Is Bismarck a Herring?* (UPDATED)

I’ve been away for a few days, so I’m slightly behind on this one, but I can’t help myself: this may be a new low to which the feminist academy has sunk. According to Susannah Cornwall of Manchester University’s Lincoln Theological Institute, Jesus may have been a hermaphrodite. The London Daily Telegraph chronicles this train wreck of speculation:

Dr Susannah Cornwall claimed that it is “simply a best guess” that Jesus was male.

It’s as much a guess as that Caesar wasn’t actually the name of a salad that happened to get appended to a famous Roman general.

In her paper “Intersex & Ontology, A Response to The Church, Women Bishops and Provision”, she argues that it is not possible to know “with any certainty” that Jesus did not suffer from an intersex condition, with both male and female organs.

It’s also not possible to know with certainty that Jesus wasn’t an alien from the planet Teegeeack.

In an extraordinary paper she says: “It is not possible to assert with any degree of certainty that Jesus was male as we now define maleness.

I’m not sure how they define “maleness” at Manchester U, but I suspect it has something to so with scissors.

“There is no way of knowing for sure that Jesus did not have one of the intersex conditions which would give him a body which appeared externally to be unremarkably male, but which might nonetheless have had some “hidden” female physical features.”

When you get right down to it, there’s no way of knowing for sure whether Jesus had any internal organs at all. Maybe He was actually a cyborg from the future. Or an android. Heck, how do we know He even had a body at all? Maybe it was just an elaborate illusion designed to fool those Jewish primitives He hung around with?

Dr Cornwall argues that the fact that Jesus is not recorded to have had children made his gender status “even more uncertain”.

Because all people who do not have children should be assumed to be intersexed.

She continues: “We cannot know for sure that Jesus was male – since we do not have a body to examine and analyse – it can only be that Jesus’ masculine gender role, rather than his male sex, is having to bear the weight of all this authority.”

People whose sex is also unknown: Genghis Khan, Cleopatra, Alexander the Great, Moses, Muhammad (now that’s gonna cause some trouble), Gandhi, Alfred Hitchcock, the passengers of the Titanic, Gary Coleman, Amelia Earhart, Osama bin Laden, Dennis Wilson of the Beach Boys, Robert Heinlein, Ru Paul, L. Ron Hubbard, Janis Joplin, Vincent Price, H.G. Wells, Adolf Eichmann, and George Harrison, among others. All of these are people whose bodies were cremated, lost at sea, or have since turned to dust. Without proper examination (I mean, who really checked out bin Laden’s innards before they dumped him overboard? For all we know, he could have been half goat!), we have no way of saying anything about the sex of any of these people (with one exception meant to see if you read the whole list, and things are a bit uncertain even in that instance, if you know what I mean).

One serious thing to say, and that’s this: if this is the kind of epistemological standard that some academics are going to employ, they should be stripped of their positions at once. Why? Because it is next to impossible for them to know anything at all about their so-called “specialties,” and what their “research” and “papers” amount to is writing down what the voices in their heads tell them. Undergraduates don’t need some fruitcake with a Ph.D to tell them bizarre stories–that’s what frat parties and beer is for.

*Line from Madeleine Kahn in Blazing Saddles–it’s a punning reference to Bismarck Herring, a brand of fish sold in Germany, named in honor of the first Prime Minister of united Germany, Otto von Bismarck, from which her character Lili Von Shtupp hails.

(Via MCJ.)

UPDATE: For more on the academic origins of this particular form of insanity, check here, an article by someone named Bruce Gerig called “Jesus the Intersexual.”

 

Bringing the Hammer Down at Vanderbilt

Last year, the U.S. Supreme Court made an enormous mistake in Christian Legal Society v. Martinez when it declared that public universities may deny recognition to student groups based on the latter’s refusal to knuckle under to academic orthodoxy. I said at the time that we’d soon see the bitter fruit of this mistake. Vanderbilt University, an erstwhile Methodist institution, is determined to make me look like a prophet. According to Fox News:

Is Vanderbilt University flirting with the suppression of religion? Yes, according to Carol Swain, a professor at Vanderbilt’s Law School.

Specifically, Swain is referring to four Christian student groups being placed on “provisional status” after a university review found them to be in non-compliance with the school’s nondiscrimination policy.

Vanderbilt says the student organizations cannot require that leaders share the group’s beliefs, goals and values. Carried to its full extent, it means an atheist could lead a Christian group, a man a woman’s group, a Jew a Muslim group or vice versa.

If they remain in non-compliance, the student organizations risk being shut down.

Among the groups that is so threatened is–surprise!–the Christian Legal Society:

Among the groups threatened with shut down is the Christian Legal Society. It ran afoul with this language from its constitution. “Each officer is expected to lead Bible studies, prayer and worship at chapter meetings.” CLS President Justin Gunter told me, “We come together to do things that Christians do together. Pray, and have Bible studies.”

To that, Rev. Gretchen Person – interim director of the Office of Religious Life at Vanderbilt – responded “Vanderbilt policies do not allow this expectation/qualification for officers.” Gunter has been negotiating with the university and has taken some language out of the CLS constitution – including the requirement that Student Coordinators “should strive to exemplify Christ-like qualities.” But he says he has to draw the line at the requirement regarding Bible studies, prayer and worship.

This is, to put it bluntly, insane, unless the Vanderbilt’s purpose is specifically to suppress any dissent from reigning academic orthodoxy. The CLS doesn’t mandate that one must be a Christian in order to be a member, take part in activities, or benefit from the group. Instead, it does when any organization, of whatever ideology, theology, purpose, or intent does–it requires that the individuals leading the group actually adhere to whatever is the underlying purpose of the group.

