Church and Art, Part I: Golden Moral Compass

I haven't blogged in a while (again. some more.), but this is something that's been simmering for a while with me, so I'm going to try and write it out. This may end up being one of a series, since I think I connect a lot of peripheral issues back into the one that I want to talk about in this post.

I want to start by talking about The Golden Compass. I don't only mean the movie, here, I mean the books also, so I will differentiate between the two by referring to the book as GC and the movie as GC-M. Also, I will write about plot details for both, so persons wishing to remain unspoiled for either the film or the Dark Materials (DM) series should probably stop here.

In the past few months, there has been a lot written online in both the Christian and non-Christian communities about the fact that Pullman, author of the Dark Materials series, is openly athiest. The Catholic League called for a boycott. Conservative bloggers warned others not to expose the children. There has been a lot of fingerpointing about atheists (usually with Pullman as the archetype) demeaning Christian beliefs, a lot of defensive paranoia, and a lot of preaching false information to try and scare people out of seeing the film (example: claims that the books promote female genital mutilation). All this for a kids' movie that came out yesterday.

For me, the interesting question in all this hullabaloo isn't how Christians should respond to GC-M, or the DM books. The interesting question is why Christians respond in this particular way. Because the GC-M bruhaha isn't the first of its kind: films like The DaVinci Code and The Last Temptation of the Christ also created this kind of furor. Books like the Harry Potter series and art exhibits like Chris Ofili's Holy Virgin Mary (the one with the elephant dung) or Cosmo Cavallaro's My Sweet Lord (a lifesize, anatomically-correct sculpture of Jesus made out of chocolate) created similar tempests in a teapot. It seems that the instinctive response, when confronted with a work of art that questions, challenges, or explores themes of faith in unorthodox ways is panic.

Note how I added 'explores in unorthodox ways' as the final item of that list. Pullman's books, while undeniably unflattering to organized religion (Roman Catholicism in particular), aren't actually anti-Christian. The religion and god of the books bears little resemblance to the religion or God of any of the common Christian denominations. Pullman's "Authority" is a created being, part of the metaphysical furniture of the world. The Authority is an old man, sitting in the sky and pathetically desperate to control his creations. That... doesn't look like any description of the Christian god I've ever seen. This makes him something that the Bible warns against: a false god, and indeed, one worthy of killing.

Likewise, the Magisterium of Pullman's world bears only passing resemblance to any actual church. The Magisterium is a controlling, authoritarian organization, completely without the concept of a Jesus-figure. Without the idea of a Redeemer, Pullman's Magisterium is a church without hope. The world has a source of Original Sin (Pullman calls it Dust) , but doesn't have a source of salvation from that curse. The Magisterium, therefore, devotes itself to finding a human way to erase original sin. None of this resembles the actual teachings of any Christian church.

So GC cannot be anti-Christian, because it's not crusading against any ideals that resemble Christian ones. This hasn't stopped the stunning Christian response, however. Buzzwords in the panic about GC-M (which downplays all religion found in the books, Christian or no) included "anti-God" and "anti-Christian". It strikes me as a little, well, heretical, really. If Christians assign to God the characteristics of the Authority, and persist in the assertion that books which show characters killing a false god in fact show them killing God, then we've given up the entire point of our religion.

If Christians take offense at the demise of Pullman's pagan deity, then they're claiming that every "god" is sacred.If this god that is not our God deserves defense, then no God deserves to be killed. Christians need to stop reacting with such militant protectionism, and start using their heads when it comes to their religion.

There is another troubling aspect of the Christian reaction, however. Let's suppose, for the sake of argument, that Pullman's books and the movies both portray the actual Christian faith and God in a poor light (I argued above that this is not so, but let's suppose). Even if that's true, the calls for boycott are both sad and inappropriate. In fact, if Pullman is raising legitimate criticism, then Christians should respond by considering what he's saying, and addressing why it's wrong. To me, a refusal to hear any dissent indicates weak Christianity. If you're so afraid for your faith that watching a movie could convince you to become atheist, then perhaps you should examine whether you actually have faith to begin with. Every Christian has doubts about God, but I'm firmly convinced that burying them under a cloak of protectionism is not the path to resolving them and becoming stronger in the faith.

Christians who refuse to confront dissent and instead resort to knee-jerk persecution rhetoric in fact become... well, what we're seeing now. So yes, maybe Pullman will end up making Christians look foolish with this movie. Not because the film advocates killing God, or some such nonsense, but because it exposes Christians for how weak they are: unable to recognize their own God when called to do so.

