Monday, 31 December 2012
The data on digital books, the market for e-books and e-book readers, is kind of conflicted at the moment. Prognosticating the future of reading is for the most part futile, anyway, but the tea leaves right now are especially mysterious.
Sales of e-readers dropped by about 36 percent, apparently due to the popularity of tablets and devices that do more than reading, leading some industry experts to predict the waning of the Kindle moment.
The rate of e-book buying has also slowed. The market's soft. About a third of those who read e-books haven't bought one in the last 12 months. This might be because they haven't read the ones that are already on their digital devices. An analyst talking to the New York Times called it the "overloaded night stand" effect: "someone isn't going to buy any more books until they make a dent in reading the ones they've already acquired."
On the other hand, the percentage of Americans owning an e-reader went up in the last year, from 10 percent to 19 percent, and the percentage who owned any kind of device that can be used for reading digital books increased by 15 points, so now more than one third of Americans could read e-books if they wanted.
Which they do: as of November 2012, about 30 percent of people who read had read an e-book in the last 12 months.
I don't know what to make of that. What's happening or what's going to happen. It's not clear whether the whole trend has crested or whether, as others say, the digital book future is just beginning.
The market, however, has already changed the way people read and what people read. The effects can be seen in the market for Christian fiction, which looks different now than it it did in 2007, and different in ways that can be directly linked to digital books.
For one thing, in the last five years, the sorts of Christian fiction that are available, the genres and sub genres, has dramatically diversified. The market has opened up so that, for instance, a novel about Reformed Christians on an alien planet in the future fighting a guerrilla war to defend "New Geneva" against invading Khlisti, a new religion described as "incorporating revamped Marxism, Islam and a dash of New Age spirituality," can now not only get published, it can reach number nine on Amazon's chart for science fiction sales. As the author of that book said, "The advent of e-books changed everything."
For another thing, in the last five years, the sorts of people reading Christian fiction has diversified. Where once only a dedicated customer could have found Christian fiction at a special store devoted to evangelical products, now people are stumbling across these books, picking them up (virtually speaking) on a whim, reading them without knowing really what they are or what they are about. This can be seen in the backlash against Christian fiction's lack of a label, though presumably not everyone who found themselves surprised to be reading Christian fiction was angry about it.
Both of these changes -- diversifying readership and diversifying genres -- can be traced the change in the ways e-books are sold.
As NPR's Zoe Chace reports:
Such strategies have changed the shape of Christian fiction, as the genres adjust to the market and make use of the market that's there. In the past, the Christian fiction market has taken the specific shape it had because of other developments in how books are produced and distributed. Christian romance emerged as a distinct genre only after a distribution network of retail outlets was organized, catering specifically to evangelicals, and especially evangelical women. Christian fiction only breached bestseller lists and broad cultural recognition after big box retailers such as Wal-Mart began carrying Christian fiction titles such as Left Behind and The Shunning, embracing the idea that buying such books was act of cultural identification that left customers more strongly allied with the cultural politics of the corporation.
Digital books, Kindle and Amazon, have likewise transformed the market, so what Christian fiction is, and who reads it, and how many, have been changed by how books are sold.
These latest developments to the market may well also determine the shape of the Christian fiction market in the future. How, of course, remains to be seen, but then, even the ways that market developments of the past have already had an influence on the markets for Christian fiction is only very poorly understood.
Sales of e-readers dropped by about 36 percent, apparently due to the popularity of tablets and devices that do more than reading, leading some industry experts to predict the waning of the Kindle moment.
The rate of e-book buying has also slowed. The market's soft. About a third of those who read e-books haven't bought one in the last 12 months. This might be because they haven't read the ones that are already on their digital devices. An analyst talking to the New York Times called it the "overloaded night stand" effect: "someone isn't going to buy any more books until they make a dent in reading the ones they've already acquired."
On the other hand, the percentage of Americans owning an e-reader went up in the last year, from 10 percent to 19 percent, and the percentage who owned any kind of device that can be used for reading digital books increased by 15 points, so now more than one third of Americans could read e-books if they wanted.
Which they do: as of November 2012, about 30 percent of people who read had read an e-book in the last 12 months.
I don't know what to make of that. What's happening or what's going to happen. It's not clear whether the whole trend has crested or whether, as others say, the digital book future is just beginning.
The market, however, has already changed the way people read and what people read. The effects can be seen in the market for Christian fiction, which looks different now than it it did in 2007, and different in ways that can be directly linked to digital books.
For one thing, in the last five years, the sorts of Christian fiction that are available, the genres and sub genres, has dramatically diversified. The market has opened up so that, for instance, a novel about Reformed Christians on an alien planet in the future fighting a guerrilla war to defend "New Geneva" against invading Khlisti, a new religion described as "incorporating revamped Marxism, Islam and a dash of New Age spirituality," can now not only get published, it can reach number nine on Amazon's chart for science fiction sales. As the author of that book said, "The advent of e-books changed everything."
For another thing, in the last five years, the sorts of people reading Christian fiction has diversified. Where once only a dedicated customer could have found Christian fiction at a special store devoted to evangelical products, now people are stumbling across these books, picking them up (virtually speaking) on a whim, reading them without knowing really what they are or what they are about. This can be seen in the backlash against Christian fiction's lack of a label, though presumably not everyone who found themselves surprised to be reading Christian fiction was angry about it.
Both of these changes -- diversifying readership and diversifying genres -- can be traced the change in the ways e-books are sold.
As NPR's Zoe Chace reports:
The price of an e-book isn't fixed the way it is with physical books. Ten years ago, a publisher would have sent out its books to the bookstore with the price stamped on the cover. After that, it was done — the publisher couldn't put it on sale to sell more books.That strategy has been very popular with Christian fiction publishers. It's not uncommon to see whole lists of evangelical novels being sold on Amazon for $2.99, $.99, or even being given away in a promotional blitz.
'The exciting thing about digital books is that we actually get to test and price differently,' [Sourcebook President Dominique] Raccah says. 'We can even price on a weekly basis.' Once publishers have this tool, the ability to adjust prices in an instant, they can do whatever they want with that tool — like use it to get publicity. That's what Little, Brown did with presidential historian Robert Dallek's book on John F. Kennedy, An Unfinished Life.
In the middle of November, Little, Brown dropped the price from $9.99 to $2.99 for 24 hours — the digital equivalent of a one-day-only sale. 'That sparks sales; it gets people talking about it,' says Terry Adams, a publisher with Little, Brown. 'You've just expanded the market.'
Dropping the price of An Unfinished Life did get people's attention. 'Here, we had an opportunity to increase the audience,' Adams says. The book — originally published in 2003 — launched itself back onto the best-seller list. And because Little, Brown could raise the price again, it wasn't stuck with a money loser.
This kind of promotion leads to discovery, something that used to just happen in brick and mortar bookstores. But with fewer of those around, publishers are using price to create discovery.
Such strategies have changed the shape of Christian fiction, as the genres adjust to the market and make use of the market that's there. In the past, the Christian fiction market has taken the specific shape it had because of other developments in how books are produced and distributed. Christian romance emerged as a distinct genre only after a distribution network of retail outlets was organized, catering specifically to evangelicals, and especially evangelical women. Christian fiction only breached bestseller lists and broad cultural recognition after big box retailers such as Wal-Mart began carrying Christian fiction titles such as Left Behind and The Shunning, embracing the idea that buying such books was act of cultural identification that left customers more strongly allied with the cultural politics of the corporation.
Digital books, Kindle and Amazon, have likewise transformed the market, so what Christian fiction is, and who reads it, and how many, have been changed by how books are sold.
These latest developments to the market may well also determine the shape of the Christian fiction market in the future. How, of course, remains to be seen, but then, even the ways that market developments of the past have already had an influence on the markets for Christian fiction is only very poorly understood.
If [Joel] Barlow was America's first atheist, he was tentative about it. "Flirtation," [James] Turner's term, seems to be accurate. He came to his unbelief privately, in the context of his reading and his private notebooks, and he kept it private too. It's significant, nonetheless, that he did go so far as to disbelieve, even if only cautiously. It was, in his notebooks, a crazy thought. And not one without consequences. Barlow hesitated, in the face of those consequences, but still might be rightly understood as marking an early moment in a significant societal shift.
Barlow's private unbelief, as possibly America's first atheist, is an important moment in that move Charles Taylor describes as "a move from a society where belief in God is unchallenged and indeed, unproblematic, to one in which it is understood as one option among others, and frequently not the easiest to embrace," the shift from a society in which "it was virtually impossible not to believe in God, to one in which faith, even for the staunchest believes, is one possibility among others."
In this sense, Barlow is significant to late 18th, early 19th century America. There may have been a historical moment, there, where in the privacy of his notebooks Barlow was the only American anywhere who thought of himself as rejecting all conceptions of God. Where he was the one who thought what was almost unthinkable, that there is no God, and thought it even to the point of tentatively, privately, accepting for himself what to most was an insult, a slur, the name "atheist."5. On the meaningfulness of books bought, but not read
Even if one does, eventually, read all the books one owns -- itself a dubious proposition -- there's a delay, a lag. There's no easy, simple link between buying a book and reading it. There's no simple formula by which one could predict readership based solely on sales.
If this seems obvious, it should. Yet, without fail, cultural critics act as though there's no difference between book purchase and book reading, as if measuring the one were measuring the other. As if the one always and everywhere  meant the other. As if there were a simple relationship between the two acts, and the only reason anyone ever bought a book was to read it, the purchase a promise always made good.
Somehow, this needs to be broken.
There has to be a way to talk about book purchases as culturally meaningful and yet distinct from and different from acts of reading.4. The myth of infatuated Žižekians
I couldn't name even one orthodox Žižekian. One really dogmatic one. One good apologist for or public proclaimer of true Žižekism.3. Mark Driscoll on Pot: sloppy, lazy and deeply unserious
Rather, what one finds is an almost ritual distancing and disowning.
Talk about Žižek is regularly prefaced with disclaimers. One has to apparently deny, first, any affiliation with a broader Žižek project, deny buying into a big Žižek system of thought, deny going too far, or accepting all of it, or not being critical enough. One has to start with a little ritual reiteration about how of course he's wrong, but there's some salvageable aspect in spite of all that.
If Žižek has followers, they're all Peter right before the cock crows that third time.
This whole booklet seems to presuppose the reader is not a half-way intelligent, reasonably capable adult human being in 21st century America. The assumption on every page is that the reader needs the most basic information explained. Driscoll may say he wants Christians and his congregants specifically to think these issues through like adults, but he doesn't act like he's writing for adults. This booklet makes no sense unless you think the intended audience is people who are incapable of considering an issue like the morality of marijuana without a lot of handholding and rudimentary help.2. Prophecies
1. Ignoring David Foster Wallace's religion
Though it's known that, at one point, Wallace belonged to a church in Illinois -- maybe a Mennonite church -- and also he reportedly twice attempted to join the Catholic Church, there's not much more information about his religiousness. Beliefs, practices, problems or questions, affiliations -- it's all question marks. A lot is known about his life, but not about this. His life fascinates people, and moves people. His ethical-religious reflections especially.
But no one in the position to find out more about his religious beliefs or practices seems to have been interested in doing so.
Friday, 28 December 2012
One of the big, big stories in the study of religion in the last few years has been the "rise of the nones." The Pew Forum on Religious & Public Life has documented a shift in religious identifications, and popularized the term "none," a new category of religious affiliation, that of disaffiliation.
