The oldest division in mysteries is the one between the English cozy, whose audience is supposed to be the older lady of genteel literary interests, and the American adventure story which appeals to the average, book-reading, if that’s not an oxymoron, male. The one goes back to Arthur Conan-Doyle, the other most famously to Dashiell Hammett.
While the usual distinctions are drawn between nationality, gender and class, I suspect they lie much deeper, in the differences between John Calvin and the Episcopal Church of the one hand, and Jacobus Arminius and the evangelizing churches he inspired on the other.
The most important thing about the English mysteries is that they involve someone within a closed society and assume that anyone has the capacity for evil. Calvin may have given the illusion that there were people born in the state of grace, but he also made clear no one knew who they were.
Arminius, on the other hand, argued grace was not the stingy gift God granted to a random few, but could be claimed by anyone who accepted Christ as his or her savior. As an elective status, being saved meant one could associate with only others who were likewise saved, and indeed one’s evidence of salvation became the company one kept. The rest of the world became the arena of great potential evil, xenophobia the natural result.
And so, Agatha Christie isolates members of a family or close circle of friends and leaves it to the spiritual leader, in her case Hercule Poirot, to identify the source of evil within the group. Before he succeeds, everyone is shown to be potentially guilty. However, true to both Calvin and her belief that anyone was capable of murder, she makes even her detective the villain in a book she wrote during World War II, but had published after she was dead.
In a modern American novel, a good person innocently gets mixed up with bad characters and experiences evil vicariously. It’s always another whose guilty, not the good person and his or her group of associates. Mary Roberts Rinehart most famously made the betrayer the outsider given greatest access to an inner circle, the butler.
The assumptions about the distribution of good and evil among people, and the expectation that one can decide conditions how novels end in societies where readers know lawyers can obfuscate the clearest cases of guilt. In the one, the guilty party commits suicide. In the other, especially after Mickey Spillane, the detective arranges for the death of the guilty one. The one still carries the doubt of Calvin, the other the infallibility of Arminius.
The small number of Tony Hillerman novels I’ve now read fall into the Arminian category. The wrongly suspected innocent aren’t actually characters in his book, but readers seeking a way to learn about unknown, potentially dangerous worlds, without becoming socially tainted by their curiosity.
One can quibble about style, plotting, character development, description, point of view, use of conventions, those signifiers we use to discuss literature. However, I suspect they really are only ways of verbalizing discomfort without addressing it.
In the end it’s not the difference between Hillerman’s journalistic description of Jim Chee or Joe Leaphorn and Agatha Christie’s novelistic treatment of Poirot or Jane Marple that matters. It’s the view of the moral world, and, as American Christians have known since the Presbyterians split into the old and new lights early nineteen century, there really is no bridge between Calvin and Arminius.
One either has the pessimistic or optimistic view of basic human nature. One may limit the positive to a small group of one’s friends or assume it can be universalized, but one cannot conceive of evil in oneself. Recognizing an author’s allegiance signals to the reader who the range of villains could be, what tensions will exist, and ultimately what the experience of discovery will be, what view of society will be confirmed and justified.
I think it’s that recognition that makes the books written by one type of writer so difficult for people raised in the other world to read, for they really are as foreign as medieval gestes and Japanese haiku.
Mysteries mentioned above include Agatha Christie, Curtain, 1975; Mary Roberts Rinehart, The Door, 1930; and Mickey Spillane, I, the Jury, 1947.
Showing posts with label Religion. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Religion. Show all posts
Sunday, October 09, 2011
Monday, June 29, 2009
Michael Jackson
The deaths of Elvis Presley and Michael Jackson provoke shared moments of cultural shock. We abandoned television for more intimate, interactive media like the internet and Twitter for news updates. Such collective moments of unmediated emotion beg us to ask why.
Superficially the two men were similar. Both were uniquely gifted synthesizers of swirling cultural currents in music, and each expanded the language of the acceptable in popular forms.
Both reached a point where they could do no more without alienating some of their fans. I’ve seen artists as diverse as Harry Belefonte and the Osborne Brothers who try variations on songs they’ve been forced to repeat for years greeted with disapproval by audiences who’ve so internalized their music that deviation could not be tolerated.
Yet, audiences want to see more, want to see something different, and so each could only evolve as performers. The Elvis of Vegas and the Jackson of the tin soldier suits are not the artists we were drawn to, but the products of our demands for new sensations within the confines of the claustrophobically familiar.
We can’t imagine either of them married watching their children play soccer. The hyper-sexuality of the one and the ultra-androgyny of the other could not be domesticated. Our perceptions built cages they couldn’t leave without risking our wrath.
We cut off creative individuals, used to working hard, from either pursing innovation in music or seeking normal domestic lives. To evoke F. Scott Fitzgerald, what possible second act did we permit them?
In the past, religion would have provided a model. But that avenue was closed to these two. Both were raised in strong evangelizing traditions, the Assembly of God and Jehovah’s Witnesses, and already had influenced more people everywhere in the world than any conventional missionary. Presley was perhaps luckier because he could maintain his ties to his past through gospel music.
The secular alternative pioneered by Ezra Cornell to devote one’s second life to philanthropy has been attacked by conservative politicians angered by the social changes supported by the Rockefeller and Ford Foundations. Both instead used late songs instead like "In the Ghetto" and "We Are the World" to do things aggressively outspoken critics would not otherwise permit.
We put them at the pinnacle of our success pyramid with no place to go. All we allowed was what we could imagine, the excesses of materialism. When they die and we see the consequences, we’re shocked because the emptiness we discover is the emptiness of our closed culture which has no options.
By chance, Presley died when we were struggling with economic problems under Jimmy Carter which we denied by following a less talented performer who could metamorphose into a politician. Jackson died in our current recession caused by the very kinds of excesses we condemned him to live.
What we intuit in their deaths is the failure of our shared world view to function when it is most needed. They become transformed into the canaries of our cultural crises that none of us can escape.
Superficially the two men were similar. Both were uniquely gifted synthesizers of swirling cultural currents in music, and each expanded the language of the acceptable in popular forms.
Both reached a point where they could do no more without alienating some of their fans. I’ve seen artists as diverse as Harry Belefonte and the Osborne Brothers who try variations on songs they’ve been forced to repeat for years greeted with disapproval by audiences who’ve so internalized their music that deviation could not be tolerated.
Yet, audiences want to see more, want to see something different, and so each could only evolve as performers. The Elvis of Vegas and the Jackson of the tin soldier suits are not the artists we were drawn to, but the products of our demands for new sensations within the confines of the claustrophobically familiar.
