the parish

Christianity Today Shilling for Universal Pictures and Blurring Several Lines

I received the latest issue of Christianity Today this week. I admit to being a bit confused at first. Front and center under the normal CT banner was Steve Carrell dressed as Noah, surrounded by animals and backed by an ark. At first I thought, "Finally, CT is getting serious about popular culture and they're doing a cover on religious films." Then I opened the magazine and saw the real cover inside the advertisement. I finally noticed the word "advertisement" above and to the right of the CT banner on the cover. The entire cover, front and back, was an ad for Evan Almighty mocked up as a CT cover.

It's not unusual for magazines to wrap their product in an ad. Books & Culture does it pretty regularly, and they are CT's sister publication. Usually though, B&C is advertising for subscription renewals or gift subscriptions. The ad is obviously an ad; even the paper stock is different. The CT ad though is a different matter. Am I worried that someone will be fooled into believing this is the real cover? No. Am I quibbling? Possibly. Is this that big a deal? Maybe not. But blurring the line between advertising and content is an ongoing problem with magazines.

By featuring the Universal Pictures film as the cover of their magazine, including their own banner, is CT making a tacit or even explicit recommendation? I've never gone for the argument that religious groups make that churches or ministries ought not advertise in magazines with objectionable material: adult ads, massage parlors, strip clubs, etc. The reasoning being, if you're trying to advertise for people who aren't Christian or who might need whatever ministry you provide, why would you not advertise in a publication they actually read? Most churches use the Yellow Pages, after all, and you can't control the content of the Yellow Pages: whorehouses, strip clubs, liquor stores, attorneys--it's all there. However, advertising in magazines is usually set off from content, and the line between an ad and a story or editorial content ought to be clearly demarcated.

I have no idea how much Universal or one of the other four distribution companies paid for the ad. I'm sure it was a substantial amount for CT to even consider the idea, and a full-color ad on the front and back of a national magazine has to cost more than a little. So what does CT think of the movie? It ought to matter since they've loaned their name to Universal for the ad. Maybe we'll have an editorial or publisher's letter that explains the reasoning. I sincerely hope that no one at CT has anything to do with the production of the explicity religious film. That too probably needs to be answered. Credibility is an expensive commodity to lose, and CT is precariously near the edge of losing credibility when they blur the line between journalism and marketing.

Hedges vs. Hitchens in a Granolaville Slugfest

Thanks to J-Fo for sending this along. If you thought Hitchens was an ass before, you'll love this.

What's It Take to Get This Job?

U.S. Representative Frank Lucas (R-OK, 3rd Dist.) sent out a newsletter this week informing his constituents what he has been up to. Frank is supporting the typical Oklahoma conservative legislation: a fence on the border with Mexico, control of the border shifted to Homeland Security (because of all the terrorists coming across that border, I assume?), alternative fuels to make us less dependent on foreign oil, etc. On page two was this beauty though.

Frank Lucas voted to retain God in the Pledge of Allegiance, and he supports the right of state courts to decide how legislation and use of the pledge will be administered in their respective states. No surprise there. But then Lucas has a quote about liberals trying to remove all references to God from our culture. "What's next?" He asks. "Are they going remove the references to God from our money, from the Declaration of Independence, and the Constitution?"

Well, Frank, this may come as a shock to you, but the Constitution doesn't mention God. So either the liberals already managed to expunge all the references, or the document's authors chose not to include it in the first place. This is Oklahoma, after all, so I suspect that we'll have a bill submitted by some lunk-head conservative state congressman demanding that Oklahoma adopt a resolution not to support attempts to remove God from the U.S. Constitution. I guess I'm naive to have hoped that a U.S. Congressman would know something about the Constitution. Silly me. This is Oklahoma, after all...

Business Week on Xianz with Comments from the parish

Ms. Holahan interviewed me for this piece last week. I'm always surprised at the quotes journalists choose. I said some far less measured things, but she took the high road. Alas...but still a good piece.

Community for the Sake of...