At least, that's one way to understand what's meant by "none."
The term has begotten lots of confusions, it seems. When I was last in America, and spent a little time in an evangelical church in Chicago, I was told by both ministers and lay leaders that atheism and agnosticism was sweeping America. These people didn't know the Pew poll, and but they knew the phrase "nones," and they used that phrase to explain what they thought was happening to the culture around them. They were quite surprised when I told them that while there were some atheists among the "nones," more than 90 percent of them actually say they believe in God.
Others have similarly used the term to reach foregone conclusions.
A recent example of this is a piece at Religion Dispatches, where author Elizabeth Drescher suggests a reading list for those "keen to explore what Nones are up to on their own terms." Those terms, as Drescher understands them, are spiritual but not religious.
Talking about the problems with that interoperation of the "nones" started a twitter exchange that became something of an impromptu internet round table interrogating the term, the category, and consequences of various taxonomies in understanding religious and nonreligious groups.
I've storified the twitter discussion below in the hopes that, as Michael J. Altman says, we might use it a place marker to know where to dig.
Starting the conversation is Chris Cotter of the Nonreligion and Secularity Research Network, who is joined by me, Michael J. Altman of Emory University, and Per D. Smith co-chair of the Secularism and Secularity group of the American Academy of Religion.
Update: Elizabeth Drescher says she doesn't mean to lump all the "nones" into the category of spiritual-but-not-religious. She points to other articles, such as here and here, as examples of where she was clearer on this point.
At least, that's one way to understand what's meant by "none."
The term has begotten lots of confusions, it seems. When I was last in America, and spent a little time in an evangelical church in Chicago, I was told by both ministers and lay leaders that atheism and agnosticism was sweeping America. These people didn't know the Pew poll, and but they knew the phrase "nones," and they used that phrase to explain what they thought was happening to the culture around them. They were quite surprised when I told them that while there were some atheists among the "nones," more than 90 percent of them actually say they believe in God.
Others have similarly used the term to reach foregone conclusions.
A recent example of this is a piece at Religion Dispatches, where author Elizabeth Drescher suggests a reading list for those "keen to explore what Nones are up to on their own terms." Those terms, as Drescher understands them, are spiritual but not religious.
Talking about the problems with that interoperation of the "nones" started a twitter exchange that became something of an impromptu internet round table interrogating the term, the category, and consequences of various taxonomies in understanding religious and nonreligious groups.
I've storified the twitter discussion below in the hopes that, as Michael J. Altman says, we might use it a place marker to know where to dig.
Starting the conversation is Chris Cotter of the Nonreligion and Secularity Research Network, who is joined by me, Michael J. Altman of Emory University, and Per D. Smith co-chair of the Secularism and Secularity group of the American Academy of Religion.
Update: Elizabeth Drescher says she doesn't mean to lump all the "nones" into the category of spiritual-but-not-religious. She points to other articles, such as here and here, as examples of where she was clearer on this point.
In 1972, a quarter of young adults in America -- 25 percent -- self-identified as Mainline Protestantism. In 2010, that was down to a mere 6 percent.
That's a 19 percent plummet, apparently.
This bit of data from LifeWays Research is consonant with two major stories that are regularly repeated about religion in America today: 1) that the mainline churches are in decline, and 2) that an increasing number of people are giving up on religion altogether, and now you have these "nones."
A second bit of data complicates both these story lines, though:
Of the quarter of self-identified Mainline Protestants in 1972, only 4 percent said they attended a Mainline Protestant church on a weekly basis. In 2010, that number had declined by half, so only 2 percent of self-described Mainline Protestants also said they attended church every week.
This means that in the '70s, lots of people would say they were Episcopalian, Presbyterian, Congregationalists, etc., but that identification did not connect in their minds to the cultural practice of church attendance. Church identification was not taken to mean weekly church attendance.
It's possible that the dramatic change we're currently seeing is only a change in that idea of what it means to say one is a Mainline Protestant.
That is itself a kind of secularism, as religion's dominance has declined at least in the sense that's it's now increasingly okay to say you don't have one, but this is a lot, lot less than is usually claimed for secularism, and a lot, lot less than is usually claimed for these sorts of statistics.
That's a 19 percent plummet, apparently.
This bit of data from LifeWays Research is consonant with two major stories that are regularly repeated about religion in America today: 1) that the mainline churches are in decline, and 2) that an increasing number of people are giving up on religion altogether, and now you have these "nones."
A second bit of data complicates both these story lines, though:
Of the quarter of self-identified Mainline Protestants in 1972, only 4 percent said they attended a Mainline Protestant church on a weekly basis. In 2010, that number had declined by half, so only 2 percent of self-described Mainline Protestants also said they attended church every week.
This means that in the '70s, lots of people would say they were Episcopalian, Presbyterian, Congregationalists, etc., but that identification did not connect in their minds to the cultural practice of church attendance. Church identification was not taken to mean weekly church attendance.
It's possible that the dramatic change we're currently seeing is only a change in that idea of what it means to say one is a Mainline Protestant.
That is itself a kind of secularism, as religion's dominance has declined at least in the sense that's it's now increasingly okay to say you don't have one, but this is a lot, lot less than is usually claimed for secularism, and a lot, lot less than is usually claimed for these sorts of statistics.
Thursday, 27 December 2012
The poet Charles Olson was born 102 years ago today.
Olson, in a terribly, hilariously cranky interview with the the Paris Review, said of his poetry,
I write a poem simply to create a mode of a priesthood in a church forever, so that a poem for me is simply the first sound realized in the modality of being. If you want to talk about actuality, let’s talk about actuality. And it falleth like a doom upon us all. But it falleth from above, and if that's not straight the whole thing is doodled and if straight then you can modality all you want. You can do anything, literally. Right? That I think is one of the exciting possibilities of the present. Modal throughout -- that's what I love about today’s kids. I like them because I think they’re modaled throughout. I don’t think their teachers are at all. I mean I'm almost like astringent here. I sit back in my lollipop Gloucester and don't do anything. A dirty lousy cop-out. I remember way back when I was young, ten years ago. I was lobbing 'em in. Now it's the Vietnam War. Dig? You follow me? It was marvelous. Playing catch, if I may say that -- with a European audience as well. But I mean catch -- we were playing catch. And he's a goddamn nice fielder. All that Jewish Bronx shit. I don’t mean because it’s Jewish. It’s this late Jewish, late east Bronx literature which to a geologist like me is just uninteresting. A geochronologist geologist. The world machines -- that’s what they got now. The world machines. When will government cease being a nuisance to everybody.Elsewhere, perhaps in a different mood, perhaps more seriously, he said, "right form, in any given poem, is the only and exclusively possible extension of content under hand."
Tuesday, 25 December 2012
Monday, 24 December 2012
A curious historical fact: the first people to work to "take the Christ out of Christmas," as it were, were not atheists, or crass materialists, or secularists/pluralists trying to diminish the role of Christianity in American culture. They were Protestants.
Protestants were very conflicted about Christmas in the 1800s.
For one thing, many were opposed to the "mass" part of Christmas, i.e., the Catholicism implicit in the holiday. If December 25 was a religious holiday, that seemed to mean accepting the Catholic tradition of the church calendar and the Catholic idea of tradition, the same tradition that led to the veneration of the Virgin Mary, the authority of the Pope and the church councils, and all the sundry things Protestants argued should be rejected because they're not in the Bible. The Bible which says nothing about a gift-giving solstice holiday.
At the same time, Protestants felt a strong impulse to take the cultural practice of the day -- the Christmas of the tavern, the Christmas of the department store -- and repurpose them as devotional practices.
This meant that they were at the same time critical of the non-religious celebrations of Christmas and leery of the religious celebrations too.
As Leigh Eric Schmidt writes in Consumer Rites: The Buying and Selling of American Holidays:
It's common today, for example, to find evangelicals at once upset that Christmas has been "commercialized" and that Wal-Mart clerks don't recognize the religious nature of the celebration in their standard customer greetings. This isn't a new thing, though; the conflict over what Christmas is has a long history. And it's not only the case of a conflict between the American Protestant majority and others, be they Catholic or non-religious. The conflict runs even through American Protestantism itself.
Protestants were very conflicted about Christmas in the 1800s.
For one thing, many were opposed to the "mass" part of Christmas, i.e., the Catholicism implicit in the holiday. If December 25 was a religious holiday, that seemed to mean accepting the Catholic tradition of the church calendar and the Catholic idea of tradition, the same tradition that led to the veneration of the Virgin Mary, the authority of the Pope and the church councils, and all the sundry things Protestants argued should be rejected because they're not in the Bible. The Bible which says nothing about a gift-giving solstice holiday.
At the same time, Protestants felt a strong impulse to take the cultural practice of the day -- the Christmas of the tavern, the Christmas of the department store -- and repurpose them as devotional practices.
This meant that they were at the same time critical of the non-religious celebrations of Christmas and leery of the religious celebrations too.
As Leigh Eric Schmidt writes in Consumer Rites: The Buying and Selling of American Holidays:
Through much of the nineteenth century, the Christianization of Christmas was a quite fragile proposition, tentative and fragmentary. Every time a pastor tried to remind his congregation that Christmas was a solemn religious event that 'should be observed in the heart as well as at the hearth, in the temple as well as at the table,' he seemed to have to admit that the most visible observances of the season were 'rioting and vain amusement' -- shooting guns, callithumpian music, practical jokes, heavy drinking and the like. The churches were invariably hard pressed to communicate the devotional dimension of Christmas; the raucous plebeian version of the celebration always threatened to drown them out.As has been regularly pointed out, the so-called "war on Christmas" is pretty specious. It is the case, though, that the meaning of Christmas is and has always been culturally contested. In its practice, this holiday is often conflicted, with multiple meanings, divergent rituals, discordant customs, and perpetually competing interpretations.
Confessedly, these Protestants in the Puritan mold were partially to blame for the sorry state of Christmas devotion in the colonial and antebellum worlds. The tradition of holiday purgation, long shared in by Congregationalists, Presbyterians, Baptists, Quakers, and many Methodists, bequeathed a model of thorough desacralization that actually helped Christmas go its secular way in American culture. Time and again these Protestants insisted that Christmas was just like any other day, that it was without 'any peculiar sanctity.' At best, Christmas was an object of 'mistaken piety'; at worst it was the occasion of superstition and corrupt tradition. Given these presuppositions about the idolatry of the ancient church calendar, when low-church Protestant began their home-centered recovery of Christmas in the middle decades of the nineteenth century, they often welcomed it back explicitly as a 'social holiday,'not as a 'religious observance.' As one Sunday School publication, the Baptist Teacher, editorialized in 1875, 'We believe in Christmas -- not as a holy day, but as a holiday.'
It's common today, for example, to find evangelicals at once upset that Christmas has been "commercialized" and that Wal-Mart clerks don't recognize the religious nature of the celebration in their standard customer greetings. This isn't a new thing, though; the conflict over what Christmas is has a long history. And it's not only the case of a conflict between the American Protestant majority and others, be they Catholic or non-religious. The conflict runs even through American Protestantism itself.
Saturday, 22 December 2012
The current variety of Christian fiction is illustrated pretty well in the Library Journal's list of the year's five best.
There's an Amish romance, though the review calls it a "fresh take on an overcrowded genre," two historical romances', one set in Tudor times and the other on the Titanic, a Christian horror novel, and an apocalyptic/CIA novel.
