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After a Sherry
by diogenes (lifted from a recent comment)
I will provide you with a very rare glimpse into my personal life and experience. I usually reserve such digressions for more intimate audiences, but but this is a very good bar and the topic demands it. So I will abandon the academic I am now and part time humorist to tell you of Diogenes the preacher of many years ago. After a sherry, of course.
In the early 1970’s, …
… at the odd cross roads of the free love and Jesus movements, that I came of age with an undying curiosity about spiritual things. A nun at my church tried to convince my I was a psychic, my older sister had me send a month at a commune of American Sufi Movement, and I began reading the Bible. The Bible (and a pile of, at that time, very convincing tracts) won my young soul and I became a solo Christian (there are solo Wiccans, so why not?), unsure of any church or movement and very much interested in developing my faith. I bounced from prayer group to church as a 19 or 20 year old. taking it all in and I was as ignorant as the day was long. For example, convinced that I needed to be baptized, I stopped at a Baptist Church in New Hampshire I had never been to before because "that’s what you guys do, it says so on the door!" Believe it or not the elderly pastor baptized me that night. I was as innocent as any Christian Candide in a very confusing world and there were plenty of Panglossses to help me along, especially the Pentecostals!
I was as sincere as naitivity can make me with the intellectual power of a high school education and a year of college (where I watched at least two professors sleep with the one girl I had a consistent crush on). But a Christian I was now. I read the Bible through numerous times (It takes around 15 hours to read the New Testament). The Old Testament/Hebrew Bible I took on one book at a time. I was a pest at all family gatherings. And I explored almost every kind of church from fundamentalist to Greek Orthodox, trying to understand how this faith worked.
So at the ripe old age of 21, I settled on a non-denominational church that had a pastor as young as I was and stayed there for almost 8 years. Now why share this with you? Well for one thing I got to meet many of these religious right bigshots back when they were little shots and more importantly, I witnessed the afterbirth of the Religious Right early in the Reagan Years.
Back then we met at Yale University in one of the lecture halls. And this church grew. Rare in the inner city. Rarer still was the amazing mix. Rich folks from Woodbridge and Hamden, Blacks from Congress Ave and Dixwell Ave who were burned out of the Cadillac cult and needed something different, Hispanics, old Catholic ladies from a Charismatic Catholic church, recovering drug addicts, Muslims from various countries curious about Chritianity, gays and lesbians, the mentally ill seeking exorcisms (my claim to fame: I led George Bush’s cousin in a exorcism where we all coughed out our demons in paper bags back in 1979!)and a host of folks in various stages of drug and alcohol recovery or relapses. It was slice of the whole world and about 350 people meet twice a week to figure out what it meant to be a Christian (Oh yes, and a number of Yale Divinity School students and undergraduates). I often wonder if Bush was around Yale at that time.
The thing that characterized this church and fascinated me was the complete lack of condemnation towards those who were different. Lesbians embraced men during the greeting part of the service. Blacks hugged Hispanics. We all knew that no one was perfect, that all lives were characterized by struggle and that the goal of a Christian was to help others along the Way. We were politically inactive, having concluded that voting and prayer were two personal matters best left to individuals and that politics, being the pandering profession that it was, was too "carnal" or "of the flesh" (yes, those were the words we and many others used back then)for a Christian to get involved with. It required deception as well and that was dangerous.
That ended early in 1982, when our young pastor was invited to a three day Ronald Reagan "prayer breakfast and conference" in Washington D.C. He was flattered and went with the church’s blessing.
The Sunday after he returned, the world turned upside down. No one expected it. A usually kind hearted (if not long winded) pastor turned into a right wing hate machine, repeating in his sermon (several times in case we missed them) the most outlandish and insulting language I ever heard. I remember portions well. I didn’t hear things like this again until the early days of Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter.
"God has called us as a church to destroy the evils of the liberal welfare state and its hand outs for laziness."
"God has annointed this church to stand as a wall and defense against the evil manipulations of the hairy legged lesbo-feminists of the teachers unions and the secular humanist educators."
There were then cracks about blacks being on welfare, welfare laziness, the ungodliness of Democrats in general, and "taking the country back for God." And within two weeks, almost every black, Latino, homosexual (though they were not singled out in the sermons), poor person, and student was gone. For good. The church split two or three more times in the next few years, leaving me a lost and stranded soul. My view of the church was increasingly assaulted by demands of 1000% loyalty, shameless pandering and financial matters that I will not elaborate upon. When I think of the turning points of my life (and there have been many), nothing determined the course of the next 23 years as that one out of the blue offensive right wing sermon.
From there I drifted from church to church over the next few years and then decided to sell my businesses and continue my education (I thank God for women who push you on to do this (my late mother) and bear the consequences of that decison (one hell of a mate). Though I originally considered studying for the ministry I soon declared a double then triple major (theology, history, linguistics). And I did well. Then I got talked into grad school and a Ph.D program. I progressively moved to the left (contrary to Horowitz, I was a Republican grad student and never encountered discrimination in grad school. We all got our asses kicked by professor after professor). I completed my Ph.D in 1998. I now teach Ancient History (primarily Church and Roman history and World History. Once in a while when I get the bug I teach a Greek or Coptic class for fun.