We can’t imagine either of them married watching their children play soccer. The hyper-sexuality of the one and the ultra-androgyny of the other could not be domesticated. Our perceptions built cages they couldn’t leave without risking our wrath.
We cut off creative individuals, used to working hard, from either pursing innovation in music or seeking normal domestic lives. To evoke F. Scott Fitzgerald, what possible second act did we permit them?
In the past, religion would have provided a model. But that avenue was closed to these two. Both were raised in strong evangelizing traditions, the Assembly of God and Jehovah’s Witnesses, and already had influenced more people everywhere in the world than any conventional missionary. Presley was perhaps luckier because he could maintain his ties to his past through gospel music.
The secular alternative pioneered by Ezra Cornell to devote one’s second life to philanthropy has been attacked by conservative politicians angered by the social changes supported by the Rockefeller and Ford Foundations. Both instead used late songs instead like "In the Ghetto" and "We Are the World" to do things aggressively outspoken critics would not otherwise permit.
We put them at the pinnacle of our success pyramid with no place to go. All we allowed was what we could imagine, the excesses of materialism. When they die and we see the consequences, we’re shocked because the emptiness we discover is the emptiness of our closed culture which has no options.
By chance, Presley died when we were struggling with economic problems under Jimmy Carter which we denied by following a less talented performer who could metamorphose into a politician. Jackson died in our current recession caused by the very kinds of excesses we condemned him to live.
What we intuit in their deaths is the failure of our shared world view to function when it is most needed. They become transformed into the canaries of our cultural crises that none of us can escape.
Sunday, August 20, 2006
Religion - Part 5 - Elmer Gantry
I finally read Sinclair Lewis’ Elmer Gantry, promoted as "the greatest, most vital and most penetrating study of hypocrisy that has been written since Voltaire." It was a hard slog, with the depth of a case study rather than a novel, marred by predictable plotting and undeveloped characters.
As I read, I kept wondering, why were people so angry when it was published in 1927? Gantry was more a man with ambitions and some charisma limited by poor education and small town upbringing than a dangerous demagogue. He certainly is no where near as interesting as Jimmy Swaggart or Jim Bakker, and had none of their influence.
Billy Graham’s career is closer to Gantry’s. Both were associated early with women with greater credentials in evangelism than they. Graham married Ruth Bell, the daughter of missionaries to China. Gantry toured with a woman modeled on Aimee Simple McPherson. She died early, leaving the reader to wonder if his life would have been different had she lived.
Both changed churches. Gantry began as a Baptist, but was expelled for seducing a woman, then refusing to marry her. He joined the Methodists when they offered him new opportunities, but he continued to be haunted by the doubts of salvation planted by his mother’s church. Graham was born a Presbyterian, but changed to the Southern Baptist Convention. While he maintained that affiliation, his children were baptized as Presbyterians.
Most important, both mixed religion and politics as the pawns of more powerful men. Gantry discovered the value of politics when he supported an underdog mayoral candidate. He became friends with the movers and shakers of his community, and asked one for help when a woman tried to blackmail him. Lewis treats the relationship as one that normally arises in a small town, and only faults Gantry for his ambition when he conspires to lead the National Association for the Purification of Art and the Press.
Henry Luce and William Randolph Hearst promoted Graham’s first revival in New York as a deliberate attempt to scare people into anticommunist crusades. With fame, came prestige which politicians exploited by appearing with him. With time, Graham himself became seduced by them, and slowly became their spokesman. Most see him less as a grasping Gantry, than as a tragic figure caught in the consequences of his own successes.
So, what is it that separates these men, makes Graham a hero, condemns the others as hypocrites?
The obvious answer is sex. For Swaggart, sex was central to religious experience. It represented the devil that must constantly be wrestled with: sometimes faith triumphs; sometimes man weakens and must reestablished his link with God through begging for forgiveness and repentance. The struggle is as constant as breathing.
Jim Bakker’s wife, Tammy Faye, dramatized the choices for women born since Henry Miller and Hugh Hefner who wanted sexual freedom within the shelter of the Assemblies of God that fostered Swaggart. Unfortunately for her, Bakker’s interest could not be sustained, and her struggle for faith degenerated into progressively more ludicrous make-up.
Elmer Gantry didn’t treat women as either sirens or sources of pleasure. He preferred women who doted on him. Unlike Swaggart who frequented prostitutes, Gantry maintained long time relationships with his mistresses. He broke with them for the same reason he tired of his wife; when his social world improved, they could not change, and no longer glorified his ego.
Lewis made a mistake when he introduced infidelity into his plot if he wanted to show a truly dangerous man like his religious contemporaries, Robert Shuler and J. Frank Norris who were broadcasting racism, nativism and homophobia in Los Angeles and Dallas. Lewis wasn’t interested enough in sex to create a sensual man. But his readers were interested enough to read more into his circumspect account of adultery, and looked no deeper into Elmer’s character.
It’s also possible sex was easier for them to discuss than the fact Gantry never met a single admirable clergyman among the Baptists and Methodists who ordained him. Those with genuine faith were ineffective. Most condemned evolution and higher criticism of the Bible, but less from belief than as received wisdom of their seminary training. Most voiced platitudes without understanding, and certainly none, but the marginal, ever had doubts.
In one scene, Gantry hosts a luncheon for the clergymen of Zenith to promote a united crusade against prostitution. As the men chat, Lewis shows each refusing to join, not because posse justice was wrong, but because each was too jealous of the potential success of Gantry.
Greed or the lust for power that characterized Gantry and many of his fellow clergymen still provokes many of the biggest church scandals. A woman set out to blackmail Gantry. Methodists Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson attacked Bakker and took over his ministry when Jessica Hahn accused him of adultery. Another revivalist, Marvin Gorman, hired detectives to spy on Swaggart.
People are not interested in recognizing an institution has failed. When they are confronted with wide scale duplicity, they search for the one person who can redeem their faith in institutions, who can reassure them a bad person does not contaminate all they’ve lived by. Billy Graham’s website recounts the downfalls of Swaggart, Bakker, and Falwell, then trumpets his compassion when it lets us know he visited in Bakker in prison. It goes further and tells us "Graham maintained his own integrity and the sincerity of his message."
Lewis wants us to think Elmer Gantry has that ability when he asks his parishoners if they believe in the "fiendishness of my accusers," then promises to lead them in a crusade "for complete morality and the domination of the Christian church through all the land."