That might still seem rather limited -- Christian fiction authors of more speculative works, such as sci fi and horror, certain complain about the constraints of the market -- but it was only a decade ago that an organization with a name like American Christian Fiction Writers only served romance novelists.
Update:
Another year-end list, from a LifeWays Christian Stores' book buyer, shows the variety to be found even in what is still, broadly speaking, the romance genre. via Carole.
There's an Amish romance, though the review calls it a "fresh take on an overcrowded genre," two historical romances', one set in Tudor times and the other on the Titanic, a Christian horror novel, and an apocalyptic/CIA novel.
That might still seem rather limited -- Christian fiction authors of more speculative works, such as sci fi and horror, certain complain about the constraints of the market -- but it was only a decade ago that an organization with a name like American Christian Fiction Writers only served romance novelists.
Update:
Another year-end list, from a LifeWays Christian Stores' book buyer, shows the variety to be found even in what is still, broadly speaking, the romance genre. via Carole.
Friday, 21 December 2012
The Harbinger begins by addressing its own problem of unbelievability.
It opens by directly dealing with the readers' likely problem of suspending disbelief for this novel. The subtitle is The Ancient Mystery that Holds the Secret of America's Future. The first page begins with that same phrase spoken as dialogue -- a bit of dialogue that could be between the author and the reader, or the author imagining that conversation, acting it out, playing both parts, his and the reader who's going to read this. And it starts by repeating that line:
On a Christian, apocalypse-oriented radio program, he said "the form is a narrative" but "90 percent of it is non-fiction." On a Charismatic TV show, he repeated the message of the book without any reference to narrative or a novel or fictions of any sort, but only to the "prophetic message known as The Harbinger." The host represented the work as revelation from the Holy Spirit, a characterization Cahn didn't dispute. In an e-mail interview with a Charismatic podcast, Cahn said,
It's a fascinating bit of metafictionality, I think.
A similar thing happened in Left Behind, where criticisms of the book, specifically that it was badly written and unbelievable, were written into the book. Left Behind briefly calls attention to its own status as fiction, predicts the readers' response, and makes that response a part of the narrative, thus re-framing its own problem of plausibility as the readers' struggle with belief. The problem of believing that God is directing the apparently chaotic events of history, and that the Bible is relevant to todays world and to an individuals life, is collapsed into the problem of suspending disbelief to read a novel.
The Harbinger does the same thing, but more so, and more directly. Here the very postmodern technique of self-reflexivity is used, and used aggressively, but to a very different end.
This has caused some deal of controversy among those who, actually, are open to the idea of the imminent return of Christ at Armageddon to reign for 1,000 years.
I wouldn't want to say that this is at all related to that, but that novel, The Harbinger, is the only Christian fiction to make it onto Amazon.com's list of 100 most-sold books of 2012. It comes in at number 23 for the year -- ahead of J.K. Rowling's foray into adult fiction, the Steve Jobs biography, and John Grisham's latest.
Many would likely scoff at that news, a response that's expected by the text and anticipated, written into the story. "I don't expect you to believe me yet," the main character says. "But hear me out!"
It opens by directly dealing with the readers' likely problem of suspending disbelief for this novel. The subtitle is The Ancient Mystery that Holds the Secret of America's Future. The first page begins with that same phrase spoken as dialogue -- a bit of dialogue that could be between the author and the reader, or the author imagining that conversation, acting it out, playing both parts, his and the reader who's going to read this. And it starts by repeating that line:
'An ancient mystery that holds the secret of America's future.'It is the plot for a novel, actually, though within the fiction-world of the narrative the "ancient mystery" isn't fiction, as the character named Nouriel Kaplan insists twice on page two. And as the author Jonathan Cahn has also said in multiple interviews outside the fiction-world of The Harbinger.
'Yes.'
'What would I think?'
'Yes, what would you think?'
'I'd think it was a plot for a movie. Is that it? Is that what you're presenting ... a movie manuscript?'
'No.'
'A plot for a novel?'
'No.'
'Then what?'
He was silent.
'Then what?' she repeated.
On a Christian, apocalypse-oriented radio program, he said "the form is a narrative" but "90 percent of it is non-fiction." On a Charismatic TV show, he repeated the message of the book without any reference to narrative or a novel or fictions of any sort, but only to the "prophetic message known as The Harbinger." The host represented the work as revelation from the Holy Spirit, a characterization Cahn didn't dispute. In an e-mail interview with a Charismatic podcast, Cahn said,
[The Harbinger] reveals things that believers have felt in their hearts but without the evidence to back it up. It reveals a biblical mystery of specific template of judgment that is now playing out in America, before our eyes, lying behind everything from 9/11 to the crash of Wall Street, biblical harbingers of judgment appearing in New York City, Washington, D.C., involving some of the highest of American leaders, the replaying of an ancient drama of judgment, even giving exact dates.This is also all presented in the dialogue in the first few pages of the novel, meaning the author, a messianic Jewish minister from New Jersey, contends that he is presenting non-ficiton as fiction, but within the fiction, the main character is arguing that the story seems like fiction but "it's not fiction -- it's real."
It's a fascinating bit of metafictionality, I think.
A similar thing happened in Left Behind, where criticisms of the book, specifically that it was badly written and unbelievable, were written into the book. Left Behind briefly calls attention to its own status as fiction, predicts the readers' response, and makes that response a part of the narrative, thus re-framing its own problem of plausibility as the readers' struggle with belief. The problem of believing that God is directing the apparently chaotic events of history, and that the Bible is relevant to todays world and to an individuals life, is collapsed into the problem of suspending disbelief to read a novel.
The Harbinger does the same thing, but more so, and more directly. Here the very postmodern technique of self-reflexivity is used, and used aggressively, but to a very different end.
This has caused some deal of controversy among those who, actually, are open to the idea of the imminent return of Christ at Armageddon to reign for 1,000 years.
I wouldn't want to say that this is at all related to that, but that novel, The Harbinger, is the only Christian fiction to make it onto Amazon.com's list of 100 most-sold books of 2012. It comes in at number 23 for the year -- ahead of J.K. Rowling's foray into adult fiction, the Steve Jobs biography, and John Grisham's latest.
Many would likely scoff at that news, a response that's expected by the text and anticipated, written into the story. "I don't expect you to believe me yet," the main character says. "But hear me out!"
Thursday, 20 December 2012
The first episode of the reality TV show Doomsday Preppers was watched by 1.29 million people. It is the most-watched show in National Geographic's history. By the time the fourth episode of the second season aired last month, ratings had suffered a little, but still there were more than 700,000 viewers.
It's very unlikely that all those 700,000 viewers were themselves interested in ways to prepare for the end of the world. It seems unlikely even that such a show would make sense, economically, if it catered only to those sympathetic to the ideas of the subjects of the show. And really, the people featured in this show are presented as strange, as freaks, as laughable.
To quote the New York Times review:
Watch [...] for a short while and, unless you’re a prepper yourself, you might be moderately amused at the absurd excess on display and at what an easy target the prepper worldview is for ridicule.It may be the case that there's a "burgeoning 'prepper' movement," as USA Today claims, but there's little actual evidence of that. Such people do clearly exist, but that's not a new thing. And that's not why such a show exists.
If you want to explain the reason such a show as this exists, you have to look not only at the existence of the people featured in the show, asking why there are so many people dedicating their lives to preparing for the end of the world, but also at the audience.
Why are there so many people so fascinated by people so obsessed by the end of the world?
This is true, too, with the slate of apocalyptic predictions all due tomorrow, the Mayan calendar and the black hole at the center of the galaxy and the hidden planet set to collide with earth. The number of people who take such theories seriously is vanishingly miniscule. The number of people who take seriously the people who take such theories seriously, however, is quite sizable. How do we explain that?
I'm very skeptical, personally, about reports of how widely such apocalyptic theories are believed. A lot of the accounts of belief seem to be very vague or very naive about what it means to believe, and there's also a strong, strong tendency towards credulity when it comes to other people's credulity. However, even if we accept the phenomenon of apocalyptic beliefs without any skepticism, that wouldn't explain the cultural phenomena of obsession with the end of the world. Because that obsession, in American culture at this moment, is not just and not even most basically obsession with the end of the world, but obsession with obsession about the end.
Beyond the matter of "true believers," there's a cultural phenomenon right now of avid interest in true believers. There's a market, here, and it's booming.
It's not enough to just explain the people featured on Doomsday Preppers, the people out there who aren't joking about Nibiru, the people who are violent in their belief in the possibility of zombie apocalypse. If we want to understand this, we can't just look at the obsessed on the TV screen. We have to also look at us looking at the TV screen.
Wednesday, 19 December 2012
There are reasons to highlight the horrible theodicies offered by the likes of Mike Huckabee and Bryan Fischer, when a tragedy happens like the one that happened in Connecticut last week. These men lead, and aspire to lead, and hold positions of privilege. Publicizing their comments serves to marginalize them. Everyone, even those who might otherwise find these men reasonable and believable, gets a chance to be horrified, and side with those who are suffering rather than the ideologues' ghastly ideologies. Which is what happened.
Their comments, though, shouldn't be taken for a fair representation of the bulk of those Christians, or even evangelicals, or even conservative evangelicals who listen to the likes of Huckabee and Fischer. These theodicies aren't widely embraced. Even where they are, in theory, accepted, most recoil from that kind of talk when it would actually be applicable, when they're actually a tragedy to be explained.
The more common response, the one you would have heard in most evangelical churches in America last Sunday, was more likely of the character of Ross Douthat's recent column. Evangelicals, like the Catholic columnist for the New York Times, for the most part understand God to be on the side of the suffering, and not the ultimate cause of violence. While that may, in terms of theology, leave violence unexplained, and leave unanswered the very real question of there could be such violence and also exist a totally good and totally powerful God, it nevertheless allows the believers to respond with empathy, and to understand God to respond that way too.
As Douthat wrote:
Eric Metaxas, the author of the Dietrich Bonhoeffer biography that's been so wildly popular among evangelicals, and a radio commentator on the late Chuck Colson's radio show, Breakpoint, responded similarly, if more hamhandedly:
And it can be criticized.
I, for one, wonder about where such statements of God's "understanding" leave you. Empathy can also mean paralysis. These sorts of statements, while not attributing the violence to a divine cause and asking people to simply submit, don't seem to clearly offer anyone the resources to respond to such a situation. They're compatible, at least, with a kind of nihilism, surrendering to and accepting of such irrationality and violence as being just the way things are. It's possible to view the idea that "God understands" as saying, in some sense, that hope for something different, something better, is futile.
Despair, God knows, has been common enough response this last week. Maybe aestheticized and spiritualized despair, despair with God, is the best we can hope for, given everything.
I know, though, that Christian theology does have resources within it to suggest that something can be done, beyond just mourning. The gospel reading assigned for the third Sunday in Advent -- last Sunday -- begins, for example, with the question, "What should we do?"
There is an answer given.
It seems to me to be different than talk about "our true home."
Still, the only place to start, the only acceptably human place to start, with any theological response dead children, has to be in mourning. Has to be in solidarity with the suffering. Unlike those who rush to God's defense, and in doing make claims for the divine rationality of such irrationality, the Godly sense of such violence, most of the ministers wrestling with how to respond to the sort of overwhelming despair that comes with such tragedies did try to start with empathy, whether that was enough or not.
