April 2005 Archives

It's that time of year: matzah is showing up everywhere. Not only is it in my school's dining hall. It's being fed to gorillas at a Tel Aviv zoo. This confused and intrigued me at first. I thought: what a great idea to think of the animals' spiritual well-being! Surely this is a step towards developing greater respect and compassion towards other species! But then I started questioning the ethics of forcing the gorillas to participate in religious rituals that they probably didn't understand. As it turned out it wasn't for the gorillas at all; it was just because the animals' handlers can't handle leavened bread.

I'm a little late, but please check out this absolutely beautiful Seder service written by Rabbi Michael Lerner. Lerner is editor of Tikkun, a progressive Jewish magazine with consistently great writing and solid interfaith discourse. Reading this service is a really great way to understand what the holiday is about and what all the symbols mean both historically and in the present geopolitical situation. You really should read the whole thing but here's a taste:

We are descended from slaves, from people who staged the first successful slave rebellion in recorded history. Ever since, our people has kept alive the story of liberation, and the consciousness that cruelty and oppression are not inevitable “facts of life,” but conditions which can be changed. The Exodus message is revolutionary: The way the world is now is not the way it has to be. Everything can change once we recognize that the God who created the world also creates the possibility of transformation and liberation. (read the rest)

When you study religion at a secular college, you learn to maintain a certain scholarly distance. You learn to avoid making normative claims and judgments. You learn to bracket your own biases and allegiances and interests and faiths in favor of "objectivity". One of my goals for this blog is to practice writing in that balanced but critical voice.

It's taken me a couple days to post anything here about the selection of Cardinal Ratzinger as the new pope. This is both because I'm struggling to live up to those lofty academic ideals, but also because I'm struggling to find anything to say that doesn't come from a meanspirited ugly place within me. All that "love your enemies" stuff is effing difficult.

Today, I could try to be witty or scholarly or objective. Instead I'm going to be honest. This is really bad news. This is bad news for anyone who care about the plight of the poor, for anyone who cares about the status and role of women in society, for anyone who thinks LGBT people deserve to be treated with human dignity. I am filled with anger and despair and I am not even Catholic. In long-term human costs, the election of Ratzinger will probably be far worse a disaster than 9/11.

from Michaelangelo Singorile's Queer In America (via Atrios):

.... Chills ran up and down my spine as I watched the protestors and then looked back at Ratzinger. Soon, anger swelled up inside me: This man was the embodiment of all that had oppressed me, all the horrors I had suffered as a child. It was because of his bigotry that my family, my church -- everyone around me -- had alienated me, and it was because of his bigotry that I was called "faggot" in school. Because of his bigotry I was treated like garbage. He was responsible for the hell I'd endured. He and his kind were the people who forced me to live in shame, in the closet. I became livid...

Suddenly, I jumped up on one of the marble platforms and, looking down, I addressed the entire congregation in the loudest voice I could. My voice rang out as if it were amplified. I pointed at Ratzinger and shouted: "He is no man of God!" The shocked faces of the assembled Catholics turned to the back of the room to look at me as I continued: "He is no man of God -- he is the Devil!" (read the full account)

Bishop Desmond Tutu:

As you know, I have expressed hope for a new pope from Africa or the Third World. A candidate from these parts would have placed on the agenda some burning issues like poverty in this skewed international order that disadvantages the poor. I would have hoped such a candidate (would be concerned with) issues of disease and the HIV/AIDS pandemic.

I hope sitting on the papal throne will take off the edges and have an effect on easing his rigidity. A less rigid candidate would have been more likely to lift the ban the Roman Catholic Church has placed on the use of condoms. Everywhere else it is recognised as an effective way to combat the spread of HIV.

National Coalition of American Nuns:

We pray that he will be open to the full partnership and full participation of women in a church that suffers because of the lack of women's creativity and lived experience. We do believe in miracles.

Jurandir Arauj, of the National Conference of Bishops Afro-Brazilian Section:

It seems that he is too conservative. Hopefully the Holy Spirit can help him change!