I didn’t become a Democrat until I was teaching at a fairly well known southern institution in 2000 and George Bush’s goons roughed up two of my students who simply brought a sign into an open meeting that read, "Mr Bush: What is your position on the Environment?" It was one of two dozen questions on signs that students brought in. They were knocked to the ground, their sign was ripped up and they were ejected. There was quite an uproar since me department had invited the chimp to campus. I am now a moderate Democrat, but anger is moving me further to the left. It is not the best motivation, but it has made me politically active.(Sherry #3 now). I now teach in a northern state hard hit by Bushanomics and very happy as a liberal Methodist in an open and affirming church.
Why am I writing this? I think because I enjoy the illusion of the bar and miss the many good conversations and stories of grad school. But more seriously the idea of Frist’s "Judgement Sunday" has brought flooding back into me that sea of faces shocked by the relentless right wing semonizing/demonizing back when the religious right was young and Sun Myung Moon wasn’t funding it. That shock and my reaction to it defined my life to this point more than other personal event. I can only hope that when this travesty of both government and faith is perpetrated upon congregations across America that honest people will react with the kind of revulsion and disgust that I felt two decades ago. Good night friends and bar keep. Say hi to Billmon.
Yikes! I’m up on the page! See what the demon rum…er..demon sherry will do? Next time I’ll heat up some saki! But seriously, thank you. It’s been my experience that millions of people, not just myself, had experiences like this. But I’ll provide a ray of hope. The religious right is a series of constantly shifting alliances and negotiations for the sake of political strength. One blogger referred to it as “people who hate each other in harness together for a common cause.” The divisions are many and various movements have swept through these connected churches like wild fire, shaking some out and adding some on. Right now, some older congregation members are finding out the role of Sun Myung Moon and his money (who remember well Moonies infiltrating their meetings attempting to evangelize and know his doctrines well) and are at odds with younger members unaware of his bizarre history. But what is more useful example is how abortion became a Protestant issue.
This is perhaps the most interesting cross over issue and it entered into the Pentecostal churches first from the Catholic Charismatic movement and inter-church fellowships such as the Full Gospel Businessmens Fellowship. The latter is a Pentecostal parachurch business organization (various notables from John DeLorean to the actor who played Tonto in the Lone Rangers Series to Pat Boone to various high ranking military officers were members and speakers)started by a Armenian diary man name Demos Shakarian in the 1950’s. It originally was the haunt of classical Pentecostals (Church of God, Assembly of God, various Faith Healer Movements, etc). But as more and more Catholic Charismatics (Catholics that came to believe in the “Baptism of the Holy Spirit” and spoke in tongues among other things)joined parachruch organizations and/or left the Catholic Church to join classical Pentecostal churches, they took their anti-abortion views and aggressively marketing them (I like to use the old Maoist term of agit-prop to describe this).
I think (and this is pure speculation) that they held to this issue as the single shred of their previous faith that legitimized their Catholic experience. The rosary, veneration of saints, the Catholic Bible with the Apocrypha, purgatory and many of the sacraments all had to go. But there was no doctrinal baggage with being anti-abortion (unlike being anti-birth control!). The issue began to be dabated more heatedly in these Pentecostal circles by the late 1970’s and outright activism was common in the early 1980’s in churches that previously had been apolitical. Most pastors strugled with these activists in their midst. I remember my youthful Pastor Disaster being furious, particularly at women who were passing out little plastic fetuses towards the end of one service! Later they wanted to create a dead fetus graveyard in front of the church and about two years later they were given permission.
At the same time the first knowledge of the AIDS virus came into popular view and the prophets (inspired speakers who would interrupt services with inspired holy utterances) among the Pentecostals began to speak of God’s judgement for homosexuality being expressed. In a short time prophets were proclaiming God’s judgement against America for homosexuals and abortion. Now judgement prophecy was nothing new and the end of the world had been popularized for my generation since Lindsay’s Late Great Planet Earth was published in 1971. But now these prophets began to see ways to avert God’s judgement by political action and organization. Churches that mocked the Religious Right in the early 1980’s became affiliates as this major doctrinal shift was popularized. As older parachurch organizations began to wane after the deaths of their founders, members found other outlets for their zeal: in the political arena, where their usual custom of seeing things in black and white (and not grey) played into the hands of ideologues who learn precisely what buttons to push for predictable actions (though I think this game is being played in a clumsy manner with the fillibuster and Terri Schiavo circus). None the less the old “Christians serves as the salt of the Earth” people (those who feel that the Church helps preserve the world from judgement by kindness, love, and example, evoking God’s mercy) were replaced by those long despised, those who felt Christians were to take the whole world and have Dominion over it (Adam’s original failed call). Hence Adam and Eve (and creationism) also become of critical importance to this group, as they are legitimized only by a real Adam and Eve and a historical Fall! Well I am running out of time. I’ll finish quickly.