Their comments, though, shouldn't be taken for a fair representation of the bulk of those Christians, or even evangelicals, or even conservative evangelicals who listen to the likes of Huckabee and Fischer. These theodicies aren't widely embraced. Even where they are, in theory, accepted, most recoil from that kind of talk when it would actually be applicable, when they're actually a tragedy to be explained.
The more common response, the one you would have heard in most evangelical churches in America last Sunday, was more likely of the character of Ross Douthat's recent column. Evangelicals, like the Catholic columnist for the New York Times, for the most part understand God to be on the side of the suffering, and not the ultimate cause of violence. While that may, in terms of theology, leave violence unexplained, and leave unanswered the very real question of there could be such violence and also exist a totally good and totally powerful God, it nevertheless allows the believers to respond with empathy, and to understand God to respond that way too.
As Douthat wrote:
the only thing that my religious tradition has to offer to the bereaved of Newtown today — besides an appropriately respectful witness to their awful sorrow — is a version of that story, and the realism about suffering that it contains.
That realism may be hard to see at Christmastime, when the sentimental side of faith owns the cultural stage. But the Christmas story isn’t just the manger and the shepherds and the baby Jesus, meek and mild.
The rage of Herod is there as well, and the slaughtered innocents of Bethlehem, and the myrrh that prepares bodies for the grave. The cross looms behind the stable — the shadow of violence, agony and death.Others echoed this. James K.A. Smith, himself a Calvinist, responded to the tragedy of Sandy Hook Elementary by arguing against a Christian theodicy:
Let's not pretend we have an answer to the question, "Why?" We can only lament in that space between the Resurrection and kingdom come.
— James K.A. Smith (@james_ka_smith) December 16, 2012
Eric Metaxas, the author of the Dietrich Bonhoeffer biography that's been so wildly popular among evangelicals, and a radio commentator on the late Chuck Colson's radio show, Breakpoint, responded similarly, if more hamhandedly:
I grew up in Danbury, CT, next door to Newtown. What happened today is unfathomable, except perhaps as proof that we need God desperately.
— Eric Metaxas (@ericmetaxas) December 15, 2012
Where can we go in this tragedy except to the foot of the Cross, where an Innocent died to defeat Death and open the door to our true home?There are plenty of reasons to talk about and criticize the kind of "Christian answer" being offered by Huckabee, Fischer, and those like them, but an actual consideration of how conservative Christians theologize a response to evil in 21st century America would do better to look at these other sorts of statements. If theodicy's going to be criticized, it should be this theodicy.
— Eric Metaxas (@ericmetaxas) December 16, 2012
And it can be criticized.
I, for one, wonder about where such statements of God's "understanding" leave you. Empathy can also mean paralysis. These sorts of statements, while not attributing the violence to a divine cause and asking people to simply submit, don't seem to clearly offer anyone the resources to respond to such a situation. They're compatible, at least, with a kind of nihilism, surrendering to and accepting of such irrationality and violence as being just the way things are. It's possible to view the idea that "God understands" as saying, in some sense, that hope for something different, something better, is futile.
Despair, God knows, has been common enough response this last week. Maybe aestheticized and spiritualized despair, despair with God, is the best we can hope for, given everything.
I know, though, that Christian theology does have resources within it to suggest that something can be done, beyond just mourning. The gospel reading assigned for the third Sunday in Advent -- last Sunday -- begins, for example, with the question, "What should we do?"
There is an answer given.
It seems to me to be different than talk about "our true home."
Still, the only place to start, the only acceptably human place to start, with any theological response dead children, has to be in mourning. Has to be in solidarity with the suffering. Unlike those who rush to God's defense, and in doing make claims for the divine rationality of such irrationality, the Godly sense of such violence, most of the ministers wrestling with how to respond to the sort of overwhelming despair that comes with such tragedies did try to start with empathy, whether that was enough or not.
From the NPR review of Consuming Spirits:
[Chris] Sullivan's Appalachian Gothic takes us into a convent chapel where the mother superior makes product endorsements part of her tour; a tiny local-history museum where unruly children chatter while being told about the ghoulish, recently found Indian corpse that's been hurriedly taxidermied and added to a display; and into the touched mind of Victor, a depressive, alcoholic man-child who drifts in and out of consciousness behind the wheel of his truck while listening to Gray's radio show.
Saturday, 15 December 2012
Friday, 14 December 2012
... one might think that a certain degree of philosophical training would be very useful to a scientist. Scientists ought to be able to recognize how often philosophical issues arise in their work — that is, issues that cannot be resolved by arguments that make recourse solely to inference and empirical observation. In most cases, these issues arise because practicing scientists, like all people, are prone to philosophical errors. To take an obvious example, scientists can be prone to errors of elementary logic, and these can often go undetected by the peer review process and have a major impact on the literature — for instance, confusing correlation and causation, or confusing implication with a biconditional. Philosophy can provide a way of understanding and correcting such errors. It addresses a largely distinct set of questions that natural science alone cannot answer, but that must be answered for natural science to be properly conducted.-- Austin L. Hughes, The Folly of Scientism in The New Atlantis.
Thursday, 13 December 2012
Wednesday, 12 December 2012
Perhaps it will ultimately be a matter of phrasing.
A third for-profit corporation has filed suit against the Obama administration's Health and Human Services' mandate that health insurance plans include coverage of contraceptives. In addition to a small flotilla of Catholic charities suing over this rule, there are also these three specific cases, where the question is finally whether or not the First Amendment's protection of religious exercise includes corporations. That is, whether or not corporations have inalienable human rights and whether or not they can in some sense be religious.
The latest suit is from Conestoga Wood Specialties Corporation, a woodworking company based in Landcaster Country, Penn. With the suit, the corporation joins and follows the arts-and-crafts chain Hobby Lobby and the Christian book publisher Tyndale House, making the case in federal court that corporations have religions.
The news story in the Philadelphia Inquirer reporting on the suit says the company, which has more than 900 employees and makes cabinets, is owned by Mennonites. Reporter Amy Worden describes Conestoga Wood Specialties as a "Mennonite-owned cabinetmaker." This seems to be a fact that no one disputes.
The headline for the piece, however, says the company is a "Mennonite firm." This is exactly what's in dispute.
Whether or not there's an important distinction between the two phrases is, it seems, basically the crux of this case.
The Obama administration's case is that a Mennonite-owned company is not the same thing as a Mennonite company. After all, there are more than 900 people working there. The religious practices of the owners may include decisions they make in running the company, but the corporation does not belong to any church. That's the argument.
Others disagree. Or, at least, favor the kind of phrasing that takes as fact what's disputed in the court case. For example:
The way one views this argument may be a matter of assumptions, really. Assumptions that come out in questions of phrasing. It just depends on how you put it.
Update (Dec. 13): The Philadelphia Inquirer has updated its headline to read "A Mennonite firm sues over Obamacare contraception coverage." Whether because the reporter or someone raised the issue I mention here or for some other reason, I do not know.
A third for-profit corporation has filed suit against the Obama administration's Health and Human Services' mandate that health insurance plans include coverage of contraceptives. In addition to a small flotilla of Catholic charities suing over this rule, there are also these three specific cases, where the question is finally whether or not the First Amendment's protection of religious exercise includes corporations. That is, whether or not corporations have inalienable human rights and whether or not they can in some sense be religious.
The latest suit is from Conestoga Wood Specialties Corporation, a woodworking company based in Landcaster Country, Penn. With the suit, the corporation joins and follows the arts-and-crafts chain Hobby Lobby and the Christian book publisher Tyndale House, making the case in federal court that corporations have religions.
The news story in the Philadelphia Inquirer reporting on the suit says the company, which has more than 900 employees and makes cabinets, is owned by Mennonites. Reporter Amy Worden describes Conestoga Wood Specialties as a "Mennonite-owned cabinetmaker." This seems to be a fact that no one disputes.
The headline for the piece, however, says the company is a "Mennonite firm." This is exactly what's in dispute.
Whether or not there's an important distinction between the two phrases is, it seems, basically the crux of this case.
The Obama administration's case is that a Mennonite-owned company is not the same thing as a Mennonite company. After all, there are more than 900 people working there. The religious practices of the owners may include decisions they make in running the company, but the corporation does not belong to any church. That's the argument.
Others disagree. Or, at least, favor the kind of phrasing that takes as fact what's disputed in the court case. For example:
RT @mzhemingway Mennonite company sues Obama admin over HHS mandate: bit.ly/TRQHiKThen, of course, there are those like the editor at First Things whose headline elides and implicitly denies any meaningful difference between a "Mennonite-owned corporation" and a "Mennonite corporation" and all the Mennonites.
— Thomas S. Kidd (@ThomasSKidd) December 11, 2012
The way one views this argument may be a matter of assumptions, really. Assumptions that come out in questions of phrasing. It just depends on how you put it.
Update (Dec. 13): The Philadelphia Inquirer has updated its headline to read "A Mennonite firm sues over Obamacare contraception coverage." Whether because the reporter or someone raised the issue I mention here or for some other reason, I do not know.
Tuesday, 11 December 2012
Jason N. Blum, "Retrieving Phenomenology of Religion as a Method for Religious Studies," in the Journal of the American Academy of Religion, Dec. 2012:
Phenomenology of religion is not keyed to offer explanations of religion, and especially not in naturalistic or social scientific terms. However, it is well equipped to offer an interpretation of religion, or of religious experience and consciousness. It is this interpretive function that should define phenomenology of religion, and which sets it apart from social scientific or naturalistic methods that seek to explain religion. The category of explanation is privileged by McCutcheon, Proudfoot, and others, and may be regarded as the style of analysis that characterizes a good proportion of social scientific work. An economist or sociologist may, for example, seek to explain why conservative or fundamentalist types of religious identification tend to increase in the face of economic hardship, globalization, or intecultural penetration. In this sense, “explanation” consists of proposing a causal relationship wherein certain observable, natural factors are identified as providing reasons for related religious phenomena.
By contrast, the phenomenologist of religion attempts to interpret or understand religion, which is to say that he seeks to disclose the meaning or meanings of it as they are constructed, perceived, and experienced within consciousness, or from the perspective of the religious subject. While this interpretive task is distinct from the explanatory one, it is not necessarily opposed to it, and may in fact represent a guide or aid in the explanatory endeavor.
[.... It is] an interpretive endeavor designed to disclose the meaning of religion, as understood and experienced from the perspective of religious consciousness."
Monday, 10 December 2012
Full disclosure: I am a public transportation user.
This makes it difficult to achieve or maintain the necessary distance to dispassionately review Mark Driscoll's new e-book, Puff or Pass? Should Christians Smoke Pot or Not. Because, it turns out, Driscoll's big argument opposing the recreational use of marijuana is the same as his argument against taking the train. Bus riders and pot smokers turn out, in Driscoll's understanding, to have the same problem. His message to both sets of "users" is identical: grow up.
I am not making this up, and I'm not stretching to make this argument.
Driscoll, "one of the world's most downloaded and quoted pastors," according to his church's website, explicitly makes this comparison.
He writes that the question of marijuana use comes up in his ministry because he works with "a high (pun intended) percentage of single young guys living typical, irresponsible urban lives." The real problem, the root problem of the issue of marijuana use, is that irresponsibility and immaturity: marijuana is just another example of the spiritual epidemic of boys who won't grow up, according to Driscoll. So even though smoking a joint isn't illegal anymore in Washington State, where Driscoll ministers, and even if marijuana isn't specifically prohibited by his church and maybe won't bring down church discipline, it's wrong because it's another way people avoid maturity.