When the Rev. Person (ELCA, in case you’re wondering) is saying here, in essence, is that the CLS may not function as a Christian organization as long as it is connected in any way with Vanderbilt University. At that point, she may as well resign her position, because she is decreeing that the university has no need for, and no desire to in any way accommodate, religion on its campus, unless said religions give up any requirements for its leaders that might actually suggest that they are, you know, religious.

Vanderbilt officials refused to be interviewed [what a surprise--DSF], and instead released a statement saying in part “We are committed to making our campus a welcoming environment for all of our students.” In regard to the offending student organizations, officials said they “continue to work with them to achieve compliance.”

In fact, they are doing just the opposite. They are seeking to make the university a place where those who dissent from the reigning orthodoxy–above all, on the subject of homosexuality, but in truth for those who take their faith seriously–are outcasts, unwelcome to so much as express their doubts that the reigning orthodoxy is correct. That last phrase (“continue to work with them to achieve compliance.”) tells you all you need to know. The CLS and other religious organizations will  bend the knee to Baal, or they will be cast out.

I hope the Supremes are happy with what they have wrought.

 

Misreading the Bible in the Service of Politics

There’s a saying about jazz attributed to Fats Waller that goes, “If you don’t know what it is, don’t mess with it.” That’s a marvelous all-purpose expression that can be used for an enormous array of things, including matters of faith. An adjunct professor at the Newhouse School of Public Communications of Syracuse University by the name of Douglas Brode demonstrates the truth of this saying perfectly.

He vents his spleen at Texas Gov. Rick Perry in a column in the Kansas City Star that claims Perry, an evangelical Christian, misreads the Bible, and particularly the New Testament. Specifically, Brode writes:

Gov. Rick Perry of Texas has, early in his candidacy, outrun all other contenders for the Republican nomination when it comes to drawing Christianity into the mix. “Many,” Perry claimed in 2008, “want to recognize Jesus as a good teacher, but nothing more. But why call him ‘good’ if he has lied about his claims of deity?”

The “many” Perry specifically referred to are secular humanists, a group Christian conservatives openly despise. Most likely Perry did not consciously intend to spit figuratively in the collective face of Jews – including conservative Jewish people whom other Republicans, notably U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann of Minnesota, with her ardent support of Israel, hope to win over.

If Brode knew anything about his subject, he would recognize in his quote from Perry a classic trope from C. S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity. It is not, of course, meant to “spit figuratively in the collective face of Jews,” but rather is a way of logically posing one of the central truths of the Christian faith in the face of unbelief, namely the divinity of Christ, who was not simply a good teacher (as, for instance, Thomas Jefferson claimed), but rather God incarnate. But not content to show off his ignorance of Christian apologetics, Brode blunders into biblical interpretation:

The greater problem here is that Perry doesn’t know didley-squat about the Bible. His argument is based on a common misconception that Jesus claimed to be “The Messiah.” Current biblical modernizations (rewrites in colloquial English) aside, in its original form that simply isn’t the case in any of the four canonical gospels that constitute the New Testament.

As end-game neared, Jesus was forced to stand before Pilate, who asked: “Are you the son of God?”

“I am the son of man,” Jesus responded, tantamount to denying divinity.

Clearly, Jesus did perceive himself as “a messiah.” The Bible tells us that, 31 years earlier, a messiah had been born in Bethlehem. The idea, which as a Jew Jesus embraced, held that a hero would emerge during times of strife.

Umm, no. That’s a good guess, but thanks for playing. It was actually the high priest who said to Jesus, “I adjure you by the living God, tell us if you are the Christ, the Son of God.” To which Jesus actually responded, “You have said so.” It is true that Jesus primarily used the title “Son of Man” for Himself, but at no point in the Gospels does He ever deny the truth of others’ ascription of the title “Son of God” to Him (for instance, in Matthew 16:16, where Peter calls Him “the Son of the living God,” or in John 11:27, when Mary of Bethany refers to Him as “the Christ, the Son of God”) He also willingly receives the worship of His followers, whom He would have rebuked for idolatry if He had not been God in the flesh. But as the misquotation above indicates, we’re not exactly dealing with a biblical scholar here.

The idea of the Messiah – as in the one and only – was invented not by Christ (Jesus never brought the issue up) but by several key followers. This likely occurred during the Passover celebration that witnessed an abrupt end of Jesus’ ministry. The fanning of an extreme new ideology by true believers would explain the turning against Jesus by many Hebrews who had recently welcomed him to Jerusalem.

That could also be explained–as countless New Testament scholars through the centuries have done–by noting that the crowd was operating with an idea of messiah that was primarily political and nationalistic, whereas the messiahship of Jesus had to do with His mission of reconciling the world to God through His sacrificial death and resurrection. That mission was hardly made up by His followers, unless one wants to contend that the Gospels were simply made up out of whole cloth.

Some Hebrews did accept that notion. They would be among the first Christians. Other Hebrews did not. They constituted the continuing Jewish people.

Luke, apparently a Greco-Roman physician, seems to have concentrated on the ever-more ambitious concept of The Mission: presenting Jesus to the larger, greater world as an Apollo-like sun-surrounded Son of God, with the Hebrews’ Yahweh now, and for the first time, modeled on aged Zeus with his high forehead, stern countenance, and mane of wild white hair. Luke’s “fellow worker,” Paul (previously Saul of Tarsus), both a Hebrew and a Roman citizen, following his own conversion embarked on a mission (perhaps accompanied by Luke) to present Jesus as the Messiah to gentiles in Greece and Asia Minor.

We’re hitting all the village atheist points against Christian faith here, aren’t we? The comparison of Christian claims regarding Jesus with Greek mythology was popular in the 19th century, but that was more about a desire to tear down Christianity than any serious attempt at comparative religion. Needless to say, Brode’s comparison of the way Jesus is proclaimed by His disciples and Zeus is simply nonsense. Oh, and one could also ask what possible meaning the notion of “messiah” would have had to Gentiles, or why they would have cared, if messiahship was about nothing more than being one “hero” among many.