I don't find this a great difficulty in the practical sense, so I'm always curious why Christians find it difficult in both the conceptual and practical sense. I have a community. I think I've always been part of one because I believe in friendship. I believe that people enrich my life, challenge me, and provide the moments that I will reflect on when I'm old enough to forget even their names and faces. Christians are forever asking what a community is supposed to look like. I'm convinced it's because church is such an artificial construct that genuine friendship has a difficult time flourishing. Typically, the people who are most worried about community are the ones in charge of the small group ministry or the poor schmuck who has to explain to some ecclesial oversight group why they have less members this year than last. I'm not sure the average pewsitter has the same set of concerns. They work and have friends at work. They play ball or their kids play sports. They go to school. They have friends from college. We can debate the depth and quality of those friendships another time, but I want to answer the question that has been put to me over and over: since I'm abandoning the idea of an organized worship service (sorry, I'm not calling it church), what will I do for community or what will community look like post-congregationally?

First, I'm giving up on corporate worship services because they are too much like corporate and not enough like worship. I have no idea what the word worship is supposed to mean anymore, but I do know that marketing strategies have so invaded the western church that we no longer meet to worship. There are other, higher goals: growth, money, buildings, young people, diversity, vocational ministry, budgets, etc. If it was about worship, people would be content to gather in a small group with none of the trappings that make suburban Christianity so distasteful: lights, loud music, wrap-around mics, peppy pastors, vapid sermons, and programs. (God save me from the fuckin' programs.) Church has become a concept that is begging for reificiation, and different groups reify it every week in ways that look much like ego-projection or psychological gratification.

Second, I didn't go to church for community in the first place. I went because I honestly believed there was this character within an all-encompassing grand narrative named God that ordered existence in a way that offered worship (definition another subject) as a means to grace. I have come to believe that there is indeed a character in a grand narrative, but he ain't writing any new chapters, and the narrative is all but closed to scrutiny or understanding. I found people at that place who became part of my community, but if people are looking for a church to become their community, they are seeking in vain.

The community ought to extend far beyond any entity called First Churh of Anything. My community includes people who don't believe in God, who believe in a different kind of God, who work in bars and restaurants and offices and hospitals and who don't work at all. It includes people of different socio-economic status. It includes people I call friend and people I don't; some are acquaintances and some are folks I genuinely don't like.

In short, community is the group of people with whom I share my life. I don't need an artificial construct called church to create a bond of commonality. Inasmuch as I've agreed to progressive levels of openness and honesty, people within my community become my friends. Inasmuch as church exists as a false construct, I find that I don't need it to participate in life or in the redemption of the world. That has always been done relationally, not programmatically. Peace.

Let the Lionizing and Skewering and Caricaturing Begin

Falwell is dead. The hot, well-informed hairdresser wife called me to tell me today. I was a little stunned. I know that at 73 death was a very real possibility at any point, but I've grown up with Falwell defining and embodying the right side of the Christian spectrum. It is arresting to consider religion in the U.S. without him. CNN started airing excerpts from Christiana Amanpour's interview with Falwell that was originally going to be part of a special news report. Now that Falwell has died, it appears this is the last major interview he ever did. Before cutting to the interview, CNN talked to a spokesperson from Falwell's ministry who described him as a man who preached the word of God and the love of God across the spectrum. Umm...yeah...not so much.

Falwell typified the sectarian Protestant ethos in U.S. Christian fundamentalism. Always convinced that his understanding of the phrases "word of God" and "love of God" was the correct one, Falwell was quick to eliminate billions from the grace of God. In his last interview with Amanpour he insisted that he stood by his post-9/11 statements about God removing his "shield of protection" from America because of the sins of homosexuality, abortion, and redefining the family. America would suffer the judgment of God for these corporate sins, but not, mind you, for the previous sins of slavery, segregation, patriarchalism, racism, bigotry, triumphalism, arrogance, nation tampering, assassination, nuclear proliferation, consumerism, etc. Nope. Those weren't sins, and we know that because God had his shield of protection around us while we practiced those things.

This triumphalist streak in fundamentalism is what is most disturbing because it won't allow for an uneasy truce. It demands the Christianization of government, culture, science, school, history, economics, and the arts. The lessons of Constantine aren't sufficient for this type of American fundamentalism. While caricaturing the Catholic Church as ignorant of the doctrines of sola fide and sola scriptura, American fundamentalism as embodied by Falwell is practicing the same sort of Constantinianism that led to the extremes of the Roman Church's authority and abuse. While fundangelicals mock secularists and liberals for predicting theocracy, they rewrite U.S. and church history to make the narratives more amenable to their theocratic tendencies.