Til death or inconvienence do us part

Fascinating article on the AP wire today: An Evangelical Rethink on Divorce?

I'm of divided mind when I see this. According to the article, last month's Christianity Today (a leading Christian publication, one of the largest in the nation) ran a cover story about rethinking Biblical divorce teaching to be more liberal. The author of the AP article calls biblical teaching on divorce 'inhumane'; actually, the CT author used the word 'cruel', but it's clear that the sentiment was the same: the Bible's 'no divorce except in the case of abuse' flies in the face of modern realities.

The facts of the matter are clear. According to a Barna report on divorce and religion (Barna is a respected Evangelical research group), couples that self-identify as Christians are more likely to get divorced than atheist couples. About one in three Christian marriages ends in divorce, and fundamentalist Christians are more likely to divorce than liberal Christians. Furthermore, the areas of the country where fundamentalist Christianity are common (South, midwest) have a much higher divorce rate than what fundies like to call the 'liberal enclaves'; couples in the very-liberal northeast are half as likely to get divorced as couples in the South.

The AP backs up these findings with their own poll. According to the AP poll, Massachusetts (the most liberal state in the union, and the only one that affords queers completely equal marriage rights) has the lowest divorce rate in the union, at 2.4 people per thousand. Texas (GWB country and a conservative good-ole-boy haven), on the other hand, has the highest divorce rate at 4.1 persons per thousand. Like Barna, the AP found that the Bible Belt had divorce rates 50% higher than the national average, while the lowest divorce rates were found in the most liberal states.

I'm hardly the first to point out the moral hypocrisies of the fundies, but the CT article goes me one better: it proposes that perhaps biblical literalists had been interpreting the divorce passages wrong, and that perhaps divorce isn't the hated sin that fundies had made it out to be. Naturally, rather than provoking a thoughtful response, the outpouring of letters to the editor that followed indicates panic. One of the more influential Evangelical (read: fundie) pastors, John Piper, posted a reply in his blog. The reply pouts about "cavalier covenant breaking", but eventually concludes there are almost never legitimate grounds for divorce.

The tragedy of this tempest in a tea-pot is that many of the scriptures these men argue over refer explicitly to wives sold into slavery to their husbands. One of the passages under debate (Exodus 21:10-11) talks about divorce specifically in the context of 'if a man buys a slave and takes her as his wife', he may not divorce her except under strict circumstances. Oh good, if I ever get sold into slavery to a fundie, I'll at least have the reassurance that they'll be philosophically opposed to divorcing me before we fall prey to the Bible Belt's horrific divorce rates.

Which is to say, in all of this, I wonder where attitudes about women make a difference. It should hardly be surprising, in a culture of liberated women, that areas who base their marriage/divorce morality on a slave code should have higher rates of divorce. It's easy to postulate that liberal states have lower divorce rates because they contain liberal men, who value things like a woman talking about her own opinions or taking a job outside the home. Southern states, by comparison, educate their girls less completely, and are more likely to contain men who will feel threatened by expressions of female independence. I think that one of the fundamental problems with the Bible (and perhaps the one that Evangelicals avoid the most often) is that women in the Bible had the status of property. Even in Pauline times, women were considered property. How should a culture in which women are considered equal citizens interface with a guiding moral document that considers them property? I don't have all the answers, but I'm pretty sure that the answer isn't a literal interpretation.

The problem with divorce, as with a lot of border-guard issues for fundies, is that the culture has changed. Given that this is true, (because no amount of wishful thinking will return the modern woman to a state where she is chattel), what should Christians do about it? The answer is probably more simple than a lot of people make it out to be: evolve. Who knows, perhaps a move beyond the 'women as property' mental game will even lower the divorce rate for the South. It certainly seems to have worked in Massachusetts.

Women are hungry for more (Oh yeah, give it to me baby)

I'd like to take this opportunity to highlight the Women's Ministry of the South Carolina Baptist convention, and laugh at the misogyny and double entendres to be found on their website.

Let's start with the current evangelism theme for the state. To clarify, this 'evangelism theme' is the platform around which all women's bible studies are designed, and all women's literature is written. This is the primary thing that the state's Southern Baptist women will focus on for the next twelve or so months. What's the theme? "Request! Rejoice! Reproduce!" That's right, reproduce, in case you had any doubts that it is the official Convention stance that women belong in the house making babies.