As for its relevance today, any understanding of the true genius of Jesus reveals it to have favored the opposite of that alliance between religion and politics that Perry and like-minded Christian conservatives endorse. In fact, Jesus invented the then-radical concept of separating church and state.

Many citizens of occupied Israel, Zealots, wanted to fight to the death in hopes of driving out the Romans. Jesus preached the reverse. Unlike previous conquerors, the Romans granted Jews freedom of religion, insisting only on payment of taxes. Despite the irony of Jesus being tried for treason, he preached acceptance of Roman domination: “Render unto Caesar that which art Caesar’s” (financial obligations) “and unto Yahweh that which art Yahweh’s” (spiritual devotion).

Lots of people are guilty of seeing their own pet ideological concerns in Jesus. I’ve done it, many conservative Christians have done it, secularists have done it. Here Brode does it. Jesus no more “invented” the concept of church-state separation in His “render to Caesar” statement than He invented romance novels when He cried at the death of Lazarus. “Render to Caesar” was a response to Jewish leadership seeking to entrap Him into either advocating treason against Rome or dismaying those who saw Him as a potential leader in opposition to Roman occupation. It was His way of indicating that God’s people have at least two authorities to whom they were called to answer, and that they should give political leadership its due while remembering that their primary allegiance is to God.

If Perry has read the Bible, it’s in some contemporary form that mangles this ideology. Some such versions have Yahweh whisper to Jesus that “You are my son.” In the original Aramaic, the words God intoned were “You are my chosen servant.” That same phrase God earlier spoke to Abram/Abraham, Moses, and David.

Given that the New Testament was not written in Aramaic, and that the only record we have of what God said to Jesus is in the Greek documents that record Him saying, “You are my beloved son” (Mark 1:11), it is more than a little presumptuous for Brode to declare that he knows what God really said to Jesus. I also find it amusing that he says, “if Perry has read the Bible,” when it’s clearly Brode who hasn’t got a clue what the New Testament (as opposed to the “contemporary Aramaic,” of which there is a record only in Brode’s head) actually says.

In answer, then, to Perry: Jesus didn’t lie in his claims of deity because Jesus never made any such claims. They were proffered by others about Jesus. Perhaps someone who posits himself as the Heaven-sent candidate ought to, before proceeding further, learn a helluva lot more about the Bible, and what Jesus actually said.

So, to sum up: a college professor who in his biography bills himself as “a screenwriter, playwright, novelist, film historian, and multi-award winning journalist” accuses an evangelical Christian of stating a Christian belief that has been adhered to by Christians for two millenia based on a quote from a Christian author that he shows no sign of recognizing, and then goes on to accuse said Christian of incorrectly understanding the Scriptures of his own faith based on said college professor’s own mangled, thoroughly uninformed misreading of those Scriptures, which he manages to misquote in the process–all to make a political point.

 

Academic Partisan Hackery

Religion Dispatches is an online magazine for religious leftists to tell one another how smart they are and how stupid religious conservatives are. Gary Laderman is the director of RD and the chair of the religion department at Emory University. He has made a discovery which should certainly reflect on both him and the rest of his department. The Republican Party, it seems, is now a “religion.” I’ll allow Dr. Laderman to explain this remarkable piece of spiritual transformation:

Let’s just face the facts and not kid ourselves anymore. Yes, it’s time to wake up and smell the coffee… er, tea: The Republican Party is no longer a political party—it’s a full-fledged religious movement. The political ideology fueling this movement is religious to the core; and while it might be easiest to label the religious element “Christian,” that designation is too broad and generous for the true complexities at work here.

Well, that’s certainly fact-free, but it is just the first paragraph. I’m sure there will some evidence offered to support this conclusion.

But what does it really mean to argue that the Republican Party, a movement with a distinctive religious culture, is a new kind of religion we might as well call “Republicanity”? Let me count the ways. (And please, don’t try this at home—I’m a professional religion-ist, it’s what I do for a living. Really.)

He said it, not me.

1) Mythology:

Republicanity’s myths are being manufactured by the mythbuilders over at Wallbuilders. In case anyone is confused, we in religious studies are not mythbusters. Let’s remember that myths are not about verifiable historical facts; they’re sacred stories that provide orientation, identity, community boundaries, etc. for a religious group. It’s not our job to tear down and deconstruct these cherished myths, though anyone with an education beyond high school or any training in the academic study of history should question the assertions being produced by David Barton and his Wallbuilders comrades, since they do claim to be “historians.”

The myths of Republicanity are fairly obvious and easy to identify when uttered by the faithful: glorifying the Founding Fathers as saints, inserting God into the nation’s origins, and demonizing the US government when policy disagreements occur.

Have you ever heard of David Barton or Wallbuilders? I have, but then I follow this stuff as a hobby. My suspicion is that the vast majority of Republicans have never heard of either, and will be surprised to learn that their party has been building a “mythology” on the basis of their writings. But the supposed influence of Barton and Wallbuilders is simply asserted here, rather than proved in any way, so we can safely ignore that.

What about the claims regarding the GOP’s “myths”? There’s no question that Republicans on the whole see the founding of the United States as a good thing, the writing of the Declaration of Independence and Constitution as good things, and the men who led those efforts as good men. Those who actually know something about American origins recognize, I’m sure, that they were not, in fact, “saints,” and that some, even many, were not Christians. That there was a religious element involved in American origins is something that only someone who is determined not to be confused with facts would deny, even if there are also those who overstate it. And as for “demonizing the US government when policy disagreements occur,” I have just two words for Dr. Laderman: George Bush. If the “professional religionist” wants to claim that Bush (or Dick Cheney, or Condoleeza Rice, or any of the other “neocons” that the left is always twittering on about) was never demonized by those who disagreed with, say, his Iraq policy, he’s welcome to do that, but he thereby forfeits his right to claim to be connected to the reality in which the rest of us live.