Though often criticized for being out of step with modernity, John Paul II did make efforts to modernize the delivery, if not the content of his message. Perhaps the most cartoonish example is his 1999 recording Abba Pater which paired selected recordings of his holiness chanting, praying and singing(!) in in five languages with a blend of new-age, world, and electronic music. Here's the title track. (MP3 6.6 mb)

The funniest thing about this recording is that I'm sure that it wouldn't exist if not for the massive success of new age-danceclub-ethnofusion band Enigma, who were based in the hedonistic city of Ibiza and layered dance beats (of the sort popularized in gay clubs) over gregorian chants and synthesized "ethnic" instruments. Their 1990 hit, "Sadeness" was a tribute to the Marquis de Sade and featured a sexy-voiced woman inquiring in French: "Sade, tell me/what is it that you seek? /The rightness of wrong/The virtue of vice?" before segueing into a treatise on the "Principles of Lust". Enigma followed up their multiplatinum hit with Cross of Changes, which featured songs criticizing Catholic conquistadors and that same sexy-voiced woman reciting such un-Christian lyrical gems as "Remember the Shaman, when he used to say: 'Man is the dream of the dolphin'."

Make the beats a touch less sexy and more meditative, and replace the lusty french lady with the Pope, and you have the formula for "Abba Pater", a fascinating artifact of the tangled relationship between institutional religion and pop culture. The official site features more sound samples and a video of the pope accepting a gold record!

Director David O. Russell describes I ♥ Huckabees as an attempt to introduce audiences to the principles of Eastern Religion, particularly Buddhism, without framing these principles in explicitly religious terms. The film seems to target a young progressive audience that is aware that something is very wrong with the state of the world but is feeling alienated and somewhat hopeless. You know, people like me, and like you and like most of our friends have been feeling since November 2. That audience is personified in Albert (Jason Schwartzman), a frustrated environmental activist, who recruits a pair of existential detectives (Dustin Hoffman & Lily Tomlin) to unravel his personal mysteries.

Huckabees teaches so artfully and efficiently that we barely notice that we're learning. Complex Buddhist concepts seem like common sense; Hoffman's character (based on Buddhist teacher Robert Thurman) demonstrates, with the help of a blanket, in 30 seconds, the concept of interbeing-everything is everything else. We learn of interconnectedness: between people, between events, between the psychological and the interpersonal, and the political. We learn of impermanence as we watch Albert and his sleazy corporate arch-nemesis Brad (Jude Law) experience devastating losses. But along with Albert, we learn how to be compassionate toward Brad; we learn to see that even our "enemies" are suffering. It is this insight that allows Albert (and us) to let go of our attachment to anger and move on.

The movie is not a thinly disguised religious tract promoting Buddhism as an easy ticket to Happytown. It is honest about the temptation and dangers posed by nihilism dressed up in a zen disguise. This is important because the whole "fuck as many people and do as many drugs as I can and ignore the consequences because I am beyond good and evil" mentality has haunted American Buddhism since Kerouac and Ginsberg.

The portrayal of a family of a typical American evangelical Christians needs a little work. Russell depicts the family as warm-hearted but narrow-minded and oblivious to their complicity in world problems. Sadly, that sounds about right. But he gets the theology behind their arrogance wrong when he has the clueless daughter state that “Jesus is never mad at us if we live with him in our hearts.” Actually, very few evangelical christians would say that. Russell seems to be hypothesizing that their confidence in their salvation-by-grace is responsible for their self-righteousness and lack of attention to social justice, but in fact personal piety and the struggle against sin remains a focus even for those who consider themselves "saved". A more nuanced diagnosis would find that the real issue is the shift in emphasis from social holiness to private personal holiness since the 19th century, or what Jim Wallis calls the "great heresy of 20th century American Evangelicalism."

Not enough films have something important and substantive to say beyond an interesting story or a character study. Huckabees doesn't provide empty escapism or deny how screwed up the world is, but still leaves you feeling hopeful and empowered to keep fighitng the good fight. And it's all delivered with sincerity and humor, like a little smiling buddha in movie form. I ♥ this movie.

Please read this cool interview with David O. Russell, written by Jeffery Overstreet for Christianity Today. It features a guest appearance by devout catholic/sexy underwear model Mark Walhberg, who says of the film, rather confusingly, but sincerely: "It's all about Jesus"

So the conventional wisdom is that the Republicans botched this. They saw it as an easy way to pander to the pro-lifers, but polls indicate that majorities even of white evangelicals opposed federal intervention.

To me, the most surprising aspect of the situation was the involvement of liberals Ralph Nader and Jesse Jackson alongside scary psycho Randall Terry of Operation Rescue, best known for harassing women outside abortion clinics. My housemate Alex theorized that the mainstream media's conception of the Terri Schiavo issue as a simple right-left divide is imagined, and this is consistent with my experience...a couple of my very liberal friends surprised me by saying they supported keeping her artificially alive.

