Avdat

How elite are you?

Claire Berlinski read Charles Murray's op-ed on the New Elites, and turned it into a quiz. Kevin Drum proclaimed the quiz worthy of being a meme, and I agree! So here's the quiz with my results:

1. Can you talk about "Mad Men?" No.
2. Can you talk about the "The Sopranos?" No.
3. Do you know who replaced Bob Barker on "The Price Is Right?" Drew Carey.
4. Have you watched an Oprah show from beginning to end? Yes.
5. Can you hold forth animatedly about yoga? No.
6. How about pilates? No.
7. How about skiing? During the Winter Olympics I can.
8. Mountain biking? I can fake it.
9. Do you know who Jimmie Johnson is? Both of 'em.
10. Does the acronym MMA mean anything to you? Yes.
11. Can you talk about books endlessly? Not only that; I READ books endlessly.
12. Have you ever read a "Left Behind" novel? Nope.
13. How about a Harlequin romance? Yes. I pilfered one of my mother's at the beach one summer.
14. Do you take interesting vacations? I think so.
15. Do you know a great backpacking spot in the Sierra Nevada? No.
16. What about an exquisite B&B overlooking Boothbay Harbor? No.
17. Would you be caught dead in an RV? I have filled the tank, checked the oil and washed the windows of many an RV. So, yes.
18. Would you be caught dead on a cruise ship? I'm not planning on being caught dead anywhere, but I know my time is coming.
19. Have you ever heard of of Branson, Mo? Yes.
20. Have you ever attended a meeting of a Kiwanis Club? No.
21. How about the Rotary Club? No. Does the Optimist Club count?
22. Have you lived for at least a year in a small town? Yes.
23. Have you lived for a year in an urban neighborhood in which most of your neighbors did not have college degrees? No.
24. Have you spent at least a year with a family income less than twice the poverty line? Yes. In fact, that's our situation right now.
25. Do you have a close friend who is an evangelical Christian? Yes.
26. Have you ever visited a factory floor? Yes.
27. Have you worked on one? Yeah, baby!

I give myself a score of 6.5 elite answers out of 27. In other words, I am 24% elite, if I did my math right. I'm a regular rube.

Murray's column reports that the Tea Party is darkly warning that a new elite--ignorant about regular folks--has taken over America. But who gets to decide who's elite and who's not? A New York Times poll last spring reported that members of the Tea Party turn out to be more highly educated and wealthier than the average American. Sounds like an elite group to me!

There are elites who actively work to maximize their plutocratic interests and those who don't. I suspect that the former try to hide their rapaciousness from themselves and others with assorted attempts to keep it real (a little MMA or NASCAR watching). And the former accuse the latter of elitism. That's chutzpah.

So, dear Elitist, I absolve you of the obligation to fly down to Talladega this weekend and slum with the rest of us. No need to display your drunken contempt for Kyle Busch by flinging a chicken bone and crushed can of Bud in his general direction. All I ask of you is that you use your outsized financial, cultural and political influence on behalf of us rubes. A progressive tax code, a living wage, universal health care, and no more rich man's wars and poor man's fights. The usual stuff. Those who do such things are by no means out of touch with the rest of us.

And now, a word about free speech

I've been hearing people say that National Public Radio's firing of Juan Williams for these comments is an assault on free speech:

 

People who say such things don't know what they're talking about. Let's review:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

What this means, boys and girls, is that if NPR doesn't want to be associated with the bigoted comments of Juan Williams, they don't have to be. They can fire him, and the government can't do anything about it.

What this also means is that if Fox News wants to pay $2 million for the services of a journalist who makes bigoted statements like Juan Williams, they're free to do so. The government can't do anything abut it.

The first amendment does not impose a burden on any entity to give voice to points of view they find objectionable. In fact, it's just the opposite. The first amendment restrains the government from imposing any such burden, short of extreme cases such as libel. That's what makes it free speech.

And make no mistake: Juan Williams' comments were bigoted. That's the real issue here. He wasn't confessing to that all-too-common sin of judging a book by its cover, and asking for forgiveness or resolving to repent. Williams was backing up Bill O'Reilly, who had said on ABC's The View that "Muslims" were responsible for the 9/11 attacks, a statement that's about as true and enlightening as saying, "Americans were responsible for the Oklahoma City bombing."