Driscoll writes:
I don't know if Driscoll's just making stuff up or what.
I can tell you what people do on buses and trains, though. I commute to work on a train and spend, some semesters, up to eight hours a week on public transportations. I made the decision to take public transportation rather than buy a car for financial reasons, and also to make better use of my time. I read, grade papers and prep classes on the train. I have also slept on the train, had breakfast on the train, and occasionally played computer games on the train. The other commuters I've seen are like me: they read, write e-mails, listen to music, do homework, talk to people, watch TV, and sometimes just stare off into space. Apparently, to Driscoll, this looks like a public health crisis of immaturity. To me it looks like people doing stuff. Maybe Driscoll looks at commuter traffic and sees manliness: I see waste and frustrating boredom.
This is a slight book, free to download from The Resurgence, which offers resources to train and equip people in Driscoll and Mars Hill's brand of evangelical Reformed theology. It's only 36 pages, but with lots of white space, oversized fonts, and half an excess of front matter, it's more like 15.
And some of that is filler.
Part one of Puff or Pass? is labeled "Statistics." Driscoll -- with the help of a research group -- uses this section to recap two Pew Research Center studies about marijuana, both of which are freely available online (here and here). The reports have to do with public support for legalization, and also mention the percentage of people who say they've tried marijuana. Driscoll simply quotes the studies. There's no interpretation, no explanation, no arguments, and no effort -- not even a minimal one -- to try to connect those sociological facts to the question the book is supposed to answer. The relevance of this information is completely mysterious. If the statistics are supposed to be "evidence," what are they evidence of? Driscoll just packs it in, and then moves on.
Part two of the book is dedicated to setting out a variety of opinions on the legality of marijuana and the morality of using marijuana. Driscoll calls these "Evangelical Views," but cites and quotes many who aren't evangelical leaders or even speaking specifically for or to Christians, such as an editorial by Kevin A. Sabet, who's worked on drug policy for the last three presidential administrations, and Marc Emery, an imprisoned advocate for the legalization of marijuana, who has written about Rastafarians in the magazine Cannabis Culture. The Christians cited range from Pat Robertson to Douglas Wilson, several Christianity Today writers, and official statements from a variety of churches, including the Presbyterian Church USA, the Episcopal Church, the United Methodists, and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints ("whose members," Driscoll mentions parenthetically, "consider themselves Christian").
Driscoll doesn't actually review these various opinions, or do much in the way of evaluative work, thinking through the available arguments or ideas. He just says what they are. He classifies the opinions into options, so one can see several choice quotes for "OPTION A: Any Illegal Use of Marijuana is Immoral," "OPTION B: Recreational Use of Marijuana is Immoral; Medical Use of Marijuana is Immoral Until Science is More Conclusive," and so on.
After a certain point, with various positions being re-capped, it becomes difficult to discern what the point is. Surely American adults who are even half-way paying attention -- maybe they've been to high school, worked in a restaurant or spent time in a suburban parking lot -- can give a more or less decent account of why some people have a problem with marijuana and others don't.
But that's exactly the point.
This whole booklet seems to presuppose the reader is not a half-way intelligent, reasonably capable adult human being in 21st century America. The assumption on every page is that the reader needs the most basic information explained. Driscoll may say he wants Christians and his congregants specifically to think these issues through like adults, but he doesn't act like he's writing for adults. This booklet makes no sense unless you think the intended audience is people who are incapable of considering an issue like the morality of marijuana without a lot of handholding and rudimentary help.
Driscoll protests that this is not supposed to be a "comprehensive" or "definitive" treatment of the question, but is meant to help "Christians think through the matter in an informed way," but what he offers is more or less a cut-and-paste job, as if the intended readers couldn't Google this stuff for themselves.
This is not to say that there are no arguments made here, but they are precious few.
In at least one case, his argument is nothing more than a statement that he believes something "as a Christian." How the one thing connects to the other he doesn't bother to say.
Driscoll concludes that recreational use is always wrong but that medical use is OK "in some cases, under a doctor's supervision." The argument for medical use is just that he's not skeptical of the science that shows it's helpful in some cases. The argument against recreational use is that getting high is wrong, or anyway wanting to get high is wrong, and also there's the above-mentioned comparison to public transportation users and the injunction to "grow up!"
Driscoll notes here that he aligns with the Presbyterians, Methodists and Episcopalians on this issue. That conclusion isn't beyond the pale or in anyway crazy, but it's also not really supported as much as just stated. There's a patina of research, a gloss of "careful consideration," but in the end Driscoll isn't doing anything more than making a declaration. A press release in response to Washington State recent legalization of marijuana would have been just as informative.
The real question of this booklet is why it exists.
At several points, Driscoll notes that he used to deal with the question of marijuana by just saying that Christians shouldn't break any law they're not morally required to break by God, but that now that objection to smoking a joint is gone. The change in the state law meant the issue came up again in this new context, and this is Driscoll dealing with it.
Mostly by not dealing with it.
As best I can determine from the textual evidence, this book exists so that Driscoll and his followers won't have to think about the question of marijuana usage. This is something Driscoll can reference and people in his church can reference and be done with, without really doing any serious work. This work exists so that when someone asks if it's OK for a Christian to smoke weed sometimes, an elder won't have to answer the question, but can instead just recommend the church's website. This isn't the kind of work one produces when a topic is important or something one cares about -- it's a sloppy and lazy and deeply unserious.
The only reason it might be taken as anything else is because it has Driscoll's name on it. If that happens, it'll be a prime example of exactly the sort of facile immaturity that Driscoll is supposed to opposed to but, nevertheless, seems to be encouraging.
If this is what it means to "act like men," I'd recommend taking the train.
This makes it difficult to achieve or maintain the necessary distance to dispassionately review Mark Driscoll's new e-book, Puff or Pass? Should Christians Smoke Pot or Not. Because, it turns out, Driscoll's big argument opposing the recreational use of marijuana is the same as his argument against taking the train. Bus riders and pot smokers turn out, in Driscoll's understanding, to have the same problem. His message to both sets of "users" is identical: grow up.
I am not making this up, and I'm not stretching to make this argument.
Driscoll, "one of the world's most downloaded and quoted pastors," according to his church's website, explicitly makes this comparison.
He writes that the question of marijuana use comes up in his ministry because he works with "a high (pun intended) percentage of single young guys living typical, irresponsible urban lives." The real problem, the root problem of the issue of marijuana use, is that irresponsibility and immaturity: marijuana is just another example of the spiritual epidemic of boys who won't grow up, according to Driscoll. So even though smoking a joint isn't illegal anymore in Washington State, where Driscoll ministers, and even if marijuana isn't specifically prohibited by his church and maybe won't bring down church discipline, it's wrong because it's another way people avoid maturity.
Driscoll writes:
[...] as a pastor I have noticed that people tend to stop maturing when they start self medicating. Everyone has very tough seasons in life, but by persevering through them we have an opportunity to mature and grow as people. Those who self-medicate with drugs and/or alcohol (as well as other things) often thwart maturity as they escape the tough seasons of life rather than face them.
[...] when a man acts like a boy, that’s a real problem. A recent article even noted that young men are now less likely than ever to own a car, as taking public transportation allows them to use their smartphone more hours every day playing video games and downloading porn. The last thing these guys need is to get high, be less motivated, and less productive; instead, they need to "act like men, [and] be strong" (1 Cor. 16:13).
The article that Driscoll cites about public transportation users doesn't say anything like he says it says. He links an Atlantic Monthly piece entitled "Why are Young People Ditching Cars for iPhones?" The author writes that economic changes and changes in consumer culture explain the 11 point drop in young people's car purchases between 1985 and 2012. There's nothing in there -- at all -- about a somehow new age of irresponsibility, and not even a single mention of publicaly viewed porn or lives devoted to video games.
I don't know if Driscoll's just making stuff up or what.
I can tell you what people do on buses and trains, though. I commute to work on a train and spend, some semesters, up to eight hours a week on public transportations. I made the decision to take public transportation rather than buy a car for financial reasons, and also to make better use of my time. I read, grade papers and prep classes on the train. I have also slept on the train, had breakfast on the train, and occasionally played computer games on the train. The other commuters I've seen are like me: they read, write e-mails, listen to music, do homework, talk to people, watch TV, and sometimes just stare off into space. Apparently, to Driscoll, this looks like a public health crisis of immaturity. To me it looks like people doing stuff. Maybe Driscoll looks at commuter traffic and sees manliness: I see waste and frustrating boredom.
If car culture encourages adult behavior and car ownership correlates to personal responsibility, I'm sure I don't know how.
But this is the thing about this little digital booklet. Supposedly the value upheld and advocated is maturity. On a certain level, that's what's happening. However, this work is also itself enormously lazy, and, I think it can be argued, encourages and fosters immaturity.
And some of that is filler.
Part one of Puff or Pass? is labeled "Statistics." Driscoll -- with the help of a research group -- uses this section to recap two Pew Research Center studies about marijuana, both of which are freely available online (here and here). The reports have to do with public support for legalization, and also mention the percentage of people who say they've tried marijuana. Driscoll simply quotes the studies. There's no interpretation, no explanation, no arguments, and no effort -- not even a minimal one -- to try to connect those sociological facts to the question the book is supposed to answer. The relevance of this information is completely mysterious. If the statistics are supposed to be "evidence," what are they evidence of? Driscoll just packs it in, and then moves on.
Part two of the book is dedicated to setting out a variety of opinions on the legality of marijuana and the morality of using marijuana. Driscoll calls these "Evangelical Views," but cites and quotes many who aren't evangelical leaders or even speaking specifically for or to Christians, such as an editorial by Kevin A. Sabet, who's worked on drug policy for the last three presidential administrations, and Marc Emery, an imprisoned advocate for the legalization of marijuana, who has written about Rastafarians in the magazine Cannabis Culture. The Christians cited range from Pat Robertson to Douglas Wilson, several Christianity Today writers, and official statements from a variety of churches, including the Presbyterian Church USA, the Episcopal Church, the United Methodists, and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints ("whose members," Driscoll mentions parenthetically, "consider themselves Christian").
Driscoll doesn't actually review these various opinions, or do much in the way of evaluative work, thinking through the available arguments or ideas. He just says what they are. He classifies the opinions into options, so one can see several choice quotes for "OPTION A: Any Illegal Use of Marijuana is Immoral," "OPTION B: Recreational Use of Marijuana is Immoral; Medical Use of Marijuana is Immoral Until Science is More Conclusive," and so on.
After a certain point, with various positions being re-capped, it becomes difficult to discern what the point is. Surely American adults who are even half-way paying attention -- maybe they've been to high school, worked in a restaurant or spent time in a suburban parking lot -- can give a more or less decent account of why some people have a problem with marijuana and others don't.
But that's exactly the point.
This whole booklet seems to presuppose the reader is not a half-way intelligent, reasonably capable adult human being in 21st century America. The assumption on every page is that the reader needs the most basic information explained. Driscoll may say he wants Christians and his congregants specifically to think these issues through like adults, but he doesn't act like he's writing for adults. This booklet makes no sense unless you think the intended audience is people who are incapable of considering an issue like the morality of marijuana without a lot of handholding and rudimentary help.
Driscoll protests that this is not supposed to be a "comprehensive" or "definitive" treatment of the question, but is meant to help "Christians think through the matter in an informed way," but what he offers is more or less a cut-and-paste job, as if the intended readers couldn't Google this stuff for themselves.