The expanded phrases for each tagline do nothing to dispel the idea that the Convention is encouraging women to get back in the bedroom and be baby-machines: "Request by prayer, Rejoice in praise, Reproduce by producing fruit." In case you didn't catch that, "producing fruit" is a euphemism for having children. It comes from the Bible verse "Be fruitful and multiply", which is non-coincidentally the verse that comes up whenever contraception is mentioned in church. The argument is that women aren't supposed to use contraception or get abortions because that's interfering with God's command to be fruitful.

I couldn't believe it when I saw this theme, and to be fair, a number of female Convention employees also had problems with the campaign. But their objections to the (entirely male) leadership of the Convention produced responses of "it's too late to change". Heaven forbid that female employees get the idea their sensibilities matter to the Convention leadership.

Let's talk about some other slogans for the Women's Ministry. Under the auspices of the "Reproduce!" as a theme, the main conference for women statewide is being called "Women are hungry for more!" That's a double entendre if I ever heard one, maybe even a triple entendre. Could the convention actually be exhorting women to have more sex? Or is it just to have more kids? It's as though all the sublimated sexuality (sublimated because women having sex is bad, of course) in the Southern Baptist doctrine is suddenly being expressed through a series of (unfortunately) inspired tagline choices from this Women's Ministry department.

The problem of Hillary

Hillary Clinton is one of the front-runners for the Democratic Presidential nomination, and seems to have a decent shot at actually becoming President.

Take a minute and think about it. Look at that sentence and read it again. Hillary Clinton, a woman and a strident defender of women's rights, actually has a shot at becoming President. It gives me shivers to think about it. The junior Senator from NY is on the brink of accomplishing something that little girls across the nation have dreamed of ever since the fifties, when society decided we could wear pants. Why, then, isn't there more excitement about Hillary's campaign from women nationwide?

In fact, Hillary's campaign and the public perception of it raise several disturbing questions about our national state of mind. One of them got highlighted today in USA Today's religious op-ed, which asks why Hillary doesn't appeal to so-called 'values voters'. The article identifies two reasons: Hillary's perceived 'church politicking', and her abortion position. While I'll grant that the abortion issue is a legitimate reason for conservative voters to shy away, it's the 'church politicking' that bothers me. The article defines this as 'using her faith for political benefit', and cites as evidence the fact that Hillary did a church tour as part of her campaign for Senator. She visited 27 churches, including six on election day, according to the article.

Such 'church politicking' is distasteful to voters, the article suggests. I wonder about that, though. Obama's campaign in the South Carolina primary has consisted primarily of a tour of the state's black churches (far more than 27), and no one has said a word about how distasteful they find the tactic. Every Republican presidential candidate that comes through the South makes at least five stops at churches. Most of them also do church tours. George Bush, Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee, and other Presidential candidates use religion as a plank in their campaign, which Hillary has never done. Why is it Hillary, then, who gets singled out as pandering to churches when not only some, but most other candidates seem to do more 'church politicking' than she does?

So we have two questions here: why not more excitement about Hillary as a woman running for President, and why focus on Hillary as a candidate who panders to churches, when every other candidate in the election seems to do it more often? I posit that the two answers are related, but I'll start with the second, as a way of opening the discussion on the first.

I think Hillary gets more notice than anyone else when she steps into a church because she's doing something that's taboo in 'values voter' churches: she's a woman in a position of power, talking from the pulpit. Whenever Hillary talks to a congregation, she's subverting what can amount to centuries of teaching that women should be submissive in churches. The SBC (from which most 'values voters' come) has forbidden women pastors. Catholics likewise won't let women preach. In fact, half of all denominations in America won't ordain women, and in most of the ones that will, female pastors are still rare. So a woman speaking to a church is a big deal to many 'values voters': Hillary is a woman who holds no truck with the paternal SBC's refusal to let women have a voice in their own faith. Hillary, it must be noted, is a Methodist and grew up in a religious tradition that ordained women regularly.

So perhaps the reason that it's a big deal when Hillary speaks in churches is that the very act is a subversion of so-called 'Christian' gender roles. From that point of view, it makes sense to link the 'distaste' this causes in voters to abortion: the pro-choice stance is also subverts gender roles by allowing a woman to make her own choices about her reproductive processes.