I know, it sounds alarmist and apocalyptic and all that, but the death of Falwell will be one of the major stories of the year (decade) in religion because he was one of the architects of the fundamentalist resurgence in American churches and in American politics. His mark is on the so-called culture wars and he helped frame much of the alarmist rhetoric and utterly stupid notions of Christians in America as a persecuted minority. His cries of victimization and his intransigence have twisted the national debate beyond the limits of salvage and have given permission to millions of fundangelicals to feel like they are living in an increasingly secular world run by godless liberals. At the same time, they fail to recognize that the homicidal impulses that drive militant, fundamentalist Islam have been present in their churches from the beginning of the fourth century.

If there is an epitaph for Falwell it would be, "He left the state of the debate far worse than he found it." Still, the man accomplished much, and it would be dishonest to fail to mention the many shelters, crisis centers and homes for single mothers his ministry provided. Enigmatic, bombastic, and hateful to his core, he still occasionally caught a vision of what Christianity could be. Alas, it was tied up in the whole Protestant fundangelical bloody Jesus God will send 'em to hell kind of Christianity. With his death, we can hope that a kinder voice emerges, but I won't be holding my breath.

How My Beloved BBC Got It Exactly Wrong

I listen to BBC World Service on the way to and from work most days (God bless XM radio). Their reporting is normally excellent, and the British accent convinces me that whatever they say is true. There's just something reassuring about that accent. People that talk like that can't lie, can they?

Pope Benedict is on a junket to Brazil this week, and the BBC was doing a series of stories related to his visit. The rate of emigration from the Catholic Church in South and Central America has increased from 4 to 16 percent per year in the past 20 years, and Benedict was going to address some of the disaffection. A large percentage of the ex-Catholics are joining what the BBC called "evangelical churches." In reality, Pentecostal and Charismatic churches are exploding in the southern hemisphere, and most of those would qualify as more fundamentalist than evangelical, not that there is much of a difference these days. This exodus is of grave concern to the Pope, according to the BBC. They reported that many people were weary of the Catholic Church's increasing irrelevance to real life and its archaic hierarchicalism and rules.

Juxtaposed with this story was the story of politicians in Mexico City who recently legalized abortion. Bishops in Mexico were threatening to excommunicate the politicians responsible. The BBC went to their reporter on the street who reported the disaffection in Mexico as well. The BBC then asked the question, "Is the Catholic Church's position on abortion and contraception the reason for the growing disaffection?" Great question if you know nothing about Christianity. Horrible question if you realize that the chance of the "evangelical" churches being more permissive on abortion is exactly zero. Charismatic and Pentecostal churches are not known for their liberal abortion views. Anyone who follows religion ought to know that. The juxtaposition seemed intentional in order to take a jab at the Catholic Church for their "archaic" views.

The anchor then moved to an interview with Philip Jenkins, professor of history and religious studies at Penn State. He just published a book about Christianity in the global south, "The New Faces of Christianity: Believing the Bible in the Global South. (Books & Culture has a review of it this issue.) The anchor then asked Jenkins what the Pope's visit meant for South America and specifically mentioned the exodus of members related to abortion and contraception. Jenkins, without flinching, said: "Those aren't the main issues." He then talked about the immediate experience of God proclaimed by Pentecostalism and the more liberal roles of women in the church in Pentecostal/Charismatic fellowships.

So, I suppose you have to hand it to the BBC for interviewing the right guy, but I'm disappointed that my favorite news source is as ignorant about religion as most American sources.

Regarding My Recent Descent (or Ascent, Depending on Your Perspective) into Atheism

There is a rumor afoot that I'm now an atheist. As appealing as the idea is to me, I've yet to embrace it. Even reading Christopher Hitchens's funny and insightful new book "god is not Great" wasn't enough to make me take the plunge however much it might have solidified some of my other recent thoughts about the absurdity of faith confessions. (Read it if you have time. You won't be sorry.) Hitchens takes shots at all the major religions, but his major issue is with varieties of theism, especially revealed religion. His points ought to be considered, but my suspicion is that Christians especially will read and begin the loathesome phrase, "Yeah, but..."