Could NPR have handled this situation better? Their ombudsman thinks so, and she's probably right. I do find it curiously inconsistent that the same people who love right to work laws aren't backing management to the hilt on this one. I also wonder where these free speech advocates were when CNN's Rick Sanchez made bigoted comments about Jews running the media, and was fired post-haste (and rightly, in my opinion). Or is the right to free speech being dumbed down to the right (and indeed, the obligation) to stereotype Muslims?

I want to be a Pentecostal

Did you know that there are Pentecostals who baptize infants? Did you know that there are Pentecostals who recite the Creed in worship? Did you know that, outside the U.S., most Pentecostals don't require speaking in tongues as evidence of a baptism in the Holy Spirit? Did you know that there are Pentecostal denominations in the World Council of Churches?

Neither did I!

Until I read An Introduction to Pentecostalism: Global Charismatic Christianity, by Allan Anderson. This scholarly and accessible book traces the origin and spread of Pentecostalism throughout the world, and also analyses Pentecostal theology, ethics and worship, as well Pentecostalism's relationship to the culture and to the ecumenical Church.

If it's not always and everywhere about speaking in tongues, just what then is Pentecostalism? Anderson suggests this answer: A shared conviction that the Holy Spirit can and should be experienced immediately and powerfully. This is in contrast to Roman Catholics, for whom the Holy Spirit is practically co-terminus with the Church, and with Protestants, for whom the Spirit has been reduced to a scriptural pedagogue.

And yet Pentecostalism does have country cousins in ecumenical Christianity. The mystical tradition, for instance, as Anderson points out.

To be sure, you have to look closely for the family resemblance. Mystics are quiet; Pentecostals are noisy. You tend to find mystics in monasteries; you can find Pentecostals all over cable TV. Mysticism offers an experience of God in which the boundary between the I and the Thou is erased momentarily, and the finite self dissolves into the Infinite. In a Pentecostal experience of the Spirit, one seems to retain a sense of self, only augmented by spiritual power: speaking in tongues, prophecy, exorcism, miraculous healing.

But what they share in common is a powerful and unmediated (to the extent possible in this space-time continuum) experience of God. It's not quite right to say that Pentecostalism is mysticism for the masses, but it isn't entirely wrong either. Once, while on retreat, a Cistercian monk gave me and my Presbyterian co-retreatants a good talking to about this subject. "What do you want? A letter from God (i.e., scripture), or GOD HIMSELF?" A Pentecostal could just as easily pose the same question.

Did you say exorcisms? Miracles? Yes, indeed. And why not? ask Pentecostals. The Bible is full of such stuff. Pentecostalism, like Protestantism once did, bills itself as a restoration of primitive Christianity, only in the context of a modern, disenchanted world understood primarily through scientific models of causes and effect. Outside Pentecostalism, God has either been kicked to the curb, or banished to the heavens, only permitted to come down to endorse our moral reform projects (as with "liberals" and "conservatives") or to mock the earnestness of liberals and conservatives in a moment of Revelation (neoorthodoxy).

But Pentecostals proclaim that the supernatural is alive and well. The desert is still a haunt of demons, and not just in Las Vegas! But prayer can still banish demons and heal the sick, they say.

How do we respond to this claim? My own experience and study of mysticism leads me to believe that the supernatural is not only real but can be encountered. It's local. Even if I were to lack some of the experiences and opportunities for study that I've had, I'd still be reluctant to dismiss Pentecostal testimony out of hand. And this despite the known charlatans. The weight of the testimony is just too great.

And yet we have benefited incalculably from the West's turn from a preoccupation with ultimate causes, and a focus on proximate causes. It is unfortunate that many African Pentecostals felt they had to choose between prayer and quinine, although since the latter was being offered only by their colonial overlords it's somewhat understandable. At any rate, while not all talk about the need for re-enchanting the world is sound, there does seem to be a real need for a theology of presence that can explain the experience of God's immanence in a Newtonian and quantum world.