2) Rituals:

Likewise, Republicanity is rife with ritual acts of the sacred variety. One of the most recent examples is the signing of yet another pledge, “The Marriage Vow—A Declaration of Dependence on Marriage and Family,” drafted by The Family Leader, an Iowa-based organization.

Which most Republican presidential candidates have refused to sign. I guess that means they’ll be excommunicated or something.

Signing pledges (against raising taxes, for lowering the debt, agreeing that this is a “Christian nation”) is all the rage these days, with adherents of Republicanity understanding the public ritual act of participating as a demonstration of their own fidelity to certain core principles.

Imagine people actually trying to get politicians to say what they believe, and to hold them to sticking by their principles. Conservatives are just so gauche. Liberals would never do that. They expect their politicians to have no principles, to not keep promises, and would never, ever think of holding them accountable for anything.

Town hall meetings to vent anger and frustration, public events more akin to religious revivals than political rallies, and following Fox news, religiously, at certain intervals throughout the day, are a few other examples of rituals performing their role in a religious movement: to energize the faithful, differentiate insiders from outsiders, and establish what is sacred and what is profane.

He’s right about this–I have never seen the people at a union rally (say, the ones in Wisconsin last winter), a pro-choice demonstration, an anti-Israel event, or a Democratic Party gathering ever watch Fox News.

3) Ethics:

Republicanity is no different, possessing its own set of ethical commitments that define its moral universe. It is like the most narrow and conservative religious cultures in its absolutist ethical positions and refusal to tolerate any difference of opinion.

Yeah, it’s a pity. It’s impossible to tell John McCain and Jim DeMint and Mitt Romney and Sarah Palin and Haley Barbour and Paul Ryan and Arnold Schwarzenegger and Tim Pawlenty and Ron Paul and Olympia Snowe and Scott Walker and Tom Coburn and Rudy Guiliani and Nicky Haley and Bobby Jindal and Clarence Thomas and Charles Krauthammer and David Brooks and Bill Kristol and Laura Ingraham and Herman Cain and, and, and all the rest of those robots who all think exactly alike apart. Shoot, on some days I’d even swear that Haley Barbour looks like Olympia Snowe, much less agrees with every word she says. These people are like robots, you know?

Obedience to authority—at the moment embodied in prominent charismatic leaders like Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann, and Rick Santorum (okay, this last one is short on charisma but people still seem to listen anyway)—is critical to the success of this religious movement, with the primary sacred textual sources legitimating the moral universe drawn from the Declaration of Independence and Constitution.

Imagine people making public policy in conformity to the Constitution. Now that’s an original idea.

What is the operative creed for Republicanity? This is, by no means, an exhaustive list: Money rules and wealth is the greatest good; the natural world is at the disposal of humans who can exploit it with no fear or consequences; every American should own a gun; screw the “golden rule,” the world is populated with evil threats to the American way, including Muslims, gays, immigrants, liberals, and of course that group of individuals who represent the gravest danger to Republicanity: smart people (read: “intellectuals”)[read: Gary Laderman and people who think just like him, because anyone who doesn't agree with him must, ipso facto, be stupid.--DF].

Are there some Republicans who think like this? Sure. Are there some who don’t? Sure. Are there some who believe some of these things and not others? Sure. And I suspect there are many, many Republicans (and conservatives of various other stripes, including–horrors!–Democrats) who would look at this list and say, “you don’t actually know any Republicans, do you? So you’ve just created them out of thin air, old Keith Olbermann shticks, and a fertile imagination?” If this is the way Laderman does his religion scholarship–simply make stuff up, caricature those you don’t like or agree with, misrepresent to make a propagandistic point–I’d hate to be a parent wasting my money on sending a child who planned on majoring in religion to Emory.

4) Theology:

Republicanity is built on a theology of divine presence in national affairs that looks in some instances like a form of theo-fascism—particularly when leaders claim an intimate knowledge of God’s will and being chosen by Him (no goddesses in this religion) to purify America. If we asked all the presidential candidates to state whether they are doing God’s will in the world certainly most, if not all, would answer in the affirmative.

Name-calling and straw men: the stuff that dreams (or hallucinations) are made of. Laderman is no doubt one of those left-wing academics whose head threatens to explode every time he hears the term “Islamofascism,” since as we all know only Christians can be fascists.

Some even assert a direct link and special relationship with God (like Michele Bachmann, who understands herself and her career in divine terms).

I don’t know about Bachmann, who isn’t my cup of tea, but I seem to remember a certain candidate for president who said that his nomination would be remembered by history as ”the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal.” Does it really get any more messianic than that?

As RD’s own Julie Ingersoll and Sarah Posner have demonstrated, a deeply-held and ubiquitous strand of Christian Reconstructionism undergirds many of the positions taken by leaders in the Republican religious movement, and the core of that theology might be boiled down to this simple formula: God is on my side, so I’m right and you’re wrong about what it means to be an American.

I would have been disappointed if he had not gotten the ultimate religious left boogeyman, Christian Reconstruction, in here at some point or another. I’ve read some of what Ingersoll and Posner have written on this subject, and what I’ve read comes across as fact-free paranoia. To say they’ve “demonstrated” anything is like saying the extreme right and extreme left have “demonstrated” that Jews are in fact trying to take over the world because they agree that the Protocols of the Elders of Zion are fake but accurate.