Hitchens is correct that there is something patently absurd about human claims to know anything definitive about God, or god, as he puts it. After reading a few chapters about revelation, I got to thinking about reading the Bible backwards, or anthropologically, as it were. What I mean is, what if you wanted to compile an oracle or two and you wanted someone to believe these were the words of God? How would you approach it? Here's how the Bible approaches it: God gives us reasoning faculties; creates a world that operates pretty consitently; gives us pretty good rules to live by (except for the ones about women marrying their rapists and alleged adulteresses drinking bitter water to prove their innocence and whatnot); and just at the point where our reasoning kicks in, sHe goes and does something positively batshit crazy like order the slaughter of an entire village or send bears to maul children to death for making fun of a bald, cranky prophet. At that point, rather than whoever is writing this thing telling us, "Yeah, YHWH had a bad day," or, "You just can't trust G_d sometimes," some joker writes in the voice of YHWH: "My thoughts are not your thoughts, and my ways are not your ways." Great. So what then is the point of these reasoning faculties we've been given? If we're meant to abandon them at the critical juncture when we ought to be able to discern good from evil, then what good are they? Why not make us in such a way that we understand what the hell she is doing?

Wait, there's an answer for that one too. "Who is the clay to say to the potter, 'Why have you made me thus?'" Yeah, thanks. That's really helpful. So, let me see if I understand this now: I'm to go about my business using the reasoning faculties God has given me except when I'm dealing with God? Is that about right? This is why, in Hitchens's framework, it's best to find an easier solution than making theistic proclamations about how God is. And I believe he's right. Isn't it far simpler to say that Christians (all theists for that matter) are wrong about God instead of making our concept of God conform to some lunatic ramblings from the iron age? And I'm not talking about open theism here either. That particular line of thought, so appealing to me when I was trying to bend the concept of God around the idea of revealed religion, creates theodic problems just as sticky as classic theism. I'm saying we're simply wrong. We don't know. If there is a God, and I still can't help my foolish belief, it's likely that it's too simple or too complex for revealed religion. As the hot, savvy hairdresser wife asked a couple years ago, "Who was this Abraham guy to say he'd heard from God and there was only one? Why should I believe him?" Well, dear, because the Bible says so. What I'm saying is, if you were going to claim to be speaking for God, it would be necessary to write just those sorts of things so that you could buttress your argument and anticipate objections ahead of time. That's precisely what someone would do. At least I think it is.

Thanks for your concern about my nascent atheism, but the rumors of my abominable ruminations have been somewhat overstated.

credo quia absurdum

Yeah, not sure what Tertullian had in mind here, but I'm pretty sure I disagree. I think I've arrived at the point at which I'm willing to say all reasonable claims about God are actually absurd. I say reasonable because I do believe that intelligent people can believe in a supreme being who is not an invisible pink unicorn, and that belief will have more justifiability than the invisible pink unicorn. However, after working through these issues for 42 years, and having listened to all the arguments from people of many different faiths, and having found no consensus among them, and having found that millions of people call themselves Christian and don't do anything about it, I think I'm ready to say that all their claims are absurd. It is a discussion betwixt insiders with a vested interest. I no longer have a vested interest.

Let me be clear, I'm not saying "I'm a good Christian and I'm disillusioned because the church is full of hypocrites." I'm not a good person. I find Christianity or Buddhism or Judaism or any other serious attempt at faith or ethics to be exceedingly difficult. I am saying that there might be a God, and there might not be a god, but until and unless something impinges upon my senses, I'm prepared to disbelieve almost any claim at this point. Why would I believe if there is no demonstrable difference between believing and disbelieving? If the answer to the question of "who is Jesus?" is a matter of heaven or hell, it's a God not worthy of worship (leaving aside the absurd idea of worship). The hot, hairdresser wife asked me the other day about this newfound disbelief. She wanted to know why I felt free to disbelieve and construct a humanistic ethic. "Because, if there is a God, he has far more to answer for than we do," I said, somewhat glibly. On reflection though, I think it's true--at least it's true if theists are correct about God. I also think I borrowed the phrase, but I can't remember from whom.

All this to say that while I find church and religion fascinating, and while I'll probably continue to write and think about them, I find almost zero credibility in any claim to revelation, personal relationships with Jesus, theodicies, and epiphanies. Call it a modern megilloth if you must, but we appear to be on our own and we're left to sort it out. It's easier to believe that's because things happened willy-nilly than to believe god had some grand plan. If the best God is capable of is a class A cluster-fuck, then you'd be better off worshipping your crazy aunt or your pervert uncle. Peace.