Earlier I mentioned Schleiermacher's position that natural cause and effect is an expression of God's causality, which differs not just in degree but in kind from natural causality. Scleiermacher's thought is a game but finally less than satisfying account of God's relationship to the world because it cannot account for the supernatural surplus of Pentecostalism, or for the thin places in the barrier between God and the world that mystics are so adept at finding and poking through--both of which scripture testifies to. Are there other options out there?

But more than a theology of the Holy Spirit, we need the Holy Spirit. Period.

Democrats perfect the b****slap

The following is not an Onion ad. Nor is it something some frat boy poly-sci majors cooked up while on a bender, as my wife insisted it must be when I first showed it to her. This is an actual ad from the U.S. Senate race in Kentucky:

 

A few years ago Josh Marshall coined the phrase "bitch-slap politics" to describe the Bush campaign's Swift Boats ads against John Kerry. Those ads made Kerry look weak in two ways: one, by casting doubt over his war record and two (and more importantly), by hitting Kerry below the belt and betting on the fact that he wouldn't hit back. I can remember reading embittered diarists at Daily Kos who ached for a Democratic Karl Rove to step forward and give the Republicans as good as we were getting.

Well here it is! The above ad is equal to anything Rove could come up with in terms of contempt for the facts, the opponent's humanity and voter intelligence and incredulity.Ya like it?

Sure, the chutzpah of a Democrat getting to the right of his wingnut opponent on religion is breathtaking. Sure, the schadenfreude of seeing Republicans hoisted on their own petard of populist bigotry is sweet indeed.

But I'm not happy with it. Not happy at all. I have no idea what Ron Paul's religion really is, but it ought to be tested in the crucible of the confessional or at the Lord's table, not in the three-ring circus of a political campaign.

In the meantime, Kentuckians need to take to heart the fact that there is a body of secular wisdom, available to all, regardless of religious belief, the mastery of which is sufficient for the art of statecraft. Your city councilman doesn't need to be saved in order to get the potholes filled. Your Senator doesn't need to be sanctified in order to approve cabinet secretaries. Your President doesn't need to be orthodox in order to negotiate an arms control treaty.

It doesn't reflect well on the Bluegrass state that this ad has gotten Jack Conway back in the race. You mean that you were thinking about voting for a guy who wants to dismantle Social Security, Medicare and the Civil Rights Acts, who wants to turn the clock back to 1896, until you found out he was involved in a fraternity prank that offends your piety? I don't get you, Kentucky. Maybe a Rovian contempt for the voter is sometimes justified.

If Conway wins, and the President finds himself ten points down two Octobers from now, maybe the Obama campaign will hire the architect of this ad to save the day. How about a 30 second spot on the secret Republican plan to let Cylons serve openly in the military? AND to adopt children! Or maybe Obama and his buddy Rick Warren will give the invocation at high school football games in swing states to preempt Aqua Buddhists from getting a shot at the mic.

If this is the only way we can win, then I don't want to win.

Open letter to my classmates

In lieu of chapel last week, the seminary community participated in a diversity workshop. One of the activities was reacting to the results of an online survey the consultant asked us to take in advance. In general, the community gives itself above average marks for acceptance of diversity, but not so if you are one of three groups: theological conservatives, people of color, and gays and lesbians (if I recall correctly).

My question is about the first group's experience. What gives? Are professors belittling conservative students in class? Are people who express conservative opinions in class subject to social ostracism out of class? Are grades affected?

I'm curious because my experience at Union is far less polarizing than my experience at Columbia 20 years ago, and I'm not sure why. Both schools seem equally liberal to me, and I wonder if it has more to do with the degree program than the school. Acquiring an M.Div., unlike a Ph.D., is as much about formation as it is information; perhaps the exposure to new ideas that is part and parcel of both programs is more threatening at the M.Div. level than it is at the Ph.D. level because it's more personal.