Lewis put too many characteristics of powerful ministers into one person to show the dangers of ambition alluded to with the luncheon. Gantry combines the weakness of Jimmy Swaggart and the fecklessness of Tammy Faye, who divorced her jailed husband, with the charisma of Graham and the media savvy of Jim Bakker. He has the opportunism of Norris and Shuler, but lacks the discipline to become Charles Coughlin.
When confronted with would-be heroes, people search for evidence of human frailty, and once that is exposed, no longer care. In real life, that concern destroys the power of men like Swaggart and Bakker. In the novel, it limits the dramatic impact to tawdry affairs. The truly dangerous man either disciplines himself to overcome his urges or sublimates them into his ambitions. One simply doesn’t worry at the end when Gantry is poised to take over napap, because one knows he’ll destroy himself.
Sources:
Graham, Billy. "Televangelist Scandals," at
unctv.org/ruthandbillygraham.
Lewis, Sinclair. Elmer Gantry, 1927; cover blurb from Literary Review on cover of 1958 Dell paperback edition.
As I read, I kept wondering, why were people so angry when it was published in 1927? Gantry was more a man with ambitions and some charisma limited by poor education and small town upbringing than a dangerous demagogue. He certainly is no where near as interesting as Jimmy Swaggart or Jim Bakker, and had none of their influence.
Billy Graham’s career is closer to Gantry’s. Both were associated early with women with greater credentials in evangelism than they. Graham married Ruth Bell, the daughter of missionaries to China. Gantry toured with a woman modeled on Aimee Simple McPherson. She died early, leaving the reader to wonder if his life would have been different had she lived.
Both changed churches. Gantry began as a Baptist, but was expelled for seducing a woman, then refusing to marry her. He joined the Methodists when they offered him new opportunities, but he continued to be haunted by the doubts of salvation planted by his mother’s church. Graham was born a Presbyterian, but changed to the Southern Baptist Convention. While he maintained that affiliation, his children were baptized as Presbyterians.
Most important, both mixed religion and politics as the pawns of more powerful men. Gantry discovered the value of politics when he supported an underdog mayoral candidate. He became friends with the movers and shakers of his community, and asked one for help when a woman tried to blackmail him. Lewis treats the relationship as one that normally arises in a small town, and only faults Gantry for his ambition when he conspires to lead the National Association for the Purification of Art and the Press.
Henry Luce and William Randolph Hearst promoted Graham’s first revival in New York as a deliberate attempt to scare people into anticommunist crusades. With fame, came prestige which politicians exploited by appearing with him. With time, Graham himself became seduced by them, and slowly became their spokesman. Most see him less as a grasping Gantry, than as a tragic figure caught in the consequences of his own successes.
So, what is it that separates these men, makes Graham a hero, condemns the others as hypocrites?
The obvious answer is sex. For Swaggart, sex was central to religious experience. It represented the devil that must constantly be wrestled with: sometimes faith triumphs; sometimes man weakens and must reestablished his link with God through begging for forgiveness and repentance. The struggle is as constant as breathing.
Jim Bakker’s wife, Tammy Faye, dramatized the choices for women born since Henry Miller and Hugh Hefner who wanted sexual freedom within the shelter of the Assemblies of God that fostered Swaggart. Unfortunately for her, Bakker’s interest could not be sustained, and her struggle for faith degenerated into progressively more ludicrous make-up.
Elmer Gantry didn’t treat women as either sirens or sources of pleasure. He preferred women who doted on him. Unlike Swaggart who frequented prostitutes, Gantry maintained long time relationships with his mistresses. He broke with them for the same reason he tired of his wife; when his social world improved, they could not change, and no longer glorified his ego.
Lewis made a mistake when he introduced infidelity into his plot if he wanted to show a truly dangerous man like his religious contemporaries, Robert Shuler and J. Frank Norris who were broadcasting racism, nativism and homophobia in Los Angeles and Dallas. Lewis wasn’t interested enough in sex to create a sensual man. But his readers were interested enough to read more into his circumspect account of adultery, and looked no deeper into Elmer’s character.
It’s also possible sex was easier for them to discuss than the fact Gantry never met a single admirable clergyman among the Baptists and Methodists who ordained him. Those with genuine faith were ineffective. Most condemned evolution and higher criticism of the Bible, but less from belief than as received wisdom of their seminary training. Most voiced platitudes without understanding, and certainly none, but the marginal, ever had doubts.
In one scene, Gantry hosts a luncheon for the clergymen of Zenith to promote a united crusade against prostitution. As the men chat, Lewis shows each refusing to join, not because posse justice was wrong, but because each was too jealous of the potential success of Gantry.
Greed or the lust for power that characterized Gantry and many of his fellow clergymen still provokes many of the biggest church scandals. A woman set out to blackmail Gantry. Methodists Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson attacked Bakker and took over his ministry when Jessica Hahn accused him of adultery. Another revivalist, Marvin Gorman, hired detectives to spy on Swaggart.
People are not interested in recognizing an institution has failed. When they are confronted with wide scale duplicity, they search for the one person who can redeem their faith in institutions, who can reassure them a bad person does not contaminate all they’ve lived by. Billy Graham’s website recounts the downfalls of Swaggart, Bakker, and Falwell, then trumpets his compassion when it lets us know he visited in Bakker in prison. It goes further and tells us "Graham maintained his own integrity and the sincerity of his message."
Lewis wants us to think Elmer Gantry has that ability when he asks his parishoners if they believe in the "fiendishness of my accusers," then promises to lead them in a crusade "for complete morality and the domination of the Christian church through all the land."
Lewis put too many characteristics of powerful ministers into one person to show the dangers of ambition alluded to with the luncheon. Gantry combines the weakness of Jimmy Swaggart and the fecklessness of Tammy Faye, who divorced her jailed husband, with the charisma of Graham and the media savvy of Jim Bakker. He has the opportunism of Norris and Shuler, but lacks the discipline to become Charles Coughlin.
When confronted with would-be heroes, people search for evidence of human frailty, and once that is exposed, no longer care. In real life, that concern destroys the power of men like Swaggart and Bakker. In the novel, it limits the dramatic impact to tawdry affairs. The truly dangerous man either disciplines himself to overcome his urges or sublimates them into his ambitions. One simply doesn’t worry at the end when Gantry is poised to take over napap, because one knows he’ll destroy himself.
Sources:
Graham, Billy. "Televangelist Scandals," at
unctv.org/ruthandbillygraham.
Lewis, Sinclair. Elmer Gantry, 1927; cover blurb from Literary Review on cover of 1958 Dell paperback edition.
