “fighter,” but they may want to take a step back and ask themselves, what was Jesus, the fighter, fighting for? What has always drawn me to Jesus, particularly through the parables, is the way he moves away from reactive, less admirable human instincts toward teachings of grace, forgiveness and wisdom – those things that I suppose are as feminine as Sophia, herself.

With regard to the Christology question, I’d agree with you. This is more eisegesis than exegesis. But a jacked up Jesus or muscular messiah isn’t new, especially in America. Last year, media was rife with the comparability of Jack Bauer, who would nobly withstand torture, with Jesus. This seems like another derivative of that masculine moral.

More on Fighting Faith:

NYTimes: “Who Would Jesus Smack Down?”
Evander Hollyfield beats wife for not tithing (enough)

Joel Gretsch portraying Father Jack Landry

As part of the ongoing project that is The Wheat and The Chaff, I want to look not only at the news media’s interaction with religion but also at the popular media’s interaction with religion and religious themes. I owe a shout-out and a hat-tip to the excellent and engaging work of Natalie and Kathryn over at The Moth Chase. Please give them a read.

One of my favorite childhood TV shows was the miniseries/series/reunion TV movie “V”. In it, one watched a post-“Beastmaster” Marc Singer and a pre-“Nightmare on Elm Street” Robert Englund fight to save the Earth from a race of masquerading reptilian conquerors-from-beyond. Seriously.

The show has been re-launched and updated. The main plot seems to be the same: aliens promising peace arrive unexpectedly, some people suspect shenanigans, aliens are shown to be literal monsters, etc. This time there’s an interesting twist: one of our main “freedom fighters” is a Catholic priest.

The title of this post comes from a decision laid at the feet of Father Jack Landry: “You need to decide whether you’re a soldier or a priest”. This line is delivered after it’s revealed that Father Jack knows how to throw a punch because he did two tours in Iraq as an Army chaplain. He’s been running around for four episodes blowing things up and occasionally reflecting on what it means to his faith in God that we homo sapiens are not the only creatures capable of building a spaceship, but finally someone points out to him that there’s a choice involved.

The Ontological Question, theology of violence, military and imperial complicity, explosions, motorcycles and space aliens. This is a show that has it all.

Levity aside, I do think that the presentation of this particular character brings up some issues worth pondering. Does it make any difference to our belief in God that there may be other intelligent life in the universe? When do you put down the crucifix and pick up a gun?

As someone who prefers to conceive of “priestly freedom fighters” in the mold more of Oscar Romero, Ammon Hennacy, Thich Nhat Hanh and Jesus, I am pretty uncomfortable with the idea that violence and ministry can play nicely together. I think that the choice alluded to here is a deep and existential one, and I think that it may be one that goes unasked far too often. Can Christianity be true to itself and still ordain ministers who serve in uniform in areas of military conflict? Is the decision between being a “priest” and a “soldier” strictly either/or or can it be both/and?

Wait. What?

The feature article in The Atlantic this month is Hanna Rosin’s “Did Christianity Cause the Crisis”. It makes a case that the prosperity gospel was another factor in our economic meltdown. In particular, she suggests its message encouraged people to agree to subprime loans on mortgages they could not afford. Here are several quotes from the article that struck me:

“It’s a curious mix of active (a step of faith) and passive (“It started happening!”).”  That is, the riches started ”happening” because of faith.

“The message at prosperity churches [is] to be quintessentially American.”

“They get swept up in manifest destiny, this idea that God has lifted Americans above everyone else.”

“… a faith that, for all its seeming confidence hints at desperation, at circumstances gone so far wrong that they can only be made right by a sudden, unexpected jackpot.”

Some Thoughts:

The prosperity gospel conflates faith with financial reward. Though Rosin makes a thought provoking article, I doubt many are going to come away from this pointing fingers at Christianity. That said, we should be very mindful of what is going on here. We’re dealing with an amalgam of symbols, religious and secular, all of which carry emince meaning and power. Much of it, moreover, swirls around American mythology. I find it vexing when Jesus gets wrapped up in these modern day symbols of Mercedes Benz signs and fine Italian suits. It’s vexing precisely when I take a minute to remember exactly who Jesus was: a poor carpenter in Galilee, who was put to death for making the Roman Empire nervous in some way, shape or form.

But that’s not the Jesus we are dealing with here. There is little humility in this Jesus, only boldness–Wall Street-like boldness. Prosperity gospelers bank on a personal Jesus that conquered death and consequently will conquer their financial insolvency.

This is another one of those instances of “who speaks for Christianity?”. If we pretend that the prosperity gospel does not speak for Christianity, we are fooling ourselves. Their numbers are growing in popularity and the message of unending gain (without thought to satisfaction) is intoxicating in our consumer culture.

“Did Christianity Cause the Crisis” by Hanna Rosin

If you are looking for a shorter read, a very similar (though less recognized) article came out in Time last month by David Van Biema: “Maybe We Should Blame God for the Subprime Mess“.

Other Links:

“Prosperity Gospel Self-Examination” by Jonathan Walton
Watch This!: The Ethics and Aesthetics of Black Televangelism by Jonathan Walton
Time: Q&A with Joel Osteen

It’s been just over a week. That’s not near enough time to make definitive statements. This event is laden with complication and questions, ones that will be worked out for months to come. So, Peter, when you ask, “isn’t he like us?” I want to say yes and no. And the no must be investigated thoroughly.

We are all fallible and fractured humans, estranged from God’s love. It’s an estrangement buoyed by our backwardness. Whether it be greed, pride, apathy or in the case of Hasan utter despair—for only a deep tragic despair could fall to such destruction—we find ourselves separated from God’s wholeness. Then there is certainly undeniable distance between Hasan and “us”. This, however, has nothing to do with Hasan being Muslim. Any killing in the name of God is perversion. The difference centers on the proverbial compass needle. Maybe it’s a fallacy, but I’d like to think in all of our imperfection, we (the “us”) can and do value the good over evil and that we can distinguish between the two when we engage in thoughtful reflection. In doing so we ask ourselves, “how do we keep the needle pointing north?” For many of us it’s a reflection through religious imagination, which helps us make sense of our fallible characters and endows us with a power of transcendence.

But when that religious imagination becomes the vehicle for violent action, it is perversion plain and simple. It’s becoming more clear Hasan was a more troubled man than anyone ever recognized—a trouble that led to a manifestation of religious perversion.  It’s why American Muslims have been so vocal in the last week to say: “this is not who we are, it is in fact the exact opposite.”

So we can see Hasan as the wholly, evil “other,” ask for our pound of flesh, and move on in dismayed anger. Or, maybe we can thoroughly investigate the whys and the hows. That is, how did such undeniable distance develop between Hasan and us? How did this man become encumbered by such deep trauma? And how did no one recognize his troubled nature and fail to speak out, or even more, help him work through such despair?

If we’re about healing, we’ll not gloss over the difficult questions that indict us all. We’ll approach them stumbling forward, but we’ll do it together—rechecking the compass with each step. We have to.

Hasan’s Presentation to Senior Army Doctors on Adverse Effects of Muslims in US Military

More Unending News:

NYTimes: Tangled Story
Slate: “Is Hasan a Terrorist”
NPR: Interview with Muslim Military Chaplain
Hasan Family Statement
Face the Nation