This is not to say that there are no arguments made here, but they are precious few.
In at least one case, his argument is nothing more than a statement that he believes something "as a Christian." How the one thing connects to the other he doesn't bother to say.
Driscoll concludes that recreational use is always wrong but that medical use is OK "in some cases, under a doctor's supervision." The argument for medical use is just that he's not skeptical of the science that shows it's helpful in some cases. The argument against recreational use is that getting high is wrong, or anyway wanting to get high is wrong, and also there's the above-mentioned comparison to public transportation users and the injunction to "grow up!"
Driscoll notes here that he aligns with the Presbyterians, Methodists and Episcopalians on this issue. That conclusion isn't beyond the pale or in anyway crazy, but it's also not really supported as much as just stated. There's a patina of research, a gloss of "careful consideration," but in the end Driscoll isn't doing anything more than making a declaration. A press release in response to Washington State recent legalization of marijuana would have been just as informative.
The real question of this booklet is why it exists.
At several points, Driscoll notes that he used to deal with the question of marijuana by just saying that Christians shouldn't break any law they're not morally required to break by God, but that now that objection to smoking a joint is gone. The change in the state law meant the issue came up again in this new context, and this is Driscoll dealing with it.
Mostly by not dealing with it.
As best I can determine from the textual evidence, this book exists so that Driscoll and his followers won't have to think about the question of marijuana usage. This is something Driscoll can reference and people in his church can reference and be done with, without really doing any serious work. This work exists so that when someone asks if it's OK for a Christian to smoke weed sometimes, an elder won't have to answer the question, but can instead just recommend the church's website. This isn't the kind of work one produces when a topic is important or something one cares about -- it's a sloppy and lazy and deeply unserious.
The only reason it might be taken as anything else is because it has Driscoll's name on it. If that happens, it'll be a prime example of exactly the sort of facile immaturity that Driscoll is supposed to opposed to but, nevertheless, seems to be encouraging.
If this is what it means to "act like men," I'd recommend taking the train.
Sunday, 9 December 2012
I can't remember the last time I've seen an interview as strange as the one National Review published recently, where Kathryn Jean Lopez asks sociologist Rodney Stark about his new book on the evidence of the benefits of religious adherence.
This really reads like an interview where something has gone horribly wrong:
LOPEZ: Religion can keep me from mental illness? My inbox suggests it is evidence of my mental illness.
STARK: Several hundred studies are unanimous that frequent church-attenders are far less likely than non-attenders to suffer from mental illness — I devote many pages to the matter.
LOPEZ: The 'higher the church membership of a city, the lower its crime rates.' What evidence do you have for this contention?
STARK: I cite many published studies.
LOPEZ: How can you prove that 'religious parents are better parents, who raise better-behaved and better-educated children'?It continues from there, with Lopez asking strange questions that seem -- best I can guess -- to be bad imitations of the kinds of questions she thinks atheists and/or liberals would ask. The gag, maybe, is that all of these things are obvious, and so obvious as to obviously not need evidentiary support. But now there is statistical evidence ... so, hahaha. Or something.
STARK: I cite a very large research literature.
Stark, who's done some important work in the sociology of religion but has also been sharply criticized for some of his work, and, generally, seems way over-defensive when questioned about the conclusions he draws from his facts, gives answers that equal the questions in oddity. With some answers, he sounds like your standard resentful conservative ("the media are dominated by the irreligious. So are universities". With others, Stark sounds as cranky someone with a toothache listening to a baby cry.
One of his answers, literally, is "See Scandinavia."
I suspect there are serious problems with this book. The whole thing appears to be based on a basic misunderstanding of evidence, and the kinds of correlation-causation confusions that one would hope an accomplished sociologist would understand and avoid. I'm disinclined to read the book and find out if that's the case, though, after this very weird case of book "promotion."
Update:
Via twitter, Per D. Smith suggests that it's been hard to take Stark seriously as a sociologist for more than a decade, citing the article "Atheism, faith, and the social scientific study of religion" in the Journal of Contemporary Religion from 1999.
Saturday, 8 December 2012
Susan Jacoby wonders why the 19th century's "Great Agnostic" Robert G. Ingersoll was more or less forgotten to history. One theory she suggests: it was liberals' smug confidence in their victory over fundamentalism after the Scopes trial.
Jacoby writes:
Ingersoll's collected works were published within a few years of his death [in 1899] by his brother-in-law C. P. Farrell, who owned the Dresden Publishing Company (named for Ingersoll’s birthplace in upstate New York). The Great Agnostic remained a well-known, frequently cited figure into the 1920s, not only because many of his friends and enemies remained alive but also because his writings were still thought to be capable of corrupting American youth.
The memory of Ingersoll faded swiftly, however, after the famous 1925 Scopes Monkey Trial, which pitted the leading spokesman for religious fundamentalism, William Jennings Bryan, against Clarence Darrow, the nation’s most famous criminal lawyer and an equally famous agnostic, who had been strongly influenced by hearing Ingersoll’s speeches in the 1870s and 1880s.Jacoby has a biography of Ingersoll coming out in 2013.
I'm slightly suspicious of the question, here. There's an assumption that it's odd or abnormal for Ingersoll's presence to have faded or have been forgotten, an assumption that goes to support Jacoby's thesis about Ingersoll's significance without making an argument for his importance.
There is an interesting question here, though. To what extent did the "victory" in the Tennessee court house, as understood by those who were critical of religion, as represented by them to themselves, change the shape of skeptical arguments and the development of the atheistic cause?
Friday, 7 December 2012
Matt Hedstrom, American Studies professor at the University of Virginia and author of the recently released The Rise of Liberal Religion: Book Culture and American Spirituality in the Twentieth Century, talking about his book on Virginia public radio.
Hedstrom starts with a brief, of sorts, for the book markets and book cultures, and why that study is important in the study of religion:
His book, I think, will be a good addition to the growing body of work on religious book cultures.
Hedstrom starts with a brief, of sorts, for the book markets and book cultures, and why that study is important in the study of religion:
"Religions also always take on the characteristics of their moment, of their surrounding culture. When you think about the United States in the 20th century, and still in the 21st century, I think the most powerful cultural forces we've got are media and the consumer marketplace. We shape our identities so much through what we consume and how we choose to consume all kinds of commodities, and how we consume media in particular. And, for a lot of Americans, over the course of the the 20th century, the most culturally significant commodity that they bought were books."Thinking about books as commodities and about how faith as currently, culturally understood, is constructed in the context of such market interactions between consumers and commodities has been one of the major developments of my thinking in my dissertation work. Hearing Hedstrom talk at the Religion and the Marketplace conference in Heidelberg, in Oct. 2011, spurred me on in this.
His book, I think, will be a good addition to the growing body of work on religious book cultures.
Thursday, 6 December 2012
The Evangelical Christian Publisher's association has announced the finalists for the 2012 cover design awards. Most seem to me ... underwhelming. Some are very bad. There's certainly a clear preference for visual puns and over-literal interpretations.
I'm not an expert at these things. Perhaps the above, for example, does what it's supposed to do in a bookstore, catches attention and communicates a basic idea very succinctly. I can't help but feel, though, that such covers communicate also a deep disrespect for the intended audience.
The very worst of the nominated covers:
Presumably such dreck actually helps sales, though.
Update: A summary of the marketing research behind these designs can be found here.
Tuesday, 4 December 2012
Daniel Dennett is notoriously horrible at history. It turns out, though, if you give him an award and €150,000, he is willing to do a little.
Here, in an interview with a Dutch journalist about how he won the Erasums award, he discovers Erasmus, and finds he has, at least in one specific sense he'll admit to, been preceeded.
Dennett: "It's a little bit eerie to discover that you're echoing a debate which is hundreds of years old. And some very similar points being made."
Indeed, Dr. Dennet. Indeed.
For an offhand -- and, I'd argue, deeplyunserious -- dismissal of phenomenology and Thomas Nagel's famous paper What Is It Like To Be A Bat?", keep watching to the 11:07 mark.
via 3 Quarks Daily.
Monday, 3 December 2012
Rob Bell's been gone from the Michigan megachurch he founded for more than a year now. When he remembers the church, he often in a sense misremembers it, according to Kelefa Sunnah's piece in the New Yorker.
Not misremembers, exactly, but rather remembers the beginning and not the end, what was overcome instead of what was created. He talks about the energy of the potential, not the extent to which an institution is an institution is an institution. The difference between what's emphasized and what's not is the contradiction inherently internal to the megachurch project, and also to Bell himself.
Sennah writes:
Both of these aspects were critical to Mars Hill's success, and also to the problems that eventually became serious. Sennah locates the tension in the two very different things a church like Mars Hill needs: a sense of creativity and ongoing discovery, but also structure, order and stability.
Another way to say this would be: the things that Bell did tended to have two opposite and yet simultaneous results. His sermon style, to take one example, brought people together who wouldn't have otherwise been brought together, and it also created new polarities, and pushed people apart.
The same is also probably true for other major evangelical leaders and their megachurches.
The question is always, it seems, of how the internal opposite forces are balanced.
Bell, on the one hand, couldn't not push. But also -- and this is missed by most of his critics and more than a few of his fans -- he couldn't allow himself or be happy with himself as a bomb-thrower and controversialist.
The contradiction, at some point, became unsustainable for Mars Hills. Or, arguably, not for Mars Hill but for Bell, who himself was internally conflicted in exactly this same way the church he created was conflicted, on the one hand wanting to be a radical and on the other unwilling to take strong stands, wanting to be a mediator and someone who builds consensus.
In Sennah's telling, the inherent contradiction within Rob Bell was expressed as a kind of crafted ambiguity ("a careful ambiguity, allowing worshipers to think that he was however evangelical" -- or however liberal -- "they wanted him to be. He wanted to make a wide range of worshipers feel comfortable.") that ultimately broke down. Either Bell himself couldn't bear the cost of keeping it up, or the balancing act of that ambiguity just became impossible, and any move would have meant a tumble.
In this postmortem, at least, the controversy over hell that marked the end, at least for now, of Bell's pastoral ministry was rather incidental to there being an end. It if wasn't that, it would have been something else. What he had, what Bell was, was unsustainable.
The internal contradiction that couldn't be kept up indefinitely.
Not misremembers, exactly, but rather remembers the beginning and not the end, what was overcome instead of what was created. He talks about the energy of the potential, not the extent to which an institution is an institution is an institution. The difference between what's emphasized and what's not is the contradiction inherently internal to the megachurch project, and also to Bell himself.
Sennah writes:
"Because [Bell] vividly remembers the early days, he still sometimes talks about Mars Hill as a gritty, scrappy place: a church with no sign, no steeple, no cross, and hardly any decoration. This is all true, but Mars Hill is also a comfortable, well-run facility, with plenty of parking and age-specific child care. It was just after eight o’clock on a seasonably cold morning, and worshippers were trickling in and stamping the snow off their boots."
Another way to say this would be: the things that Bell did tended to have two opposite and yet simultaneous results. His sermon style, to take one example, brought people together who wouldn't have otherwise been brought together, and it also created new polarities, and pushed people apart.
The same is also probably true for other major evangelical leaders and their megachurches.
The question is always, it seems, of how the internal opposite forces are balanced.
Bell, on the one hand, couldn't not push. But also -- and this is missed by most of his critics and more than a few of his fans -- he couldn't allow himself or be happy with himself as a bomb-thrower and controversialist.
