A Postscript to the Consensus: Why Sookie Stackhouse Ought to Bang a Werewolf

Vampires are intensely boring. It's all death, all the time. Death and blood and violent sex and then sleeping during the day. After that, more death and blood and violent sex, followed by the occasional political machination to usurp some sovereign's authority, and then back to the earth for some more sleep. Sookie is bored with it. The werewolf is sexy. He's primal. He's simple. Sookie ought to do him and tell Bill Compton to stay dead, like really dead, not vampire dead. 

It's a bizarre analogy, I know, but it's the best pop culture reference I had for the conversation between Rachel Held Evans and Ken Ham. They were sparring over this Tennessean story that was picked up by some national news outlets. No, Rachel is not Sookie, and Ken is not Bill. That's not the point. We outsiders are Sookie. The Church is Bill Compton. Not sure where Rachel fits in this analogy. I like what she has to say, and I only disagree with one incredibly important part.

The idea of reform was addressed in the last post, particularly my skepticism about the American Church's ability to reform itself. That led to three comments I want to address and a message that shall remain anonymous unless the writer chooses to identify himself. Leighton first wondered about an abstract concept called Church. He's painfully smart, and here are his words:

I think a good test to see who fits in the category described in your first paragraph would be to see who's talking about saving "the Church," as though there is such a thing. Those who are involved with actual living people and attending to their needs don't ever seem to feel the need to justify their involvement in feeding the hungry and comforting the oppressed. It's the ones who cry the loudest about reclaiming (or worse, preserving) the institution who are in the danger zone. By the time you have to retreat to abstract ideas to find something of value, the war is long lost.

I agree with him. It's an overused word, and it needs some definition. What I meant when I used it was the organizational structure formed by the evangelical/fundamentalist consensus, which is to say, many denominational churches in the evangelical category, as well as most independent churches in the charismatic/pentecostal tradition.

Cheek said that it's impossible to institutionalize without succumbing to the failings of institutionalization, a process that eliminates the possibility of reform. I think that's a fair paraphrase. It's actually way smarter when he says it:

I'm convinced that any reform movement that takes the institutionalizing step past its first generation is doomed to fail because institutions are ultra-conservative by their very nature. As soon as you start paying executive directors and hiring summer interns, you give up the will to overturn the system since despite whatever you might say, you are now a part of that system.

The message went like this, sort of: a German monk was talking about the need for renaissance in the Church because it was impossible to reform structures that were flawed to begin with. That sounds right to me.

The last email was from Matt Mikalatos, and he's the author of Imaginary Jesus, a book I reviewed rather uncharitably. Matt has apparently forgiven me, and speaks very kindly to me now. His comment was that he hopes that reform can still happen in the Church. Here are his actual words:

...as one of those evil evangelical people who wants your precious (yes, I wants it), of course I remain hopeful that meaningful change can come from within the church. From, you know, focusing on Jesus. I know, even people in the church seem to think that's idiotic.

Before we get back to Sookie, it's safe to say I'm skeptical of Matt's hope for reform from within. I believe vested interests count more than principles when it comes to organizations, even religious organizations. (How else to explain the cover-up of pedophiles in the Catholic Church? Or the Health & Wealth "Gospel"? Or Rwanda?) But my last post in the series illustrated why I'm deeply skeptical of the chances for reform, and what I missed, Cheek nailed. Leighton is right, of course, that a broader definition of church that takes into account "Christ-followers" without regard to their relationship to an organizational entity is far more capable of reform than an organizational structure with all the correlative vested interests. (That's an extrapolation from his post, albeit a fair one, I think.) And the monk is right, of course, that you can't reform a system that is so corrupt and so deep into its death rattle that it looks like a sewer system installed in the 18th century. Can you keep fixing the leaks, or do you eventually have to rip the whole thing out and start over? Hmmm. Sometimes broken really means broken, especially when the congregants already believe they're saved and that is what matters. Holy baby Jesus, I've said all along that substitutionary atonement breeds complacency and arrogance. Please show me where I'm wrong.