Taken all together, Republicanity is a culture that merges politics and religion (maybe better identified as a form of “poligion,” as one of my teachers used to say) and unashamedly and unreservedly blows apart the longed-for “wall of separation” keeping the two spheres separate. Now more than ever the case can be made that our politics are a form of religion and that religion is the new politics.

I was sure he was going to miss getting in church-state separation, but he pulled it out in the final seconds. Gosh, that was close.

So, you put it all together and what do we have? I think it’s fair to say that Gary Laderman, the chair of the religion department at Emory University, is a partisan political hack who dresses up his hackery in pseudo-scholarly language, thereby hoping to continue to fool the rubes who pay his salary.

But what do I know? I, after all, am not a “professional religionist.”

 

Man the Barricades, the WMHCCs Are Coming

Did you know that the white, male, heterosexual conservative Protestant Christian is an endangered species? And that we should be vewy, vewy afraid of Them? Do you know why? Because Terry Jones, the Koran-burning Florida pastor, is an idiot.

If you don’t get the connection, join the club. This is the argument that Gary Laderman, the director of Religion Dispatches and religion professor at Emory University, tries to make today. See if you can make any more sense out of it than I can:

Egghead scholars and interfaith leaders, bloggers on both sides of the political aisle, and everyday Americans will surely condemn him for his outrageous actions and beliefs, and argue that Jones is an isolated, peripheral figure whose religious views are borderline paranoid delusional, if not well past that line. Are Jones’ actions motivated by authentic religion or dysfunctional psychology? Genuine fear about the threat of another religion or an idiosyncratic psychotic vision distorting religious theology in the throes of irrational hatred?

All I know is that Jones is one of the very few friends that Fred Phelps and the Westboor Baptist Church folks have. That tells me everything I need to know.

While the Wall Street Journal published a recent article that casually identifies Jones as a “Christian pastor,” and other outlets use less tame designators like “radical preacher” or “Koran-burning preacher,” the exact location of Jones within the Christian fold is difficult to pinpoint. Some place him beyond the bounds of Christian theology while others put him smack dab in the middle of engaged Christian fundamentalist activism. Yet regardless of the public disagreements over the rights and values of Preacher Jones, one thing is crystal clear: He represents a dying breed in American society and that, I think, is another if not the critical factor in understanding both his actions and his symbolic presence in the media.

If the “dying breed” is “hateful people who know nothing more of Christianity than they know of curling,” then I’d say he might represent them. And his place in the Christian continuum is “nowhere.” Jones is a cultist, like the Westboor people, and no more representative of authentic Christianity than Jim Jones.

White, male, heterosexual, conservative Christians (WMHCC from here on out) are losing their numbers in American society and could, if some projections hold true, diminish to a small minority in the next 20 years; part of a larger trend that one influential study has labeled the “vanishing Protestant majority.” In a recent analysis by the Public Religion Research Institute based on post-2010 election surveys, the number of white Protestants in America is projected to decline dramatically in the next fifty years. This is one of the most significant demographic shifts in American history.

You can take a look at the first study Laderman mentions, which in fact doesn’t have anything really to do with his conclusion–it doesn’t break data down by race or gender, and doesn’t include lots of people who don’t identify as “Protestant” but who are undoubtedly in that theological tradition; it also says nothing about “conservative” Protestants versus anything else. As for his second link, I couldn’t find what he was talking about.

One can easily see how this might lead to more individuals like Jones entering the culture wars to battle against the perceived moral and mortal threats destroying their peculiar vision of Christian America.

The real stakes in this battle are about sheer survival for these men, and their sense of vulnerability, disintegration, and impotence when facing the radical social changes taking place in 21st-century America. Fear of increasing religious diversity, shifting sexual values, and diminishing economic opportunities is transformed into and then projected out as a moral worldview that embraces bigotry, intolerance, and a commitment to violence when necessary.

Notice how easily he glides from “individuals like Jones” to “these men,” meaning the WMHCC? He doesn’t bother to establish any actual connection between them, which is not surprising, considering most WMHCCs would consider Terry Jones to be the antithesis of what they stand for. He then projects a variety of “fears” upon them, and then simply leaps a canyon and supposes that they are going to react to those “fears” with bigotry and violence. Slick.

On the one hand, this moral universe has been a driving force in US history and an all-too-familiar disposition to value hatred, as I’ve written about before. But on the other hand, and what’s so new and rife with hateful and violent possibilities, is that at this moment in US history WMHCC increasingly perceive their hold on power to be imperiled by social and demographic forces beyond their control.

The picture is indeed grim for this group, what with growing numbers of Americans preferring to identify with no religion; religious pluralism bringing more and more Hindus, Buddhists, Jains, Mormons, Jews, New Agers, Muslims, and a slew of others all around them; the younger evangelical generations showing signs of greater openness to non-heterosexual orientations; myriad versions of Christianity in immigrant communities that are unfamiliar if not downright blasphemous; and a popular culture riddled with hip hop artists, filmmakers, cable comedy variety news shows, and television producers willing to openly mock and demean that moral universe.

This is the thesis: WMHCCs are losing control over society, so it’s only a matter of time before they go postal. Apparently that’s because they’re all haters who can’t deal with diversity, and who get upset at the merest hint of a slight to their faith (it was actually WMHCCs who threatened Salman Rushdie and the artists behind the Danish Muhammad cartoons, doncha know). America is simply filled with Missouri Synod Lutherans and Evangelical Presbyterians and independent Baptists ready to start a jihad over South Park and “Piss Christ.”

But even more radically distressing is the prospect of losing the cultural—dare I say hegemonic—power over American society that is as old as the republic. Is it that outrageous to claim WMHCC have generally been the primary power brokers (in government, in law, in finance, in churches) determining the course and self-definition of the nation? A few Jews here, a smattering of progressives there, and some people of color, to be sure; but if you take the long view of US history, it’s mostly WMHCC who’ve been in charge. This is certainly congruent with recent ruminations about the “triumphant decline of the WASP” most recently identified with the striking absence of white Protestants on the Supreme Court.