Or maybe it's because I'm older and a bit more settled in my theological and personal identity, and I can read and appreciate thinkers with whom I disagree without being threatened by them. If I had read Gordon Kaufman's In Face of Mystery when it was published in 1993, that for me would have been a profoundly disturbing experience, but I really enjoyed reading the book last spring. I appreciated Kaufman's irenic tone; I appreciated the way that his method and the questions that preoccupy him reveal blind spots in my own theology, and I appreciated the book for helping me to clarify my own theology.I haven't given up on a personal God, but I was captivated by Kaufman's case for an impersonal Ultimate.

On the other hand, had all 1,600 pages of Eckard Schnabel's Early Christian Mission been available to me as an M.Div. student, I would have been annoyed at his contempt for redaction and form criticism as well as his unapologetic exclusivism, but as I plowed through the second volume today I was mainly gobsmacked by the scope of the thing. His conservative assessment of New Testament mission is thoroughly in conversation with every nook and cranny of New Testament and classical scholarship--liberal, moderate, conservative, and of all confessions or none. Where does the man find time to eat and sleep?

My education isn't all sweetness and light. My research focus is late antiquity, when monasticism and asceticism really took hold. In the stuff I read, no one's debating the ordination of homosexuals. They're debating whether or not heterosexual, procreative, married sex is something the Church should tolerate, or renounce altogether.

I'm not sure if this is conservative, even reactionary, or if it's beyond liberal, even anarchistic--living naked in the Syrian desert on a loaf of bread a day and decrying procreation because it feeds the death machine could go either way, I suppose--but anyway, in my study carrel, where my "class" at times consists of me, Jerome, and the Desert Fathers, I too feel a bit defensive. I even find myself saying (to no one in particular), "Well, I don't care what you think, Mister Holier-Than-Thou Egyptian Monk; I like having sex with my wife and I'm going to keep on having it!" (With her permission, of course).

But this irritation I experience with the communion of saints is nonetheless a good thing. Like reading Kaufman, it forces me to clarify my own understanding (in this case, of sexuality). And like reading Schnabel, it often elicits a low whistle from me in the face of their herculean efforts.

The point of all this is, Are your opinions really not valued, or is the discomfort you're experiencing a natural part of the growth and change that is a hallmark of a liberal arts education? Hopefully, no one leaves higher education the same as he or she enters it. And I don't know of any experience of growth or change that didn't demand a pound of flesh.

This is not a rhetorical question. I genuinely don't know what your experience is since I'm not in class with you. Please feel free to comment either here or on Facebook. Or email me.

The fate of the universe is someone else's problem

A while back I wrote that my problem with atheism is that all it has to say to the innumerable and nameless dead piled on the ash heap of history is, "It sucks to be you." Atheism's other problem would seem to be that it has little in the way of an encouraging word for the future. The long term future, that is. The scientists tell us that eventually the universe will either expand to the point of fizzling out or collapse in upon itself. The big freeze or the big crunch. If there is no God whose purposes for this creation are ultimately good, then none of our efforts to make the world a better place have ultimate worth.

The reply would be, "Well, that's a long way off," and I must admit it is. Heck, when God postponed Israel's punishment just one generation, that was enough of a reprieve to let King Hezekiah sleep like a baby. If the big fizzle doesn't happen for another few billion years, how much better can we all sleep?

And yet, if it is coming, and that's all there is that's coming, why get out of bed in the morning?

This is why I won't give up on the bodily resurrection. The bodily resurrection is a premodern confession that the law of entropy is destined to be revoked. That's a theology of hope.

And I suppose this is why I'm not fully on board with Schleiermacher's assessment of miracles.  Schleiermacher maintains that everything has both a natural and a supernatural cause. In other words, the nature system of cause and effect is for Schleiermacher a manifestation of divine causality, which is different in both degree and kind than natural causality.

This means that Schleiermacher doesn't believe in miracles, if by miracle you mean the suspension of the laws of nature. Jesus came not to abolish but to fulfill the law (of nature) by redeeming us from sin and evil. On the other hand, this also means that for Schleiermacher, everything is a miracle. Unlike the Deists, Schleiermacher can affirm God's ongoing providence in the world.