The contradiction, at some point, became unsustainable for Mars Hills. Or, arguably, not for Mars Hill but for Bell, who himself was internally conflicted in exactly this same way the church he created was conflicted, on the one hand wanting to be a radical and on the other unwilling to take strong stands, wanting to be a mediator and someone who builds consensus.
In Sennah's telling, the inherent contradiction within Rob Bell was expressed as a kind of crafted ambiguity ("a careful ambiguity, allowing worshipers to think that he was however evangelical" -- or however liberal -- "they wanted him to be. He wanted to make a wide range of worshipers feel comfortable.") that ultimately broke down. Either Bell himself couldn't bear the cost of keeping it up, or the balancing act of that ambiguity just became impossible, and any move would have meant a tumble.
In this postmortem, at least, the controversy over hell that marked the end, at least for now, of Bell's pastoral ministry was rather incidental to there being an end. It if wasn't that, it would have been something else. What he had, what Bell was, was unsustainable.
The internal contradiction that couldn't be kept up indefinitely.
Sunday, 2 December 2012
Thursday, 29 November 2012
I don't know whether it's really possible to have a meaningful, reasonable debate about the place of religion in public, and about the question of what it means for the government to not "respect an establishment of religion," but a lot of examples like this "discussion" above seem to indicate it's not.
This debate, like so many on this subject, gets very weird very fast, as Bill O'Reilly claims Christianity is actually not a religion (unlike Methodism and Catholicism), and thus not subject to that clause of the First Amendment. "It is a fact," O'Reilly says, "that Christianity is not a religion. It is a philosophy. If the government was saying that the Methodist religion deserves a special place in the public square, I would be on your side." Even attempting to make any sense out of that claim just makes me tired.
And that's before the argument reaches its apex, where these public figures argue about who would have a hypothetical problem with what, and the host launches into accusations of insanity and fascism.
*sigh*
Wednesday, 28 November 2012
Tuesday, 27 November 2012
I'm in the process of preparing a class on the history of American Atheism, which, as far as I can tell, is more or less uncharted territory. Existing studies and curricula seem to either be philosophical examinations of atheism (e.g.), or much too narrow for my interests (e.g.), or really more hagiographical canonization efforts than I am comfortable with (e.g.). Not to mention the very common whig histories of atheism.
Given the new(ish?) direction of the class I'm designing, it seems some readers might be interested in the shape of the class as it develops. Also, as there's no standard text outlining major figures or movements in American Atheism, I would appreciate readers' help in identifying critical people and/or texts to teach.
Below, I've listed those I have in mind who are important in this history and who I think can be taught fairly well to first and second year students with an interest in religious history and American cultural studies. I've construed "atheist" fairly broadly, to include some agnostics and skeptics (especially if they expand the possibility of disbelief); as well as some who's opposition to specific faith traditions is clear while their own position is more ambiguous; those of the political right as well as the more well-represented left; some who are hostile towards religion and some who attempt to make use of religious rhetoric. I've also tried to work in a fair representation of non-whites, women, and, as far as possible, some from backgrounds other than Protestant.
Are there any significant figures or movements I'm missing?
Anyone who would likely teach particularly well that I haven't thought of?
Course description:
From Cotton Mather’s denunciations to Daniel Dennett’s proposal atheists rebrand themselves as “brights,” atheists have been a much-discussed but little understood feature of the religious landscape of America. This class will take a historical approach to the subject, analytically examining the many varieties of atheism in America. Students will learn about atheisms, plural, in the past and present, and will study their cultural contexts, as well as arguments for and against the existence of God, and vying conceptions of meaning and morality. Students will also be introduced to the methodological issues in the study of the history of religion, gaining a working understanding of the approaches entailed by cultural history.
Tentative syllabus:
1. Thomas Paine
2. Joel Barlow
3. Joseph Weydemeyer
4. Robert Ingersoll
5. Charles Chilton Moore and the Blue Grass Blade
6. Emma Goldman
7. Eugene V. Debs
8. Emanuel and Marcet Haldeman-Julius
9. Richard Wright
10. James Baldwin
11. Ayn Rand
12. Madeline Murray O'Hare
13. Kurt Vonnegut
14. Thomas Altizer
15. Sam Harris
16. David Silverman
17. YouTub videos: "Why I am an Atheist"/"How I became an Atheist."
18. "Preachers who are not believers"
19. Chris Stedman
Update:
Additions suggested via twitter:
Felix Adler
Paul Kutz
Carl Sagan
Update:
Additions suggested via Facebook:
Penn Jilette
Seth MacFarlane
George Carlin
Linus Pauling
Richard Feynman
James Rani
Michael Hardt
H.L. Menken
Update:
Other additions suggested:
Charles Lee Smith
Ambrose Bierce
H.P. Lovecraft
Given the new(ish?) direction of the class I'm designing, it seems some readers might be interested in the shape of the class as it develops. Also, as there's no standard text outlining major figures or movements in American Atheism, I would appreciate readers' help in identifying critical people and/or texts to teach.
Below, I've listed those I have in mind who are important in this history and who I think can be taught fairly well to first and second year students with an interest in religious history and American cultural studies. I've construed "atheist" fairly broadly, to include some agnostics and skeptics (especially if they expand the possibility of disbelief); as well as some who's opposition to specific faith traditions is clear while their own position is more ambiguous; those of the political right as well as the more well-represented left; some who are hostile towards religion and some who attempt to make use of religious rhetoric. I've also tried to work in a fair representation of non-whites, women, and, as far as possible, some from backgrounds other than Protestant.
Are there any significant figures or movements I'm missing?
Anyone who would likely teach particularly well that I haven't thought of?
Course description:
From Cotton Mather’s denunciations to Daniel Dennett’s proposal atheists rebrand themselves as “brights,” atheists have been a much-discussed but little understood feature of the religious landscape of America. This class will take a historical approach to the subject, analytically examining the many varieties of atheism in America. Students will learn about atheisms, plural, in the past and present, and will study their cultural contexts, as well as arguments for and against the existence of God, and vying conceptions of meaning and morality. Students will also be introduced to the methodological issues in the study of the history of religion, gaining a working understanding of the approaches entailed by cultural history.
Tentative syllabus:
1. Thomas Paine
2. Joel Barlow
3. Joseph Weydemeyer
4. Robert Ingersoll
5. Charles Chilton Moore and the Blue Grass Blade
6. Emma Goldman
7. Eugene V. Debs
8. Emanuel and Marcet Haldeman-Julius
9. Richard Wright
10. James Baldwin
11. Ayn Rand
12. Madeline Murray O'Hare
13. Kurt Vonnegut
14. Thomas Altizer
15. Sam Harris
16. David Silverman
17. YouTub videos: "Why I am an Atheist"/"How I became an Atheist."
18. "Preachers who are not believers"
19. Chris Stedman
Update:
Additions suggested via twitter:
Felix Adler
Paul Kutz
Carl Sagan
Update:
Additions suggested via Facebook:
Penn Jilette
Seth MacFarlane
George Carlin
Linus Pauling
Richard Feynman
James Rani
Michael Hardt
H.L. Menken
Update:
Other additions suggested:
Charles Lee Smith
Ambrose Bierce
H.P. Lovecraft
Monday, 26 November 2012
Can corporations practice religion? The courts disagree.
In two different federal courts, in two different cases where for-profit companies with evangelical owners are suing the government over the Obama administration's mandate that health insurance include contraception coverage, two very different conclusions were reached.
In Washington D.C., a federal court granted the Christian publisher Tyndale House an injunction last week, exempting the company from the daily fines it would accrue starting in January for not following the new health care law. The granted injunction is a ruling that the company has a good case, and should be treated -- at least until the final outcome -- as if it has won. Three days later, however, in Oklahoma, a federal court did not grant the arts and crafts store Hobby Lobby an injunction. The two cases are almost identical, yet the courts ruled in opposite ways.
Pretty much, too, they ruled opposite ways because of what seems to me to be the core question, which is whether or not corporations can have or exercise religion in the sense indicated by the First Amendment.
In the first case, Judge Reggie Walton, an appointee of the second President Bush, ruled that "the beliefs of Tyndale and its owners are indistinguishable."
In the second case, Judge Joe Heaton, also a George W. Bush appointee, ruled that corporate exercise of religion is "largely uncharted waters," and said Hobby Lobby's lawyers hadn't cited any legal precedent for the idea "that secular, for-profit corporations such as Hobby Lobby [...] have a constitutional right to the free exercise of religion," despite the fact there's no legal question about the owner's religious beliefs.
One might conclude that Walton and Heaton have a fairly straightforward disagreement about what the case law says, but the difference seems more subtle than that.
Heaton, as I read his ruling, says there's no evidence that for-profit corporations can practice religion. Walton actually agrees, though, despite ruling differently.
Walton writes in his ruling that he "declines to address the unresolved question of whether for-profit corporations can exercise religion within the meaning of [...] the Free Exercise Clause," and cites three cases where the question was left unresolved, First Nat'l Bank v. Bellotti in 1978; Church of Scientology of Cal. v. Cazares in 1981; and Stormans, Inc. v. Selecky in 2009. What he does then, though, is where the difference lies. Walton, in the first move, grants that corporations maybe can't have religion in any meaningful sense and then, in a second move says, that this particular for-profit company "Tyndale has standing to assert the free exercise rights of its owners."
The corporation can act as a kind of carrier of religion or religious practice, while not itself having or exercising said religion.
Walton ruled:
"Tyndale is a closely-held corporation owned by four entities united by their Christian faith, each of which plays a distinct role in achieving shared, religious objectives. Christian principles, prayer, and activities are pervasive at Tyndale, and the company’s ownership structure is designed to ensure that it never strays from its faith-oriented mission. The Court has no reason to doubt, moreover, that Tyndale's religious objection to providing insurance coverage for certain contraceptives reflects the beliefs of Tyndale's owners. Nor is there any dispute that Tyndale's primary owner, the Foundation, can 'exercise religion' in its own right, given that it is a non-profit religious organization."
It remains to be seen.
Saturday, 24 November 2012
Thursday, 22 November 2012
Tuesday, 20 November 2012
A federal court ruling handed down in Oklahoma yesterday said that for-profit corporations don't have rights -- constitutional, inalienable, or otherwise -- to freely exercise their religion.
The court case involves a chain of arts and crafts stores called Hobby Lobby, owned by a family-established trust, in a suit with the Obama administration over the Health and Human Services mandate requiring health insurance plans include birth control coverage. This ruling will be appealed. Its not anything like the final word on this. However, the court has made clear that the issue in this case is who or what can have a religion.
Who or what can practice a religion.
The clarification of the issue is appreciated, since the assumptions out there in these claims of "freedom of religion" are actually quite confounding, and since, as far as I can tell, no one from the many many groups or among the many many critics opposing this HHS mandate seem interested in explaining the issues. Apparently it's enough to be appalled that the Obama administration is assaulting our first freedom and obliterating freedom of religion, without ever being clear about the messy matters of corporate personhood and religious practice.
Which this 28-page ruling by U.S. District Court Judge Joe Heaton points out:
The court case involves a chain of arts and crafts stores called Hobby Lobby, owned by a family-established trust, in a suit with the Obama administration over the Health and Human Services mandate requiring health insurance plans include birth control coverage. This ruling will be appealed. Its not anything like the final word on this. However, the court has made clear that the issue in this case is who or what can have a religion.