While it is true that a quick glance at the US Congress seems to contradict this view, the election of the first non-white president has been fraught with portentous and perilous meanings for WMHCC—to a degree that far exceeds the hysteria ignited when the first and only liberal Catholic was elected president a half century ago. What could be more telling about shifting power structures than the dynamics of the 2008 presidential elections, the selection of the symbolic head of the body politic?

The election of the first non-white president is only “fraught with portentous and perilous meanings” for leftists who are obsessed with race. The “hysteria” that Laderman asserts is solely in his own head. While there are undoubtedly some racists among those who don’t like the president, his attempt to smear an entire group with that label is as odious, and just as bigoted, as any genuine racism. Let’s all repeat so that Professor Laderman can understand it: the reason so many WMHCCs don’t like Barack Obama is not because he’s black, it’s because he’s liberal. Many of those same people are, if conservative blog comment boxes are to be believed, chomping at the bit to vote for someone like Rep. Allan West of South Carolina or Herman Cain, because they love their message and their method of delivering it. Of course, they’re black Republicans, so we all know they aren’t real black people, but you get the point.

Is Terry Jones merely on the fringes of US Protestantism or is he at the vanguard of a new cultural movement taking shape in the tattered, crumbling fragments of a once-dominant presence in the centers of power? When I look into his dull, vacant eyes I certainly see fear, but it’s not a fear of a false Abrahamic faith, or a fear of cultural differences, or a fear of growing religious diversity so much as it’s a fear of the future and an awareness of increasing powerlessness.

Personally, as an American citizen who values religious freedom and appreciates difference, I would like to ignore the reappearance of Jones on the media horizon. But as a historian of American religious cultures I’m shaking in my boots about Jones and others on the fringes who could very well creep in and radically, if not violently, alter America’s future.

Tell you what, doc. Go talk to some of the folks at First Baptist Church of Atlanta, or North Point Church, Alpharetta. They’re both full of WMHCCs who I’m sure would be glad to stand guard over your home and office and protect you from the big, bad looney preacher man and his dozen minions.

 

Makin’ Stuff Up

Kathryn Jean Lopez of National Review Online has a column today in which she refers to a play by “Roman Catholic” playwright Theresa Rebeck that got some attention in the New York Times last week. Ms. Rebeck, who claims to be a Roman Catholic, must be a real piece of work.

Her play, written under a commission from the University of Delaware English and Theater departments, is called “O Beautiful,” and is described as being “a satirical look at the politics of the Tea Party, Glenn Beck and the failed Senate candidate Christine O’Donnell,” which is to say that the school gave her $50,000 of foundation money (the Unidel Foundation had the honor of praying for this) to write an extended op-ed. And that’s not all:

“O Beautiful” also deals with suicide, date rape, gun rights, the founding fathers and, of course, abortion — in a subplot starting with the first scene, in which a pregnant teenager, Alice, seeks counsel from Jesus Christ, who wanders through the high school and characters’ homes without explanation. Jesus, rendered as sympathetic to everyone irrespective of their politics, reaches a provocative conclusion when Alice, who has been raped, asks where in the Bible he opposes abortion.

Alice: Did you ever say, “I’m Jesus, and I say that stupid girls who let guys talk them into going to the back seat of their cars have to have babies?” Did you say that ever?

Jesus: No.

Alice: All you talk about is, be nice to each other! You never said nobody’s allowed to have an abortion.

Jesus: No.

Alice: So can I? Can I? Can I?

Jesus: Honestly, I — I don’t really have an issue with it.

It is true that Jesus never said nobody can have an abortion. He also never said that nobody should have sex with a weasel, poison their mother-in-law, pay taxes using camel dung, or refer to God as “Mr. Bojangles.” So I guess He doesn’t have an issue with any of those things, either. Oh, and by the way–Jesus never, ever used the word “nice.”

In writing this opus, Ms. Rebeck didn’t start with Jesus, of course, but with her own politics:

“So I started with Alice’s story, but the politics of our day was also on my mind, and I felt particularly disturbed by how Jesus was being distorted over and over on the right,” added Ms. Rebeck, a University of Notre Dame graduate…

If I was Notre Dame, I’d ask for my sheepskin back. What she’s saying, in essence, is that she’s pro-abortion, so Jesus must be also. I mean, He’d never disagree with me, would He?

The director of the play and chairman of the university’s theater department, Sanford Robbins, justified this nonsense this way:

“Part of the university’s mission is to provoke thought and debate,” Mr. Robbins said. “And even people who may disapprove of her Jesus will see, I hope, that this is a loving, caring Jesus.”

Truth be told, He’s not. He’s a Jesus who doesn’t care about the life of the one to be killed, doesn’t care about the effect of abortion on women, doesn’t care about truth. In short, He’s a 21st century moral relativist who thinks that putting self first is a great way to live. Which is to say that He is apparently the playwright rather than any Jesus anyone has ever actually met.

One more thing. See those ellipses above? Here’s the end of that paragraph, which deserves to stand on its own:

…who, in her 20s, was a ghostwriter of Mass homilies for a company that paid $50 for weekday services and $150 for Sundays. “I have huge admiration for Jesus Christ and for his incredible compassion for all people.”

When I read this, my jaw dropped. There’s actually a company out there paying pro-abortion “Catholics” to ghostwrite homilies for Catholic priests to read at Catholic Masses? There are actually Catholic priests out there who, rather than write their own sermons, use the scribblings of people who repudiate Catholic teaching and make up stuff about Jesus based on their politics? Is there a Catholic bishop out there who’d like to comment on this? Because I’m speechless.