Anyway, Rachel is irritated with Ken Ham because so many of her friends have left the church over the creation/evolution issue. Really? You must come from a very provincial group. Perhaps that is their issue, but most young people leave the church for radically different reasons: they like fucking, drinking, smoking, dancing, philosophy, justice, or a myriad of reasons having to do with a loathing of hypocrisy, politics, or human weakness. They seldom leave over creation/evolution. I'm sure it's a problem in fundamentalist churches, but it hardly constitutes a movement. The real problem is soteriology and methodology, but I've said enough about that. I only mention Rachel because of Sookie. The other possibility for this analogy is that the institutional church is Bill and those who want reform are Sookie. The werewolf is the hope of reform by means of a different path.

If Matt gets what he wants, and I really am on his side, and his next book is called Night of the Living Dead Christians, so he has a vested interest in supernatural, monster metaphors, then Sookie better dump Bill and get to humping werewolves, because you can't bring back the dead, unless you're Jesus, and the church is only interested in a particular Jesus, not the real one, a reality Matt understands too well. The Jesus who died "just for me" is fine, but the Jesus who wants me not to be a dick, well, that's a bit too much to ask. And the Jesus who isn't interested in issues like literalism and creation/evolution is not Bill's Jesus. Bill's Jesus is serious and hard and consumed with shit that doesn't matter, like six-day creation. I mean, fuck justice, we've got to figure out whether Jesus actually rode a velociraptor or not. The metaphor, although stretched to the breaking point is pretty solid, and the metaphor requires that there be a reevaluation of priorities, and it's best to consider hybrid forms, kind of like werewolves.

Comments

[Mike McVey]

Just wanted to say thanks to you for all the recent posts. So, um... thanks.

[Leighton]

Your metaphor is even funnier when you stand a vampire and a werewolf side by side and realize that one eats flesh and the other drinks blood; between them, they've got the whole eucharist covered.

I actually left the church mostly over the evolution/creation issue, though it was just as much the Rachel Evanses as the Ken Hams that I couldn't abide. My reasoning was along the Augustinian lines of "If you're going to take a stand for things that are demonstrably lies, or make your first priority to make peace with con artists and authoritarian psychotics, there's no reason to trust any other aspect of the institution either." (Leaving theism was a different reason and off topic in this post.)

But I agree that nearly everyone who leaves does so for reasons other than that, and I daresay that those who are less infected with the privilege of the educated young are more likely to walk away because they're appalled at the institution's combination of willful ignorance of human experience and depraved indifference to human suffering.

And just to be clear, I don't begrudge Ms. Evans her stand on principle, and wish her well, and hope she gets somewhere--but when the voice of reform is crying "Hey, maybe we should stop lying, or at least stop being cruel to one another because some people don't want to believe lies," it's long past time for a renaissance--rebirth implying, of course, the death of the institution.

[Matt Mikalatos]

I have never understood why the evolution question is "the" question in many churches (I understand the historical reasons for it, but not the continuing emphasis on it). I've always found it ironic that the darling of evangelicalism, Mr. C.S. Lewis was himself an evolutionist (and it would be a stretch to label him an evangelical by most definitions, anyway). I can't tell you how many "evangelism" classes I've sat through where someone was trying to explain how to prove evolution false. It's an odd thing to prioritize and you can tease it out pretty easily by asking an evangelical "Would you rather have someone be a Christian evolutionist or a non-Christian creationist?" When it's couched like that they can often see the ludicrous nature of what they're doing (once they get over the shocking revelation that you can be a creationist and be, say, Buddhist rather than Christian).

Also, let's be honest... if the church was able to provide velociraptor rides, every single one of us would be waiting in line on Sunday morning.

[Leighton]

Matt, my guess is that evo/cre is so popular because it serves as a good fulcrum for authoritarians to exert themselves within the evangelical bubble. Two observations:

1) Notice that Ken Ham's argument isn't that a reasonable review of the evidence clearly shows that his view of 6-day creation is the most likely. It's an appeal to the omnipotent authority of his god, the Bible.

2) Part of the authoritarian personality needs to distinguish Us from Them (i.e. followers of the Authority from non-followers) in a conspicuous way. You can sort of do that inside the Christian social bubble, but because outsiders aren't around much, the Thems aren't as omnipresent as (for instance) non-Americans are for worshippers of U.S. military power. Being able to live safely within the bubble yet still point out the evils of pretend-Christians who dare to disagree with 6-day creationism is a huge boost to authoritarians who have a compelling need to have someone tell them how to prioritize their lives.

That's my guess, anyway. It surely isn't an issue for PR or marketing reasons.