Sunday, August 13, 2006
Religion - Part 4 - Doubt
Some religions admit doubt while others deny it exists. Calvinists argued God’s grace was absolute, but no man could know if he was among the elect. Doubt drove searches for evidence of God’s favor.
Later Protestants argued from the evidence backwards. If you spoke in tongues, if you had a conversion experience, then you were in a state of grace. Good works, public service, wealth all became tokens of sanctification.
At every crisis in our past, we’ve taken the absolute over the unknown. Within a generation, the leaders of Massachusetts Bay Colony abandoned their requirements for membership and adopted the half-way covenant that allowed children of church members to join without proof of grace. Election was transformed from personal experience to a collective family legacy that could be inherited.
Jimmy Carter and George W. Bush were both schooled in southern religion, but the one was raised a Baptist, the other converted to Methodism. The first historically divided into warring sects while Methods hewed to central authority. The one group constantly argues theology, the other debates social issues. Both divided over slavery, but only the one still has northern and southern conventions; the other united its conferences in 1939.
Doubt survives among Carter’s Baptists, but not among Bush’s Methodists. One of the earliest, popular country songs illustrates the difference. Ada Ruth Habersohn, who worked with Methodist gospel musician Ira Sankey, wrote "Will the Circle Be Unbroken" around 1908.
In 1935, A. P. Carter rewrote the lyrics for the Carter Family as "Can the Circle Be Unbroken." The reason for the change was probably quite simple: record companies wanted artists to avoid copyright payments by writing their own songs, and artist obliged.
The nature of the change is speculation. It could be as simple as the preference for the sound of the hard consonants (can the circle) over the internal rhyme of the vowels (will the circle). Or, it could reflect the more Calvinistic theology of the south. A. P. was raised in a Methodist community, while his sister-in-law, Maybelle, was from a Baptist communion in southwestern Virginia.
Will, with it’s implied allusion to free will, assumes ascension to heaven, and the only issue is if an individual has taken the actions necessary to ensure a family reunion. Can invites speculation about what’s possible, introduces doubt.
Since outsiders started listening to the Carter Family, their descendants changed the keyword back to "will," probably because they were told they had made a silly error and should correct themselves. It certainly isn’t the only case where they changed one of their songs to fit the expectations of different audiences.
Still, "can" is the version that people with little money bought in the 1930s, and "will" is what the mainstream expects today.
Our public Protestant tradition continues to edge towards the moral certainty that prefers "will" to "can," and eventually recasts all received texts. Once I was told God tested Job to the point Job despaired of God. Some time in the late-1980s, I heard a radio preacher say that was wrong, that God would never toy with a believer. Instead, Job was in the hands of the devil, and his error was not recognizing the wiles of Satan.
As a child, I was also told David defeated Goliath, with the implication that the weak can prevail, that brains can triumph over physical bullies. A few months ago, a woman told me her minister had given her new insight into the story. Goliath lost because he doubted God.
When the woman started to retell the story she almost said Goliath denied his savior, but then realized that didn’t sound quite right. She kept rewording it until she could retain that interpretation with words that fitted the Old Testament.
New interpretations of traditional stories signal changing values. Voters who accept doubt will have different expectations for leaders, for novels or films than those who want absolutes. The trials of Job speak to a different audience than the travails of Goliath. The Godfather and The Sopranos are different narratives.
When we were faced with difficulties raised by racism, poverty, dependence on petroleum, many found austere Goliath more comfortable than tormented Job or complex David. Since Jimmy Carter was president, men who have been willing to negotiate, the peacemakers blessed of old, have been ridiculed as weaklings.
The cultural preference for uniformity that spreads change from a country song to the entire Bible, leads vocal shareholders to eliminate unknowns and demand boards replace CEOs who still believe they should work with their employees and political leaders in communities where they have plants. The same absolutism informs commentators who criticize parents who share child rearing responsibilities, because two decision makers in a family introduces an element of chance.
Self-help consultants tell people, when in doubt, do something, anything. A leader always acts. We’re told Goliath would never form a committee. Job does not grapple with a crisis in faith, he dithers. Even the Southern Baptist convention today seeks the hegemony of Methodists, the theological purity of Presbyterians.
Later Protestants argued from the evidence backwards. If you spoke in tongues, if you had a conversion experience, then you were in a state of grace. Good works, public service, wealth all became tokens of sanctification.
At every crisis in our past, we’ve taken the absolute over the unknown. Within a generation, the leaders of Massachusetts Bay Colony abandoned their requirements for membership and adopted the half-way covenant that allowed children of church members to join without proof of grace. Election was transformed from personal experience to a collective family legacy that could be inherited.
Jimmy Carter and George W. Bush were both schooled in southern religion, but the one was raised a Baptist, the other converted to Methodism. The first historically divided into warring sects while Methods hewed to central authority. The one group constantly argues theology, the other debates social issues. Both divided over slavery, but only the one still has northern and southern conventions; the other united its conferences in 1939.
Doubt survives among Carter’s Baptists, but not among Bush’s Methodists. One of the earliest, popular country songs illustrates the difference. Ada Ruth Habersohn, who worked with Methodist gospel musician Ira Sankey, wrote "Will the Circle Be Unbroken" around 1908.
In 1935, A. P. Carter rewrote the lyrics for the Carter Family as "Can the Circle Be Unbroken." The reason for the change was probably quite simple: record companies wanted artists to avoid copyright payments by writing their own songs, and artist obliged.
The nature of the change is speculation. It could be as simple as the preference for the sound of the hard consonants (can the circle) over the internal rhyme of the vowels (will the circle). Or, it could reflect the more Calvinistic theology of the south. A. P. was raised in a Methodist community, while his sister-in-law, Maybelle, was from a Baptist communion in southwestern Virginia.
Will, with it’s implied allusion to free will, assumes ascension to heaven, and the only issue is if an individual has taken the actions necessary to ensure a family reunion. Can invites speculation about what’s possible, introduces doubt.
Since outsiders started listening to the Carter Family, their descendants changed the keyword back to "will," probably because they were told they had made a silly error and should correct themselves. It certainly isn’t the only case where they changed one of their songs to fit the expectations of different audiences.
Still, "can" is the version that people with little money bought in the 1930s, and "will" is what the mainstream expects today.
Our public Protestant tradition continues to edge towards the moral certainty that prefers "will" to "can," and eventually recasts all received texts. Once I was told God tested Job to the point Job despaired of God. Some time in the late-1980s, I heard a radio preacher say that was wrong, that God would never toy with a believer. Instead, Job was in the hands of the devil, and his error was not recognizing the wiles of Satan.