 

In Other News, Water is Wet

CNN runs a “Belief Blog” that, according to the description, “covers the faith angles of the day’s biggest stories, from breaking news to politics to entertainment, fostering a global conversation about the role of religion and belief in readers’ lives.” Apparently there’s a raging controversy that has tossed up the scribblings of one Timothy Beal, a religion professor at Case Western Reserve University. Dr. Beal has made a monumental discovery that he wants to share with CNN readers: apparently, there are multiple versions of this Bible thingy. Who knew?

Ronald Reagan once said that if he were shipwrecked on a desert island and could have only one book to read for the rest of his life, it would be the Bible.

I wish someone would’ve asked, which one? Which version? Protestant? Jewish? Catholic? Orthodox? Syriac? Each has a different table of contents.

The Jewish one obviously doesn’t include the New Testament, but it also has a different order, beginning with the Torah, considered the core of scriptures, then the Nevi’im, or “prophets,” then the Ketuvim, or “writings.”

And you know that when you put the books in a different order, that can be confusing and stuff. Someone might turn the page after finishing Kings and come to Isaiah rather than Chronicles, and start questioning their faith and wondering if maybe Scientology has the answers and, and, well, I just can’t imagine the problems that would stir up.

The Catholic Bible includes all of the Protestant Bible plus seven additional books, known as the Apocrypha, as well as significantly different versions of and additions to the books of Esther and Daniel.

Different Orthodox Bibles (Greek, Ethiopian, Slavonic, etc.) include those plus other apocryphal books as well as a collection of poems known as the Book of Odes. So does the traditional Syriac Bible, but it does not include Revelation and four other New Testament books found in other canons.

This has, obviously, been a point of debate among Christians, and I don’t want to downplay the important of the argument. But it is also the case that most of the difference between Christians don’t revolve around whether Tobit is in the canon or not.

And which translation would he bring? There are dozens available, and they vary widely in both style and theology. Many of the most popular ones today are highly interpretive “meaning-driven” versions in which translators don’t translate word-for-word but instead write what they believe conveys the equivalent meaning of larger blocks of text.

So “my cup runneth over” might become “you blow me away.” Or a passage buried in Leviticus that prohibits a man from lying with another man as though with a woman (other no-no’s in this list include adultery, sex with a woman on her period, and marrying a divorcee or a brother’s widow) becomes a universal ban on homosexuality. Put two translations side-by-side, and you may find yourself hard pressed to know if they’re even translating the same passage.

This is the stuff you expect from a village atheist, not a religion professor, who should know that the vast majority of translational difference don’t make any difference in what Scripture teaches. In fact, most varying translations are easily discerned to be saying just about the same thing. As for the multiplicity of versions, that may be good or bad, but again has little to do with actually understanding what the text says.

Oh, and that reference to homosexuality is probably the key to understanding where Dr. Beal is coming from. There isn’t actually any debate about how the verses that refer to homsexual behavior should be translated; the real debate is over how they should be applied.

And which edition would he bring? A good old-fashioned floppy black leather one? Or a niche-market edition like “The Golfer’s Bible,” loaded with full-color pictures and “inspirational messages teed up to reach the golfer’s heart.”

Then again, depending on the terrain and climate of his island, “The Waterproof Bible: Sportsman’s Edition” might be a more practical choice. How about one of the many Manga Bibles on the market? Or a Biblezine, a Bible in magazine form filled with jump-off-the-page callouts and graphic features on balancing work and play, shopping, healthy eating, and finding love? Or one of the thousands of study Bibles loaded with notes and commentaries telling you what it means according this or that (usually conservative) viewpoint?

And at this point he’s just making himself look foolish. Ask yourself this: suppose you listen, back-to-back, to two versions of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. One is by the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra under the direction of Herbert von Karajan, the other by the Wiener Philharmoniker under Leonard Bernstein. (I use these because I’ve heard them both.) Are they recordings of the same symphony? Of course. Are they identical to one another? No–there are small, minor variations that reflect the personality and interpretation of the conductor. If you take von Karajan to a desert island rather than Bernstein, do you have to spend the rest of your pitiful existence decrying the fact that your on a desert island without Beethoven’s Ninth?

Or take an example even closer to the subject at hand. In my library, I’ve got two editions of The Way of a Pilgrim, the classic work of Russian spirituality. One is the classic translation by Reginald French, the other is translated by Gleb Pokrovsky and contains annotations. There are minor differences in the language, but the message is clear in both. The annotations in the Pokrovsky version are helpful, but not essential. So, if I take French’s version to a desert island, so I have The Way of a Pilgrim with me or not?

Dr. Beal sums up what he’s getting at with all this when he writes:

There is no “the Bible,” no book that is the one and only Bible. There are lots and lots of Bibles. They come in many different physical and digital forms with a great variety of content – different canons, translations, notes, commentaries, pictures, and so on.

To which I say, what’s your point? Anyone who knows anything about the Bible, who has taken any time at all to acquaint himself with it and its background, knows all this. There is nothing mysterious about it, and there’s no real significance to most of it except the canon question. So what is he really getting at?

I suppose you can probably guess the agenda through the reference to homosexuality. It isn’t about the answers, but about the questions, allegedly:

Life is crazy uncertain, so it’s understandable that many of us want religion and especially the Bible to offer deliverance from it. But it doesn’t. It’s not a rock but a river, not a book of answers but a library of questions. When we take it seriously, and soberly, it calls us deeper into the wilderness – away from the sunny shoreline of the island and toward the uncharted interior.

Yep, the Bible: it’s not a book, it’s a map of Transylvania in Klingon; it’s not a religious text, it’s a broken GPS system. It’s not a book of answers, so we get to provide those ourselves, and voilà–we get to remake God and His commands in our own, liberal, academic, postmodern image. Ain’t life without any answers save the ones you’re comfortable with grand?