I am not sure why Nader and Jackson got involved, but I think perhaps it's good that they did, because it destabilizes the polarized discourse surrounding the so-called "culture of life". Maybe they hope to end the identification of a "culture of life" with a conservative social agenda that neglects obvious life issues like war. Perhaps Nader and Jackson sense that the "Save Terri" crowd are realizing that the republican interest in the issue was insincere, and are ready to look elsewhere for leadership. Cue Jim Wallis, talking rather predictably about consistent life ethics.

The best analysis I've read comes from Eric Santner, who reflects on the case in light of political theology.

Given the fact that many who oppose abortion also condone capital punishment, one has good reason to wonder whether what is really at stake here is not innocent life but rather living innocence, that is, a fantasy of protecting not a human life but a condition of purity and innocence that can, in turn, only be truly embodied by non-sentient life. Indeed, one cannot help but wonder whether what President Bush has referred to as the “culture of life” only refers to non-sentient life; as soon as one acquires feeling, perception, and awareness one is more or less abandoned to the minimally regulated vagaries of the market place. (read the rest)

Meanwhile, Julianne points out what ought to be the obvious lesson of this sad episode...so why is the media ignoring it?

A thread on UHX recently suggested that blogs ought to have author bios. It feels cheesy and dumb. I should hire a publicist to do this for me.

Anyway, this is a draft. Is there stuff you think i should put in or take out? Stuff you wonder about me? I am into awkward uncomfortable levels of self-disclosure.

Kevin Erickson cannot write about himself in the third person for more than one sentence at a time.

I live in Anacortes, Washington, where I'm a resident worker at this crazy arts infrastructure in an old fire station called The Department of Safety.

I got my B.A. in Religion at Whitman College in Walla Walla, a small town out in the wheatfields of Eastern Washington. My senior thesis was an in-depth examination of Relevant, a magazine for hip evangelical twenty-somethings, interpreted in light of Thomas Frank's concept of commodified dissent/fake counterculture.

I was a recipient of the tenth annual David Nord Award in Gay & Lesbian Studies. My project, advocated DIY music culture as an important component of a comprehensive praxis of queer liberation.

At various times, I have been general manager, music director, and news director for KWCW. Briefly, I was a music writer for the Whitman College Pioneer, where i won the Robert Hosokawa award for Excellence in Opinion Writing. I should do freelance stuff? Someone throw money at me.

Location history:
Age 0-8 Jacksonville, Oregon
Age 9-18 Yakima, Washington
Age 18-24 Walla Walla, Washington
Age 25-26 (now) Anacortes, Washington

I run a small CD-R label, currently dormant, ready to hit the restart button in 2007. I play in some bands, sometimes.

This blog is about the nexus of politics, religion, and culture, so maybe I should disclose my biases?

Politics: if i had to align myself with a particular ideology, "social democrat" works. But, I also think some of the best political discourse is that which pushes us past stereotypes. I think the populist subset of the right-wing is in touch with some important realities that young leftists like me usually miss. They have an acute sense of the mounting pressures on families, the spiritual depravity of mass culture, etc (although they generally misidentify the source of these problems). I also think my politics can be kind of cheesy. I am okay with this.

Religion: I am interested in studying religion as an outside observer, but also as a practitioner. I am a stubbornly loyal member of the United Methodist Church, a denomination which includes both theological liberals and conservatives. My personal beliefs tend to emphasize liberation theology, feminism, ecology, etc, but with a dollop of neoorthodoxy to keep me from getting too hippy-dippy. I'm strongly influenced by other faiths, especially Buddhism. I believe in universal truth, but I think epistemelogical humility is really important.

Culture: My favorite kinds of culture are those that help create networked communities of resistance, that communicate something meaningful and attempt to transform things. I'm sort of old-fashioned in that I think mass culture is more a force of hegemony than a potential space for resistance, but I'm not necessarily knee-jerk anti-mainstream. That said, I do find that the most interersting stuff happens at the fringes, off the radar. Weird stuff. Fun stuff. Smart stuff. I'm suspicious of postmodern understandings of culture, because postmodernism is the cultural logic of late capitalism, which sucks.

I have a big problem with the idea that when someone dies, we should only say nice things about him/her. This is the time when history is written in the minds of a generation. Kids too young to remember all the bad shit that Reagan pulled now think he was a swell guy, the "most popular president in modern history", cuz that's what the MSM kept repeating in the days after his death.