As a child, I was also told David defeated Goliath, with the implication that the weak can prevail, that brains can triumph over physical bullies. A few months ago, a woman told me her minister had given her new insight into the story. Goliath lost because he doubted God.
When the woman started to retell the story she almost said Goliath denied his savior, but then realized that didn’t sound quite right. She kept rewording it until she could retain that interpretation with words that fitted the Old Testament.
New interpretations of traditional stories signal changing values. Voters who accept doubt will have different expectations for leaders, for novels or films than those who want absolutes. The trials of Job speak to a different audience than the travails of Goliath. The Godfather and The Sopranos are different narratives.
When we were faced with difficulties raised by racism, poverty, dependence on petroleum, many found austere Goliath more comfortable than tormented Job or complex David. Since Jimmy Carter was president, men who have been willing to negotiate, the peacemakers blessed of old, have been ridiculed as weaklings.
The cultural preference for uniformity that spreads change from a country song to the entire Bible, leads vocal shareholders to eliminate unknowns and demand boards replace CEOs who still believe they should work with their employees and political leaders in communities where they have plants. The same absolutism informs commentators who criticize parents who share child rearing responsibilities, because two decision makers in a family introduces an element of chance.
Self-help consultants tell people, when in doubt, do something, anything. A leader always acts. We’re told Goliath would never form a committee. Job does not grapple with a crisis in faith, he dithers. Even the Southern Baptist convention today seeks the hegemony of Methodists, the theological purity of Presbyterians.
Sunday, July 30, 2006
Religion - Part 3 - Free Will
Some years ago a radio program dramatized the conversion experience of a young woman who’d become involved with drugs. She begged her family to let her see a psychiatrist. They refused, telling her Jesus was the only answer. Finally, she accepted their solution.
I had two reactions. Since I knew nothing about the woman or her family, it seemed possible she needed to confront them and their religion, and this was the right solution for her. It also struck me she should have had some choice, should have come to that conclusion on her own.
Free will, the idea that human beings are able to act to improve their lives, is the most potent of those associated with the Protestant Reformation, and is not characteristic of every group. Followers of Jacobus Arminius were persecuted by the Calvinists, but sired the Methodists and midwived the Baptists.
Free will today has two definitions. The narrow one was presented to the young drug addict who was told this or damnation. In 1901, William Dean Howells sketched a Ohio family threatened by a wastrel. The Kentons wanted their daughter to terminate the relationship, but refused to coerce her. Instead, they told the girl they would go abroad until she decided what she wanted "of your own free will."
General free will is under attack today by Protestants who embrace the binary Manichean view of the world as good or evil. Conservatives have generalized the fatalism of the drug addict’s parents to our civil life and tell people no human agency can help them - not the government, not the courts, not unions, only the church,
Most of us were raised with an expansive, Howellsian view of what’s possible, and are genuinely surprised when institutions don’t work. I’m sure this is behind much of the anger about hurricane Katrina. We knew the government could respond; it had in the past. It’s willful failure stunned us. We wouldn’t be so obsessed with retaining walls if only it had tried.
Many have drawn the appropriate conclusion, resignation that one more ideal has failed them. Few are still so angry they want to organize. That response has dissipated in the face of political indifference. They have seen so many cases where human energy has been disparaged, they’ve given up.
When people were being attacked by their manager at the last place I worked, no one thought about a union or group response. Only one considered a lawsuit; another thought about reporting incidents to a whistle blower telephone line, but wouldn’t call the ACLU for advice. Most just grumbled, but no one would file a formal
complaint with human resources for fear of reprisals.
Several left it to fate, saying "God will see me through." They were not the people known for attending church, and they would have shrugged off advances made by those who were. Their comments were less a religious response than the fragments of their self-esteem protesting they could survive.
One sees the same range of responses in interviews with automotive workers who’ve been told their plants are closing and their jobs are gone. They don’t consider the government an ally. They learned with Chrysler and the steel industry that Ronald Reagan didn’t consider a strong industrial base part of the national interest.
Chris Brown, a Delphi worker in Coopersville, told David Moberg, "We can’t depend on the unions, the Democrats, the Republicans...We have to get ourselves mobilized."
A Delphi worker in Dayton, Tony Henderson told James Hannan, "I'm mad as hell, but what can
you do?"
But in Flint, Delphi worker Lisa Simpson told Christ Christoff, "If it's going to happen, it's going to happen...You can only live one day at a time; it's in God's hands."
And in Saginaw, a Detroit News photographer found a prayer circle in the parking lot after Delphi announced the plant would close.
Is it free will when politicians and their strategists systematically attack civil institutions in the belief they should not exist? Or, is it exhausted acceptance of the only alternative proclaimed by those in power?
The loss of this piece of the Protestant ethic may be more serious than all the jobs that are lost, because it is the belief humans can act, can persevere that has separated this country from others. Once it’s gone, it no longer can be channeled into secular projects like conservatives’ wars for the greater good of mankind, or, the welfare of families like the Kentons.
Sources:
Christoff, Chris. "As beat-up Flint faces more bad news, Delphi workers are disgusted," Detroit Free Press, 1 April 2006.
Detroit News, The. Photograph, 1 April 2006.
Hannah, James. "Delphi Plants Proposal Upsets Employees," Associated Press, 1 April 2006.
Howells, William Dean. The Kentons, 1901, reprinted by Greenwood Press, 1969, free will discussed on pages 36 and 274.
Moberg, David. "Dueling over Delphi," The Nation, 3 April 2006.
I had two reactions. Since I knew nothing about the woman or her family, it seemed possible she needed to confront them and their religion, and this was the right solution for her. It also struck me she should have had some choice, should have come to that conclusion on her own.
Free will, the idea that human beings are able to act to improve their lives, is the most potent of those associated with the Protestant Reformation, and is not characteristic of every group. Followers of Jacobus Arminius were persecuted by the Calvinists, but sired the Methodists and midwived the Baptists.
Free will today has two definitions. The narrow one was presented to the young drug addict who was told this or damnation. In 1901, William Dean Howells sketched a Ohio family threatened by a wastrel. The Kentons wanted their daughter to terminate the relationship, but refused to coerce her. Instead, they told the girl they would go abroad until she decided what she wanted "of your own free will."