If Hillary is all about equality in gender roles, we arrive back at the first question: why haven't we heard excitement from women about the possibility of a female President? I recently asked a female friend this question, and she gave a telling answer: "Because it isn't the seventies." What? Well, she explained, in the sixties and seventies there was excitement about changing old systems, about finding new roles for previously oppressed classes. Women were happy to burn bras and talk about cracking glass ceilings. Now, however, there is a curious lassitude among many women when it comes to finding a better place in society. Especially among social conservatives (the so-called 'values voter' set), there's a sense of nostalgia for the time when child-rearing was a woman's noble profession. Pointing out that women are still perfectly free to raise children if they wish is beside the point. It's a nostalgia for that whole era: an imagined time wherein not only gender roles, but world politics, health-care, education, and environmental issues were simpler and, as a result, less scary. Hillary, as a candidate for President, is a symbol of all the best things that have changed about the female social situation in the past century (she is an educated, politically involved woman with self-agency that extends far beyond any control Bill might exert over her), but by the same token, she is a symbol of all the things that have changed. My friend suggested that women have been hesitant to embrace Hillary as a symbol of women's lib because the 'values voter' set are nostalgic for a time when Hillary couldn't have existed. At the same time, liberal female voters are determined to prove how far women have come by evaluating all candidates on the merits of their platform, without regard at all to Hillary's gender.

I would suggest that while voters nostalgic for a time before the complications of the modern world are misguided, so are liberals who would evaluate candidates without regard to Hillary's gender. Women should be excited about the possibility of a woman in the White House. Just as Bush's religiosity is a key part of his character (and one would not evaluate his campaign platform without taking into account his tendency to appeal to supernatural powers for validation of insane schemes), Hillary's gender is a key part of her character. If Hillary gets elected, we won't just have elected a platform of ideas. We'll have elected a woman to enact them, and I think that means something. Women worldwide should be excited about the possibilities.

The internet is for... hope? Not so much.

Although my computer still isn't completely recovered from its crash, I felt that I needed to post this.

Recently I received an email from a colleague who works for the Southern Baptist Convention. In her signature at the bottom of the email was a link to a webpage called Here's Hope, and I was curious enough to follow it. Big mistake. I laughed until I cried, and then I got a little mad.

It's a flash movie about indoctrination. Or perhaps I should say it's an attempt at indoctrination via flash movie. It begins with scary red-fonted words ("Depression! Anxiety! Fear! Despair!"), then shifts to black for the question "Is there any HOPE?" Ironically, 'hope' is done in rainbow colors. Unsuspecting LGBT advocates might for a moment think that they'd found a support site, but alas! it is not to be.

The cheap-looking flash movie opens, and after a lot of propaganda and a little scripture, the person is asked if they want to pray to ask Christ to be their savior. They are then reassured that they are now a 'saved' Christian, and are asked for personal information over an unsecured web page (presumably to contact a church in their area).

If a person 'commits' to God after using this page, they will have seen a grand total of six verses of scripture in their life. That's less than 200 words. They will have no idea of who Jesus actually is, outside of the site's assertion that he is the Son of God. They will have no idea why they are suddenly supposed to feel peace and find freedom from their cares. The site implies that Jesus is a magic fix for broken families, diseases, and (oddly) the War on Drugs, but doesn't really give the viewer information about why.

This is precisely the sort of site that I was thinking about when I named this blog. It's Christianity given in tiny chunks, like baby food but in smaller portions. If I had set out to deliberately design a website illustrating the sort of 'fast-food conversion' mentality that I posted about in Killing the Buddha, I could not have done a more thorough job. The fact that people who work for the Convention would recommend such a site (and this woman is the adult ministry Department Director for a state convention. One would think she'd know better) is sickening to me.

Things not to do

Well, on Friday my hard drive apparently decided that it was going to take its football and go home, so I spent the weekend doing a data retrieval (if you have the choice, never do this voluntarily), replacing the hard drive, reinstalling Windows without using Windows reinstallation disks (because Dell apparently doesn't include them when you purchase a notebook from them), and reinstalling all of my programs.

I got lucky that most of my data could be retrieved. Again, if you have the choice, do not voluntarily do any of that. It's about as much fun as open heart surgery.

Sheriffs, fences and booze

A few days ago, a Christian friend of mine stopped me and in whispered tones informed me that she had seen me going into a liquor store.

"Okay," I replied. "And?"

"Well, you know that we're not supposed to drink," she said. "It's against the Bible. I'm concerned about your faith, if you're drinking, and God says we should rebuke our fellow Christians in love."