Yet, lately even liberals who are harshly critical of misogyny when it's displayed by, say, Snoop Dogg, think that since it's the dead pope, we should let it slide. To this I say, "Hooey!"

Some people have developed the mistaken notion based on his anti-war and anti-poverty statements that John Paul II was "progressive". These people have forgotten what a progressive pope or a truly progressive catholic looks like. John Paul I was progressive! Perhaps that's why he was (quite possibly) murdered. Being to the left of the Christian Right in America does not make someone "progressive". It makes someone "not completely evil and insane." Hey, isn't the Pope supposed to be the holiest guy on the planet? Shouldn't we hold him to a higher standard than "not completely evil and insane"? Being anti-war and anti-poverty should be a given.

Some people have responded "okay he was bad on sex and gender, but he was good on other stuff, right?" I say, by alienating the women, queers, and liberals, JP2 drove them from the church. Thus, JP2 has ensured that the church will remain strongly conservative for the forseeable future. Remember that women are 51% of the population. Many of the people who would be the Daniel Berrigans and Dorothy Days of today no longer feel they have a place within the catholic church.

Now, this isn't meant to suggest he didn't do a few things right. Sure, he hastened the fall of communism (although his knee-jerk opposition to anything vaguely Marxist-sounding, a product of his youth in Poland, led him to squash the liberation theology movement in Latin America). And he did take a firm stance against capital punishment.

Still from a global/historical perspective, a basic statement against a war that the international community already declared unjust and unnecessary doesn't make someone a wide-eyed liberal loony. It just makes him not completely evil and insane.

Unsurprisingly, the process of Pope selection is extremely political. Of course, since the pope is chosen by God, there's really no reason to think about or discuss the politics behind the scenes, according to a bishop on CNN this weekend. Hmm. If you find this unsatisfying, I invite you to make your voice heard by voting for a new pope in this straw poll. Your options are:

1. Bono. A big part of the Pope's job is uniting various factions. Well, Christians worldwide already love this dude. He's progressive, but he can get people of all political stripes to come together for something good, like AIDS relief in africa. He actually wrote a promotional blurb on the back of one of my bibles! He's already accustomed to wearing silly outfits, making pompous pronouncements, and having crowds of people revering him. Also, if he's the Pope, he'll be too busy to make any more crappy records. Dude hasn't done anything interesting since the Popmart tour.

2. Sister Wendy Beckett. John Paul II spent a lot of time telling catholics what to think about stem cell research, contraception, women as priests, etc.. Funny thing is, American Catholics loved JP2, but had no problem disagreeing with him about almost everything! So if we're going to disregard moral stances anyway, maybe it's time for a pope that'll keep her trap shut about that junk and will instead tell us something useful and interesting, like about Renoir's symbolic use of light and shadow. Sister Wendy is an adorable british nun/self-taught art historian, and my mom highly recommends her public TV shows, which you can get from Netflix.

3. Oprah Winfrey. In the modern marketplace of religions, how will Catholicism be able to compete with Protestant megachurches which offer one-stop spiritual shopping? Through the power of SYNERGY! Okay so her spiritual content tends to be of the superficial self-help therapeutic deist variety. But that's how one gets to be queen of all media.

4. Steve Schroeder. Everyone loves Steve. Steve loves everyone. You know this dude would make such an awesome pope.

5. David Bawden, the pope of Kansas. As documented in Thomas Frank's excellent book What's the Matter With Kansas, David Bawden meticulously studied catholic history and doctrine for years, concluding that the church became heretical with the progressive, modernizing reforms of Vatican II. This is roughly the same position that Opus Dei conservatives like Mel Gibson hold, but Bawden considers them heretics too, because they don't fully reject the current church. In 1990, Bawden decided that the only possible step would be to hold an election. His mother and a couple of his neighbors showed up to vote, and unsurprisingly, Bawden himself was elected and renamed Pope Michael I.

6. 50 Cent. Doesn't need a popemobile; he's been shot nine times! Also, disrespectful to women, just like a real pope.

To vote, leave a comment with your choice. Write-in candidates will be accepted.

Welcome to Holy Moly, my new blog about religion, and the ways religion intersects with politics and culture. I'm working on some sorta introductory manifesto, but in the meantime I will get started right away with some reflections on Terri Schiavo and the Pope.