General free will is under attack today by Protestants who embrace the binary Manichean view of the world as good or evil. Conservatives have generalized the fatalism of the drug addict’s parents to our civil life and tell people no human agency can help them - not the government, not the courts, not unions, only the church,
Most of us were raised with an expansive, Howellsian view of what’s possible, and are genuinely surprised when institutions don’t work. I’m sure this is behind much of the anger about hurricane Katrina. We knew the government could respond; it had in the past. It’s willful failure stunned us. We wouldn’t be so obsessed with retaining walls if only it had tried.
Many have drawn the appropriate conclusion, resignation that one more ideal has failed them. Few are still so angry they want to organize. That response has dissipated in the face of political indifference. They have seen so many cases where human energy has been disparaged, they’ve given up.
When people were being attacked by their manager at the last place I worked, no one thought about a union or group response. Only one considered a lawsuit; another thought about reporting incidents to a whistle blower telephone line, but wouldn’t call the ACLU for advice. Most just grumbled, but no one would file a formal
complaint with human resources for fear of reprisals.
Several left it to fate, saying "God will see me through." They were not the people known for attending church, and they would have shrugged off advances made by those who were. Their comments were less a religious response than the fragments of their self-esteem protesting they could survive.
One sees the same range of responses in interviews with automotive workers who’ve been told their plants are closing and their jobs are gone. They don’t consider the government an ally. They learned with Chrysler and the steel industry that Ronald Reagan didn’t consider a strong industrial base part of the national interest.
Chris Brown, a Delphi worker in Coopersville, told David Moberg, "We can’t depend on the unions, the Democrats, the Republicans...We have to get ourselves mobilized."
A Delphi worker in Dayton, Tony Henderson told James Hannan, "I'm mad as hell, but what can
you do?"
But in Flint, Delphi worker Lisa Simpson told Christ Christoff, "If it's going to happen, it's going to happen...You can only live one day at a time; it's in God's hands."
And in Saginaw, a Detroit News photographer found a prayer circle in the parking lot after Delphi announced the plant would close.
Is it free will when politicians and their strategists systematically attack civil institutions in the belief they should not exist? Or, is it exhausted acceptance of the only alternative proclaimed by those in power?
The loss of this piece of the Protestant ethic may be more serious than all the jobs that are lost, because it is the belief humans can act, can persevere that has separated this country from others. Once it’s gone, it no longer can be channeled into secular projects like conservatives’ wars for the greater good of mankind, or, the welfare of families like the Kentons.
Sources:
Christoff, Chris. "As beat-up Flint faces more bad news, Delphi workers are disgusted," Detroit Free Press, 1 April 2006.
Detroit News, The. Photograph, 1 April 2006.
Hannah, James. "Delphi Plants Proposal Upsets Employees," Associated Press, 1 April 2006.
Howells, William Dean. The Kentons, 1901, reprinted by Greenwood Press, 1969, free will discussed on pages 36 and 274.
Moberg, David. "Dueling over Delphi," The Nation, 3 April 2006.
Sunday, July 23, 2006
Religion - Part 2 - Conversion
Conversion theology has its comfortable, upholstered aspect. If one genuinely recognizes the error of one’s past ways, and ceases those activities, then one is absolved from responsibility. Wives and children of drunken or violent men are not as forgiving as Jesus.
In politics, the implications are more pernicious. George Wallace, Billy Graham and Lee Atwater all have voiced regrets about consequences of their past behavior, but their confessions do nothing to undo the evil they abetted.
Atwater was responsible for George Bush’s Willy Horton campaign. As a southerner, he should have known he was appealing to racism and bigotry. He may have recognized his mistake, but racism is still more respectable than it was. If it weren’t, it wouldn’t be so easy to stir hatreds against brown skinned immigrants from México and Central America.
Billy Graham, no doubt, felt he was doing God’s work when he became an unofficial advisor to Richard Nixon. He may later have realized counseling Nixon tarnished his reputation, but he never eschewed the lure of the powerful. His actions may have had no effect on the active involvement of fundamentalist ministers in politics today, for they had the example of Black preachers before them. Still, he gave the changing view of religion and the state legitimacy with common folk it might not have had.
George Wallace is more complicated. He had no inhibitions about using race for political gain in Alabama. It was only after he was shot and saw the people he opposed adopt his rhetoric that he began to address Black crowds, sometimes asking for forgiveness.
His attempts were greeted with skepticism, especially if the press was notified. Rosa Parks was angry when photographers were there after she met with him; reporters were present when he addressed the Dexter Street Baptist Church of Martin Luther King.
At the same time, Dan Carter tells us, Wallace had meetings with other, less famous people in Alabama, with no fanfare. Many felt his contrition was genuine. But some still remembered the viciousness of his attacks on people they knew, and could not forget.
Evangelistic religions conceal a paradox. They must appeal to the unregenerate to succeed. If the worst are to be saved, then the worst must be forgiven. An evangel Christian can not accept the existence of a person who cannot be redeemed. Alas, this means there is no crime which cannot be excused.
When evangelism remains on the frontiers of society, is a buffer between civilization and the barbarians, it is useful to the survival of the commonwealth. When it moves into the center, it brings a debilitating acceptance of lawlessness.
Since most recognize lawlessness is bad, evangels retreat to question the sincerity of repentance on the grounds that if a change can be doubted, then a criminal can be executed. At one time, Methodists expected the saved to go through a period of testing before they were fully accepted into the church.
The problem with a waiting period is that it suggests redemption is conditional. Today, the answer to the dilemma is love the sinner, hate the crime. The individual is separated from his or her actions.
Many reject this logical consequence of salvation as too radical. They know crimes exist with no statute of limitations, that crimes exist with absolute death penalties. They elevate those actions over regret by the criminal. They recognize the state must impose limits on their evangelist impulses.
When evengels are uncomfortable with unconditional acceptance, then converts must continually prove themselves, even if churches have eliminated waiting periods. New believers are encouraged to establish their bonafides by only mixing with the saved, shunning the dammed, avoiding temptation and contamination.
Once one learns to use external evidence of salvation to arbitrate human interaction, it is easy, neigh necessary, to extend that criteria to politics. Some are willing to support Jose Efraín Ríos Montt in Guatemala, simply because he is a convert. Similarly, others still distrust Russia because it once forsook religion, but can’t quite condemn fascists and Nazis who upheld the church, as if quantifying the dead is sufficient to elevate the lesser murderer over the greater in God’s eyes.
Reducing the complexities of religion to simple, verifiable behaviors may be the most pernicious aspect of forgiving the excesses of the convert, for it allows history to be rewritten and judgement suspended.