This movement is fragile because the issue of correct doctrine still lives, though it is suppressed by the tyranny of the urgent. The Religious Right can only hold its factions together in crisis mode, so you will find these occasionally manufactured (such as the jihad against SpongeBob and Postcards from Buster). If you go to the jungle of the AOL message Boards, you will find some fragmentation as fundamentalist snipe at Catholics and their traditions. But interject controversy and threat, and the movement runs on “greased groove.” Well time to mold fresh, young minds. Salve, bar keep!
Posted by: diogenes | Apr 18 2005 12:49 utc | 9
A friend of mine once said, “There’s no point in talking about religion.” He then told the story of a tribe found in the back of beyond (Papua New Guinea?) who had never left their valley. They had a total world view related exclusively to their valley. He added to this the experiments where researchers have stimulated certain parts of the brain (I believe they are where our heads rise to their pointy tops) and produced religious experiences. They did this (is this an urban myth?) with nuns and, lo, the nuns saw saints etc…
But I think he was talking about spirituality, something so personal that it is indescribable and therefore incommunicable. Maybe this is because no life can have all the elements of another.
Religion, on the other hand, is a systematic belief system. To argue against a religion is to disagree with this belief system. One can argue with religious people from within their belief system (you say X, but doesn’t that imply Y?), or from without (your belief system claims X, but mine claims Y).
But people don’t want religion, they want spirituality, which is…what? Something personal, to be discovered by walking one’s own path, from the aggregation of all experiences.
I think there is a danger when people gain information second-hand (e.g. through texts) that one form of experience (read, consider, assent or dissent) overwhelms other forms of experience.
Round the corner from our flat is a house where various foreign nationals live. They appear to be Africans in that they are brown-skinned (various hues), and wear opened-toed sandals. They live quietly, chat to their friends, and I suppose they are refugees of some kind. Migrants, at any rate.
In the UK there is an idea that we have a problem with immigration. Articles are written, politicians pontificate. The reality of human beings, in open-toed sandals, leaning on a wall and chatting to friends–all gone.
I think this can happen the other way, too. Reading articles about, say, Ethiopia, one can hold an idea that the place is full of gunmen pointing at and shooting starving people, as if there weren’t friends chatting lazily over a wall somewhere there, too.
Perhaps the fact that education has moved indoors and become individualised means that people are becoming like theoretical scientists who never pick up a test tube, never make chemical reactions, and so weaken certain senses, e.g. that experience comes in many shapes and forms.
Oh Lord (“So you believe in–?” “My cat, yes.”–Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy), whyohwhyohwhyohwhy. Right. My point being, er, lost somewhere above.
Here’s a poem by Elizabeth Bishop:
CASABIANCA
Love’s the boy stood on the burning deck
trying to recite “The boy stood on
the burning deck.” Love’s the son
stood stammering elocution
while the poor ships in flames went down.
Love’s the obstinate boy, the ship,
even the swimming sailors, who
would like a schoolroom platform, too,
or an excuse to stay
on deck. And love’s the burning boy.
Posted by: Reg | Apr 18 2005 14:25 utc | 10
I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said, “two vast and armless hands of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half drunk, a shatterd Colman lies, whose frown,
And clumsy fingers, and expression of exasperation
Show that its sculptor well those passions read,
Which yet survive, stamped on those stony digits,
The serifs which mocked Colman, and the difficult bit
where you have to link and “r” to an “s” without the
“r” turning into an “n”,
And on the wrist these words appear:
I am the God of Handwriting:
Look at my looped “J”s, Colman, and despair!
Nothing beside remains (except Colman, trying to
Read his own handwriting and cursing). Round the decay
Of those granite tentacles, boundless and honest,
Colman’s honest plea for life not to be stuck in a box marked
“Here be fairy explanations” stretches far away
and hits The God of Handwriting between his furry nuts.
The God of Handwriting winces, says,
“Colman, I would like to help you. Really I would. But I have recently re-trained as the God of baking and can no longer take orders for Handwriting miracles. Sorry.”
And yet, by heaven!, Colmans’ handwriting will improve!
For their is another, smaller, God,
the God of Elegant Lettering, a sort of sub-division God,
of more recent origin, who would be glad to help.
Indeed–
BANG!
—————–
Argh! Apologies! God made me do it.
Colman, yea, yea, and more yea. Religion is organised belief–no thanks. When you express your spirituality others will hear gibberish.
Me, I like memorising the Tao Te Ching and Shakespeare’s sonnets. There are no Alzheimers patients who have forgotten the Tao AND the Sonnets, they say.
But “they” are fairies from pixie land, and we all know fairies from pixie land are tricksy types, so they may have been lying.
Enough! I hope your irritation levels are lower.
(The MRI scan experiments with nuns and Tibetan monks is interesting, btw–seems the monks and nuns were up to quite a bit more than meditating, but that’s a terrible rumour.)
Hey, I can remember some of the Tao. This is the beginning of 41:
The great scholar hearing the Tao
tries to follow it.
The middling scholar hearing the Tao
sometimes has it, sometimes not.
The lesser scholar hearing the Tao
has a good laugh.
Without this laughter, it wouldn’t be Tao.
———————————-
ARRRGGGHH!
Posted by: The God of Handwriting | Apr 19 2005 9:58 utc | 38
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