Who or what can practice a religion.
The clarification of the issue is appreciated, since the assumptions out there in these claims of "freedom of religion" are actually quite confounding, and since, as far as I can tell, no one from the many many groups or among the many many critics opposing this HHS mandate seem interested in explaining the issues. Apparently it's enough to be appalled that the Obama administration is assaulting our first freedom and obliterating freedom of religion, without ever being clear about the messy matters of corporate personhood and religious practice.
Which this 28-page ruling by U.S. District Court Judge Joe Heaton points out:
"Plaintiffs have not cited, and the court has not found, any case concluding that secular, for-profit corporations such as Hobby Lobby and Mardel have a constitutional right to the free exercise of religion .... The question of whether the Greens can establish a free exercise constitutional violation by reason of restrictions or requirements imposed on general business corporations they own or control involves largely uncharted waters."In short, this ruling asks the very basic question that those up in arms over religious freedom have consistently refused to answer: what sense does "religious freedom" have for a corporate entity?
Wednesday, 14 November 2012
A bit of shameless self-promotion:
Exploratory Sessions (A18-232)
Per Smith, Boston University, Presiding
Theme: Irreligion, Secularism and Social Change
Sunday, Nov. 19 – 1 – 2:30 PM, McCormick Place West, room 178A, Chicago
"Scholars of religion from a variety of disciplines are increasingly focusing their attention on the relationship between the religious and the secular. So what would a sustained discussion of 'the secular' look like within the American Academy of Religion; and moreover, how would such a discussion be relevant to religious studies? This exploratory session seeks to provide modest answers to those questions by example. On the heels of the year of the protestor, the session explores how 'the secular' is implicated in and affected by social transformations. How did social change make the secular possible? How have the demands of 20th century social movements shaped emergent forms of secularism? How do contemporary social movements provide fertile soil for secular theologies of resistance? And how are contemporary irreligious identities evolving within a social context that considers them deviant?
Daniel Silliman, University of Heidelberg
The Possibility of Secularity and the Material History of Fiction
Petra Klug, University of Leipzig
The Dynamics of Standardisation and Deviance using the Way U.S. Society deals with Atheists as an Example
Jordan Miller, Salve Regina University
Occupying Absence: Political Resistance and Secular Theology
Responding: Jonathan VanAntwerpen, Social Science Research Council
Exploratory Sessions (A18-232)Per Smith, Boston University, Presiding
Theme: Irreligion, Secularism and Social Change
Sunday, Nov. 19 – 1 – 2:30 PM, McCormick Place West, room 178A, Chicago
"Scholars of religion from a variety of disciplines are increasingly focusing their attention on the relationship between the religious and the secular. So what would a sustained discussion of 'the secular' look like within the American Academy of Religion; and moreover, how would such a discussion be relevant to religious studies? This exploratory session seeks to provide modest answers to those questions by example. On the heels of the year of the protestor, the session explores how 'the secular' is implicated in and affected by social transformations. How did social change make the secular possible? How have the demands of 20th century social movements shaped emergent forms of secularism? How do contemporary social movements provide fertile soil for secular theologies of resistance? And how are contemporary irreligious identities evolving within a social context that considers them deviant?
Daniel Silliman, University of Heidelberg
The Possibility of Secularity and the Material History of Fiction
Petra Klug, University of Leipzig
The Dynamics of Standardisation and Deviance using the Way U.S. Society deals with Atheists as an Example
Jordan Miller, Salve Regina University
Occupying Absence: Political Resistance and Secular Theology
Responding: Jonathan VanAntwerpen, Social Science Research Council
Tuesday, 13 November 2012
 |
| Photo by dennizo |
CNN: exit polls
FOX: exit polls
Also of interest:
First Hindu elected to congress, Tulsi Gabbard:
Black Mormon woman elected to congress (first black Republican congresswoman), Mia Love:
The Catholic hierarchy's opposition to Obama:
Staunch evangelical opposition to Obama:
Friday, 9 November 2012
A bit of a political protest is becoming apparent as the ballots are tallied in one North Georgia congressional district: a protest on behalf of science.
According to the Athens Banner-Herald, Charles Darwin received nearly 4,000 write-in votes in one of the 24 counties that make up the state's 10th Congressional District, where the unopposed Republican incumbent had declared the theory of evolution to be the work of Satan. How many write-in votes went to Darwin in the 23 other counties of the district is not clear, as not all of the counties report write-ins, yet the symbolic protest was sizable enough to attract the attention of national news outlets and, Darwin supporters hope, attract a real challenger to the race in 2014.
Broun's broad dismissal of science -- from evolution to the Big Band to embryology -- at a political rally in a Baptist church was especially inflammatory because he sits on the House Science, Space and Technology Committee. In the viedo released by the church, Broun stood in front of a wall of mounted deer heads, and said that science was opposed to the Bible, which is the "manufacturer's handbook."
Echoing the ideas of Christian Theonomists such as R.J. Rushdooney, who taught that the world is divided into four spheres and that God is king of all four, Broun explained that science is a blasphemous attempt to displace God. He told the audience he doesn't accept the authority of science, but of the Bible, which "teaches us how to run our lives, individually, how to run our families, how to run our churches. But it teaches us how to run all of public policy and everything in society. And that's the reason as your congressman, I hold the Holy Bible as being the major directions for how I vote in Washington D.C."
The brouhaha that followed the congressman's version of theocratic government was turned into a symbolic protest at the polls, last week, in part due to the work of a UGA professor.
Jim Thompson of the Athens Banner-Herald reports:
Even in 2008, in the context of the massive turn-out for Democrats inspired by Barack Obama's first election, Broun managed a decisive win. The Democratic challenger Bobby Saxon won only about 39 percent of the vote.
Nevertheless, the write-in votes can be read as a core of opposition to Broun, or to conservative evangelical candidates more generally, even in the deeply Republican districts of deeply Republican states like Georgia.
The Flagpole, the University of Georgia Athens paper, reports that in addition to the votes for Darwin, there were about 2,000 other write-in votes in the congressional race in Athens-Clarke County. Another 23,000 voters reportedly ignored that part of the ballot entirely.
Other write-in votes from those dissatisfied with Broun included votes for: "Carl" Marx, Burning Bag of Dog Shit, Doritos, Michael Stipe, Ron Paul, Satan, Stephen Colbert, and Taylor Swift. A fictitious candidate from a previous protest against Broun, "Pete McCommunist," also won more than 100 write-in votes. An actual person who also ran a write-in campaign, Brian Russell Brown, won 238 votes.
Bill Nye the Science Guy, who has come out in opposition of teaching creationism to children and slammed Broun for his anti-science statements, also won some of the one county's write-in votes.
Not all of the opposition to Broun, notably, was from the left. Georgia's libertarian-leaning talk show host Neil Bortz, who's most significant political foray to date was probably promoting fellow Georgian Herman Cain, came out strongly in opposition to Broun. Bortz said Republicans like Broun were "hurting the brand," making the party look like it consisted of un-evolved Neanderthals and redneck hicks.
The radio show host encouraged listeners to write-in Darwin.
The coalition of libertarians, UGA faculty and students and others who want their government officials to accept science didn't carry the day, in North Georgia, but the small symbolic protest was nonetheless noted when they went to the polls in Athens-Clarke County.
According to the Athens Banner-Herald, Charles Darwin received nearly 4,000 write-in votes in one of the 24 counties that make up the state's 10th Congressional District, where the unopposed Republican incumbent had declared the theory of evolution to be the work of Satan. How many write-in votes went to Darwin in the 23 other counties of the district is not clear, as not all of the counties report write-ins, yet the symbolic protest was sizable enough to attract the attention of national news outlets and, Darwin supporters hope, attract a real challenger to the race in 2014.
Broun's broad dismissal of science -- from evolution to the Big Band to embryology -- at a political rally in a Baptist church was especially inflammatory because he sits on the House Science, Space and Technology Committee. In the viedo released by the church, Broun stood in front of a wall of mounted deer heads, and said that science was opposed to the Bible, which is the "manufacturer's handbook."Echoing the ideas of Christian Theonomists such as R.J. Rushdooney, who taught that the world is divided into four spheres and that God is king of all four, Broun explained that science is a blasphemous attempt to displace God. He told the audience he doesn't accept the authority of science, but of the Bible, which "teaches us how to run our lives, individually, how to run our families, how to run our churches. But it teaches us how to run all of public policy and everything in society. And that's the reason as your congressman, I hold the Holy Bible as being the major directions for how I vote in Washington D.C."
The brouhaha that followed the congressman's version of theocratic government was turned into a symbolic protest at the polls, last week, in part due to the work of a UGA professor.
Jim Thompson of the Athens Banner-Herald reports:
"A campaign asking voters to write-in Darwin’s name in the 10th Congressional District, which includes half of Athens-Clarke County, began after Broun, speaking at a sportsmen’s banquet at a Hartwell church, called evolution and other areas of science 'lies straight from the pit of hell.'Broun won re-election fairly easily, though, garnering more than 200,000 votes in his district, more than he won in 2006, 2008 or 2010.
"Jim Leebens-Mack, the University of Georgia plant biologist who started a 'Darwin for Congress' Facebook page in the wake of Broun’s remarks, said the number of Darwin votes cast in the race were 'in the ballpark, a little bit more' than he had expected.
"The Darwin votes, Leebens-Mack added, made it 'clear to me, and I hope everybody, that Paul Broun is vulnerable' in terms of continued re-election to Congress. Broun was first elected in a special 2007 election, and won re-election in 2008, 2010 and again on Tuesday in a newly drawn 10th District, reconfigured as part of congressional reapportionment."
Even in 2008, in the context of the massive turn-out for Democrats inspired by Barack Obama's first election, Broun managed a decisive win. The Democratic challenger Bobby Saxon won only about 39 percent of the vote.
Nevertheless, the write-in votes can be read as a core of opposition to Broun, or to conservative evangelical candidates more generally, even in the deeply Republican districts of deeply Republican states like Georgia.
The Flagpole, the University of Georgia Athens paper, reports that in addition to the votes for Darwin, there were about 2,000 other write-in votes in the congressional race in Athens-Clarke County. Another 23,000 voters reportedly ignored that part of the ballot entirely.
Other write-in votes from those dissatisfied with Broun included votes for: "Carl" Marx, Burning Bag of Dog Shit, Doritos, Michael Stipe, Ron Paul, Satan, Stephen Colbert, and Taylor Swift. A fictitious candidate from a previous protest against Broun, "Pete McCommunist," also won more than 100 write-in votes. An actual person who also ran a write-in campaign, Brian Russell Brown, won 238 votes.
Bill Nye the Science Guy, who has come out in opposition of teaching creationism to children and slammed Broun for his anti-science statements, also won some of the one county's write-in votes.
Not all of the opposition to Broun, notably, was from the left. Georgia's libertarian-leaning talk show host Neil Bortz, who's most significant political foray to date was probably promoting fellow Georgian Herman Cain, came out strongly in opposition to Broun. Bortz said Republicans like Broun were "hurting the brand," making the party look like it consisted of un-evolved Neanderthals and redneck hicks.
The radio show host encouraged listeners to write-in Darwin.
The coalition of libertarians, UGA faculty and students and others who want their government officials to accept science didn't carry the day, in North Georgia, but the small symbolic protest was nonetheless noted when they went to the polls in Athens-Clarke County.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