Sources:
Anonymous. "Billy Graham," Wikipedia on internet, 2006.
Anonymous. "Harvey Leroy ‘Lee’ Atwater," Wikipedia on internet.
Carter, Dan T. Carter. The Politics of Rage: George Wallace, The Origins of the New Conservatism and the Transformation of American Politics, 1995.
In politics, the implications are more pernicious. George Wallace, Billy Graham and Lee Atwater all have voiced regrets about consequences of their past behavior, but their confessions do nothing to undo the evil they abetted.
Atwater was responsible for George Bush’s Willy Horton campaign. As a southerner, he should have known he was appealing to racism and bigotry. He may have recognized his mistake, but racism is still more respectable than it was. If it weren’t, it wouldn’t be so easy to stir hatreds against brown skinned immigrants from México and Central America.
Billy Graham, no doubt, felt he was doing God’s work when he became an unofficial advisor to Richard Nixon. He may later have realized counseling Nixon tarnished his reputation, but he never eschewed the lure of the powerful. His actions may have had no effect on the active involvement of fundamentalist ministers in politics today, for they had the example of Black preachers before them. Still, he gave the changing view of religion and the state legitimacy with common folk it might not have had.
George Wallace is more complicated. He had no inhibitions about using race for political gain in Alabama. It was only after he was shot and saw the people he opposed adopt his rhetoric that he began to address Black crowds, sometimes asking for forgiveness.
His attempts were greeted with skepticism, especially if the press was notified. Rosa Parks was angry when photographers were there after she met with him; reporters were present when he addressed the Dexter Street Baptist Church of Martin Luther King.
At the same time, Dan Carter tells us, Wallace had meetings with other, less famous people in Alabama, with no fanfare. Many felt his contrition was genuine. But some still remembered the viciousness of his attacks on people they knew, and could not forget.
Evangelistic religions conceal a paradox. They must appeal to the unregenerate to succeed. If the worst are to be saved, then the worst must be forgiven. An evangel Christian can not accept the existence of a person who cannot be redeemed. Alas, this means there is no crime which cannot be excused.
When evangelism remains on the frontiers of society, is a buffer between civilization and the barbarians, it is useful to the survival of the commonwealth. When it moves into the center, it brings a debilitating acceptance of lawlessness.
Since most recognize lawlessness is bad, evangels retreat to question the sincerity of repentance on the grounds that if a change can be doubted, then a criminal can be executed. At one time, Methodists expected the saved to go through a period of testing before they were fully accepted into the church.
The problem with a waiting period is that it suggests redemption is conditional. Today, the answer to the dilemma is love the sinner, hate the crime. The individual is separated from his or her actions.
Many reject this logical consequence of salvation as too radical. They know crimes exist with no statute of limitations, that crimes exist with absolute death penalties. They elevate those actions over regret by the criminal. They recognize the state must impose limits on their evangelist impulses.
When evengels are uncomfortable with unconditional acceptance, then converts must continually prove themselves, even if churches have eliminated waiting periods. New believers are encouraged to establish their bonafides by only mixing with the saved, shunning the dammed, avoiding temptation and contamination.
Once one learns to use external evidence of salvation to arbitrate human interaction, it is easy, neigh necessary, to extend that criteria to politics. Some are willing to support Jose Efraín Ríos Montt in Guatemala, simply because he is a convert. Similarly, others still distrust Russia because it once forsook religion, but can’t quite condemn fascists and Nazis who upheld the church, as if quantifying the dead is sufficient to elevate the lesser murderer over the greater in God’s eyes.
Reducing the complexities of religion to simple, verifiable behaviors may be the most pernicious aspect of forgiving the excesses of the convert, for it allows history to be rewritten and judgement suspended.
Sources:
Anonymous. "Billy Graham," Wikipedia on internet, 2006.
Anonymous. "Harvey Leroy ‘Lee’ Atwater," Wikipedia on internet.
Carter, Dan T. Carter. The Politics of Rage: George Wallace, The Origins of the New Conservatism and the Transformation of American Politics, 1995.
Sunday, July 16, 2006
Religion - Part 1 - Belief
Recently, Freeman Dyson distinguished belief from belief in belief in a review of a book by Daniel Dennett His distinction illuminates how our current religious ferment differs from earlier ones. Unlike previous awakenings, contemporary revivals have no spokesman, no Luther or Calvin or Knox, no Arminius or Wesley. Instead, they seem to be a movement in search of a theology.
People were shocked by change and rebellion in the 1960s when there was a war no one wanted, when civil rights leaders made clear charity was not enough, when children complained they had been raised with ideals that didn’t match reality.
People were shaken, and they responded by asserting the crisis arose from a situation, and thus did not imply they could not have values that endured. Hucksters rushed in with programs, and many chose the one most familiar, the one that abided from their childhoods.
People found a label, said at least I’m still a Christian. Only that was meaningless. It paralleled what happens when someone decides they’re an Indian or a Ukranian, after being assimilated for years. The label is sociologically valid, but it carries no validation, no prescription for action.
Ethnic converts consider learning the language, but that’s usually difficult for adults. Religious students have always learned Aramaic and Greek, and amateur scholars at least know the problems that arise from translation. Others turn to Hebrew; but few still bother with Latin.
Some try food, but discover they like Americanized versions. For an Italian, it’s one thing to experiment with more kinds of pasta, but quite another to open a cookbook and discover recipes for squid and octopus. Methodists advertise seders at Easter.
Then, ethnic seekers dabble with dance and music. Today, worldly theater suppliers offer costumes for liturgical dance derived from Martha Graham.
There’s less interest in reviving the lyre than in adapting modern music, by writing lyrics that make it compatible with a Christian life. Distinctive music no longer matters, since we can’t revive the historic. Southern gospel music that dramatized individual salvation within Protestantism, with four equally strong vocal parts, is disappearing as younger performers seek symbiosis between their religious cohort and their social one.
I remember hearing a young member of a gospel group say, "since I’m a Christian," then I should be doing x. I don’t remember the rest, only that he knew what he was, knew his family tradition, but did not know how to represent it. He was especially open to outside influences because the one thing he was was a performer who needed an audience, and his audience was born again.
At the same time people like the young gospel singer were looking for guidance, others were organizing political groups looking for people to mobilize. A convergence of interests developed when men told new converts, if they were Christians, they should support specific political interests. Instead of theology, they were given a culture war; instead of reformation, a crusade.