 

News Flash: Academics Don’t Like Evangelicals

National Public Radio presents an interesting story regarding the experience of religious conservatives in academia. There’s some interesting survey data, and one laugh-out-loud moment:

When Elaine Howard Ecklund began asking top scientists whether they believe in God, she got a surprise. Ecklund, an assistant professor at Rice University and author of the book Science Vs. Religion, polled 1,700 scientists at elite universities. Contrary to the stereotype that most scientists are atheists, she says, nearly half of them say they are religious. But when she did follow up interviews, she found they practice a “closeted faith.”

“They just do not want to bring up that they are religious in an academic discussion. There’s somewhat of almost a culture of suppression surrounding discussions of religion at these kinds of academic institutions,” Ecklund says.

She says the scientists worried that their colleagues would believe they were politically conservative — or worse, subscribed to the theory of intelligent design. Ecklund says they all insisted on anonymity.

Without seeing the poll, it’s impossible to say for sure, but the interesting thing here is that there’s no indication that the half of respondents who say they’re “religious” are actually conservative or orthodox believers. They may all be Reform Jews or members of the United Church of Christ. It sounds as if the prejudice isn’t against conservative religious, but those who claim faith of any kind, at least if the NPR report is accurate. But the next item nails it down a bit better:

And it appears that climate may extend beyond science departments. A poll of 1,200 academics by the Institute for Jewish and Community Research found that more than half said they have unfavorable feelings toward evangelical Christians.

Aryeh Weinberg, who co-authored the study, says one reason for this is that there are relatively few evangelicals in academia.

I guess it’s easier to dislike those with whom you have nothing to do, and know little about.

“The question is, why? Do they self-select out, and if they do, why are they self-selecting out? Are they actually not hired? Are they trying to get hired but not getting hired? Are they getting hired then being forced out, not getting tenure?” Weinberg asks.

I expect the answer to her questions is, “all of the above.” As to why evangelicals self-select out, it only makes sense that most people do not want to jump into a work environment where they know most of their colleagues will dislike them simply because they are traditionally religious. The level of vitriol–often ignorant, often personal–aimed at evangelicals on college campuses is not something a lot of people would willingly subject themselves to if they had alternative.

Next came the LOL:

Randall Balmer, a professor of American religious history at Columbia University and an Episcopal priest, disagrees.

“I haven’t encountered that hostility at all,” Balmer says. “I’ve been a visiting professor at places like Emory and Northwestern and Yale and Princeton and other places. And I simply have not encountered that sort of hostility to my claims of faith or my professions of faith.”

Of course Balmer has never experienced hostility. His outspoken political liberalism, combined with his revisionist Episcopalianism, make him a completely non-controversial, non-threatening trophy prof (“look, see, we don’t discriminate against religious academics!”) The fact that he has repeatedly attacked evangelicals in print makes him just that much more presentable within the monolithic university.

Anyway, there’s more worth looking at. Check it out.

(Via T19.)

 

Illinois Prof to Have Case Reviewed

The University of Illinois religion professor who got fired for teaching about Catholicism in his Catholicism class is going to have his case reviewed by a faculty committee that will hopefully be more than a cover-your-butt rubber stamp for the school’s administration. According to the Associated Press:

A faculty group at the University of Illinois’ flagship campus will review the decision to fire an adjunct religion professor for saying he agreed with Catholic doctrine on homosexuality.

Urbana- Champaign campus Chancellor Robert Easter said Monday he hopes to have a decision on the firing of Kenneth Howell from the Faculty Senate’s Committee on Academic Freedom and Tenure by the time fall classes start. The review is to determine whether Howell’s academic freedom was violated.

“We want to be able to reassure ourselves there was no infringement on academic freedom here,” new university President Michael Hogan told members of the Faculty Senate on Monday. “This is a very, very important, not to mention a touchy and sensitive, issue. Did this cross the line somehow?”

I’m not sure how you can say that Howell’s firing didn’t “cross the line,” if Hogan is talking about the line between the university as a bastion of independent thought that welcomes a genuine diversity of views and the university as left-wing indoctrination center. There are clearly people in his administration who think that academic freedom is fine unless you dissent from left-wing orthodoxy. Hopefully, one or more of them will wind up paying a price for operating on that mindset, rather than being allowed to help continue the process of killing freedom of thought and speech in American higher education.

(Via Hot Air.)

 

Fired Illinois Prof Strikes Back

Or rather, his attorney has. The Alliance Defense Fund has taken up the case of Dr. Kenneth Howell, the University of Illinois religion professor who was fired essentially because the school couldn’t stand up to a single anonymous complaint from a student thug. David French of the ADF put the case in a nutshell:

A university cannot censor professors’ speech–including classroom speech related to the topic of the class–merely because certain ideas ‘offend’ an anonymous student. To fire a professor for teaching the actual subject matter of his course is outrageous. It’s ridiculous that a school would fire a professor without even giving him a chance to defend himself when he simply taught Catholic beliefs in a class about Catholic beliefs.

The First Amendment protects the ability of faculty to speak freely, especially when the material is of direct relevance to the class. Professors’ careers cannot be made to stand or fall based on the emotions of intolerant, anonymous students who do not yet understand that opposing viewpoints exist within a free society.

Travis Barham of the ADF Center for Academic Freedom has sent the university a letter outlining the facts, offering legal analysis, accusing the university of giving into a “heckler’s veto,” and demanding that Dr. Howell be reinstated. Personally, I almost hope the university balks at doing so. The longer this is before the public, the longer the opportunity to inform the public, using a graphic example, what their publicly-funded universities have all too often become.