I looked at her oddly for a moment. She and I clearly had very different positions on this matter, and I didn't want a fight with someone who genuinely thought she was doing me a favor. "I'll pray about it," I finally said, and that was the end of it.

Well, in subsequent days, I've thought a bit about this one. The leaders of the Southern Baptist Convention years ago adopted an official stance of total abstinence from alcohol. Part of the contract that students at Southern Baptist Seminaries sign forbids them to drink, and if they're caught with alcohol in their proximity, they can be expelled from the Seminary. Likewise, state Convention staff are forbidden to drink on pain of potentially losing their jobs. Many states in the Bible belt have created blue laws to prevent people from buying alcohol at all on Saturday nights or Sundays, so that the good Christians will not be tempted.

The interesting thing about this hullabaloo is that the Bible never forbids drinking. It says not to drink in excess, but 'in excess' is a far cry from 'not at all'. We know that Jesus and the disciples drank wine with every meal. Everyone did at the time, because often the water was unsafe. So alcohol itself can't be inherently sinful. Why the huge emphasis on abstinence, then?

The answer, strangely enough, can be found in the traditions of the Jewish faith. Judaism, unlike Christianity, tends to take the laws of the Old Testament very seriously indeed, particularly the commandment to keep God's commandments. In order to help Jews do this, the councils that interpret Torah law have, over the centuries, established other laws. These supplementary laws (a good example is 'don't complete a circuit on the Sabbath') are designed to be a 'fence' around the original Torah laws. They are in fact more strict than the Torah laws, because Torah scholars figured that they were a good way to keep people from inadvertently breaking one of God's precious commandments.

Christians, on the other hand, tend to play fast and loose with God's laws. We try and stick to the Ten Commandments, but we ignore large chunks of Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers wholesale. Protestantism in particular has never developed an official 'fence' position, but that's what we see happening when Christians believe that all alcohol is forbidden. It's an unofficial 'fence' around a set of teachings that for some reason someone found important. The Convention's draconian policies place Convention leadership in the position of sheriff, riding the fences and looking for lawbreakers.

The problem with fences is twofold: a) how do we know that we're fencing off the right doctrines, and b) how do we deal with the matter of sheriffs? The first prong of this line of thinking leads to some funny conclusions. We have total abstinence from alcohol to fence the doctrine of 'drink in moderation', forbidden use of birth control to fence the doctrine 'be fruitful and multiply', and in many churches, a discouraging attitude towards dancing to fence the doctrine of mental purity. Why are these important doctrines, though? When asked what was the greatest commandment, Jesus replied,

"'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.' 38This is the first and greatest commandment. 39And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' 40All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commands." [Matt22:37-40]

The truth is, we Protestants don't really have fences for the two greatest commandments. We often spout them about, but rarely think enough about what they mean in practice to establish effective fences to make sure that we're loving properly. Christians often talk about the power of love unbound, but in this case I think that we need to bind it, to build our fences around God's commands and make sure that we're loving always. Christ places these two commands over all the Law and Prophets, which means above little issues like alcohol or birth control. It's long past time the Christian church had a serious conversation about love, and about the practical ways that we can make sure we're always loving as we have been commanded.

The second prong of my thoughts about fences concerns enforcement: should we be sheriffs for the fences that we build? Often, I think that's not our responsibility. The Bible tells us to support each other in faith, but I'm not yet convinced that that necessarily means policing the sort of fences that the Southern Baptist Convention has built. Rather, I think that supporting someone in faith means encouraging them to put effort into their attempt to walk with God. It means engaging them more deeply in theology, asking the difficult questions about God and faith, then sitting and listening while they work out their answers. It means loving, unconditionally. Things like playing sheriff for minor fences pale in comparison to those duties, and Christians, myself certainly included, don't pay nearly enough attention to the big duties that God gives us as it is.

In short, I think that right now Christianity needs fewer sheriffs, and more scholars. We need to refocus onto what God says is crucial, and trust that the other things will fall in line when the big priorities are right. We need to be less concerned over the appearances of someone's faith, and more concerned over their understanding. I was walking into the liquor store to buy wine for a recipe of coq au vin, but my neighbor was more concerned with the appearance of violating a non-existent command than with my actual intent for my actions. My neighbor has never asked me about issues of faith, like what I think about whether love obligates us to protect someone. The need for change goes both ways, though. I judged her as shallow for her concern about my actions, but I, in turn, have never asked her about doctrine, like what she thinks about Paul's writings on women. Maybe it's time for both of us to become less judgmental sheriffs, and better Christians.