Some remembered politics was not part of their traditional Protestant upbringing, with its emphasis on the separation of church and state. But, when they revisited those churches, they didn’t find much assurance, and so they were ready to listen to an alternative.
Others heeded calls to reject religious social action, which often appeared to be political. Dispensationalism argued the social gospel was heresy that distracted individuals from preparing themselves. It then suggested the best protection was a return to the life of early believers in ancient Israel before the time of Christ.
Instead of individuals immersing themselves in the Bible, as earlier Protestants had done, some accepted interpretations from evangelists and turned to history. By coincidence, translations and commentaries on the Dead Sea Scrolls suggested there was much they hadn’t learned, while archeological digs in Israel provided more evidence of the historic life of Jesus.
Ancient Christian religious life was more exciting than anything offered by contemporary churches. And so, these new converts adopted Jewish traditions: not those of the rebbe, but the same kinds of external symbols the new Ukrainian or new Indian finds. The natural tendency to explore language, food and music became ways to return to the primitive church.
As Dyson suggested, people want to believe, and hold to that desire as self-defining. The reasons they don’t take the second step, and actually study the Bible is they’re not sure how to proceed. They’re reviving a tradition they’ve lost, and retain only the most general idea what that tradition meant.
Dispensationalism was introduced into this country between 1862 and 1876 by John Nelson Darby, an Anglican who joined the Plymouth Brethren, a British group with roots in the 1300s and the Brethren of the Common Life in what became the Netherlands. Thomas à Kempis distilled their beliefs in The Imitation of Christ which focused on the life of prayer and humble devotion.
Churches failed their responsibility to train their congregants and clergy in the ways of faith, and abandoned their ties with their founding theologians who could have suggested ways to respond. Spokesmen who exploit the impotence of established churches betray the rededicated by discouraging independent thinking that leads to faith.
The conflict between the will to believe and the vacuousness of proffered theology does not shake the belief in belief. It only makes converts restless consumers who move from one church to another, from one evangelist to another, continually hoping to find something that dignifies their hopes. If a belief is held long enough, becomes central enough to an individuals self-definition, then it can become a true religion, not just its doppelgänger.
Sources:
Freeman Dyson, "Religion from the Outside," The New York Review of Books, 22 June 2006, review of Daniel C. Dennett, Breaking the Spell.
People were shocked by change and rebellion in the 1960s when there was a war no one wanted, when civil rights leaders made clear charity was not enough, when children complained they had been raised with ideals that didn’t match reality.
People were shaken, and they responded by asserting the crisis arose from a situation, and thus did not imply they could not have values that endured. Hucksters rushed in with programs, and many chose the one most familiar, the one that abided from their childhoods.
People found a label, said at least I’m still a Christian. Only that was meaningless. It paralleled what happens when someone decides they’re an Indian or a Ukranian, after being assimilated for years. The label is sociologically valid, but it carries no validation, no prescription for action.
Ethnic converts consider learning the language, but that’s usually difficult for adults. Religious students have always learned Aramaic and Greek, and amateur scholars at least know the problems that arise from translation. Others turn to Hebrew; but few still bother with Latin.
Some try food, but discover they like Americanized versions. For an Italian, it’s one thing to experiment with more kinds of pasta, but quite another to open a cookbook and discover recipes for squid and octopus. Methodists advertise seders at Easter.
Then, ethnic seekers dabble with dance and music. Today, worldly theater suppliers offer costumes for liturgical dance derived from Martha Graham.
There’s less interest in reviving the lyre than in adapting modern music, by writing lyrics that make it compatible with a Christian life. Distinctive music no longer matters, since we can’t revive the historic. Southern gospel music that dramatized individual salvation within Protestantism, with four equally strong vocal parts, is disappearing as younger performers seek symbiosis between their religious cohort and their social one.
I remember hearing a young member of a gospel group say, "since I’m a Christian," then I should be doing x. I don’t remember the rest, only that he knew what he was, knew his family tradition, but did not know how to represent it. He was especially open to outside influences because the one thing he was was a performer who needed an audience, and his audience was born again.
At the same time people like the young gospel singer were looking for guidance, others were organizing political groups looking for people to mobilize. A convergence of interests developed when men told new converts, if they were Christians, they should support specific political interests. Instead of theology, they were given a culture war; instead of reformation, a crusade.
Some remembered politics was not part of their traditional Protestant upbringing, with its emphasis on the separation of church and state. But, when they revisited those churches, they didn’t find much assurance, and so they were ready to listen to an alternative.
Others heeded calls to reject religious social action, which often appeared to be political. Dispensationalism argued the social gospel was heresy that distracted individuals from preparing themselves. It then suggested the best protection was a return to the life of early believers in ancient Israel before the time of Christ.
Instead of individuals immersing themselves in the Bible, as earlier Protestants had done, some accepted interpretations from evangelists and turned to history. By coincidence, translations and commentaries on the Dead Sea Scrolls suggested there was much they hadn’t learned, while archeological digs in Israel provided more evidence of the historic life of Jesus.
Ancient Christian religious life was more exciting than anything offered by contemporary churches. And so, these new converts adopted Jewish traditions: not those of the rebbe, but the same kinds of external symbols the new Ukrainian or new Indian finds. The natural tendency to explore language, food and music became ways to return to the primitive church.
As Dyson suggested, people want to believe, and hold to that desire as self-defining. The reasons they don’t take the second step, and actually study the Bible is they’re not sure how to proceed. They’re reviving a tradition they’ve lost, and retain only the most general idea what that tradition meant.
Dispensationalism was introduced into this country between 1862 and 1876 by John Nelson Darby, an Anglican who joined the Plymouth Brethren, a British group with roots in the 1300s and the Brethren of the Common Life in what became the Netherlands. Thomas à Kempis distilled their beliefs in The Imitation of Christ which focused on the life of prayer and humble devotion.
Churches failed their responsibility to train their congregants and clergy in the ways of faith, and abandoned their ties with their founding theologians who could have suggested ways to respond. Spokesmen who exploit the impotence of established churches betray the rededicated by discouraging independent thinking that leads to faith.
The conflict between the will to believe and the vacuousness of proffered theology does not shake the belief in belief. It only makes converts restless consumers who move from one church to another, from one evangelist to another, continually hoping to find something that dignifies their hopes. If a belief is held long enough, becomes central enough to an individuals self-definition, then it can become a true religion, not just its doppelgänger.
Sources:
Freeman Dyson, "Religion from the Outside," The New York Review of Books, 22 June 2006, review of Daniel C. Dennett, Breaking the Spell.
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