I really appreciate the second half of that equation. If we only look for miracles in the extraordinary and unexpected, then we take too much for granted. Why do we exist at all? That we are here is wholly gratuitous. I believe that if we properly understand our existence and the amazing intricacies of the universe that sustain us, we will feel not only awe but gratitude as well, and a relentless determination to seek out the One who properly deserves our gratitude.

At the same time, the laws that govern this dazzling universe seem in some sense to be prison bars. We understand more about the world than Schleiermacher's generation did, and to us, and apart from revelation, it appears to be less a well-oiled machine and much more a random and purposeless cacophony.

The Bible says that when God created the world he pronounced it good; thus the laws of nature must be "holy and just and good." But a good creation may not be good enough in the long, long run. Even if we repented of our rapacious plundering of the earth, we still stand in need of new heavens and a new earth. So we look for a disclosure from God apart from the law (of nature), which we call miracle in the customary sense of the word, and for those who receive it, this disclosure names the One who is worthy of our gratitude and gives us a reason to get out of bed in the morning.

Columbus Day Meh

I blew all my liberal outrage on other, noble causes, so I've got nothing for today. It's just a day in October that I can't mail a letter. So let me refer you to this post which not only competently makes the usual anti-glorification of colonialism points, but also convincingly argues that Italian-Americans need to drop Christopher Columbus as their hero, thus explaining in this process this map of Italy as seen by elite Italians:

I nominate Joe DiMaggio's birthday to replace Columbus Day. It falls at the end of November, and by replacing Thanksgiving as well, would increase the productivity of federal employees while simultaneously taking out another holiday that commemorates the screwing over of Native Americans. It gives liberals and conservatives a reason to vote for it. That's change we can believe in!

I wouldn't mind if Columbus Day went away, along with Confederate Heritage Month, the Washington "Redskins," and many other dubious cultural symbols, but I find the conflict over the symbols per se a bit tedious. I think it's more advisable to try to change the ground level conditions that such symbols are tethered to. Then they either fall of their own weight, or they're compelled to mediate a different reality.

An analogy: Congress' failure to do right by black farmers, who as recently as the 1990s were subject to federal discrimination, is far more egregious than Governor McDonnell's failure to mention slavery in his Confederate Heritage Day proclamation, but guess which omission has garnered more media coverage?

There are similar pending and long overdue actions that could right wrongs and change American Indians' material conditions for the better--like this bill, which would fix the strange problem that there are no federally recognized Indian tribes in Virginia, a problem created in part by a state official in the last century who changed the race on Native American birth certificates from "Indian" to "black."

So, less Columbus Day grumpiness posted on Facebook and more emails to your Congressman, please.

Pink madness

After last week's NFL games, in which it looked as though like a giant cotton candy machine had thrown up on stadiums everywhere, I caught Steve Czaban on the radio ranting about breast cancer awareness month. Czaban asked, Why single out one form of a deadly disease and ignore all the others? I thought he might have a point in that courageously contrarian way, but then I looked up cancer statistics, and it turns out that breast cancer is second highest in terms of annual new cases. It's deservedly a high profile disease.

Still, far, far more people die every year of lung cancer than breast cancer, and slightly more people die of colo-rectal cancer than breast cancer. What accounts for the phenomenal success of the Komen Foundation and other advocacy groups in raising the profile of this disease as opposed to say, the American Lung Association?

Surely gender solidarity has something to do with it. But there's no parallel mobilization for prostate cancer.

So could it also have something to do with... you know... breasts?

Let's face it, in this culture breasts are far less esteemed for feeding offspring than they are for turning men on. So you can sell breast cancer detection as a form of foreplay, as Save The Ta-Tas literally does here:

 

And you can interest men in the cause in the way that you can't interest them in prostate cancer, because while men in general don't like thinking about diseases, men do like thinking about breasts. It's perfect.

I am not trying to make light of a serious situation. I know women who have died from and survived breast cancer. I have fond memories of the former, and great respect for the latter. But there does seem to be a strange mixture of compassion and titillation at work here. I'll just say that it would be a good thing if all women had to worry about regarding their breasts was their health, and not whether they're too small, too droopy, or too whatever.

The Tea Party is nothing new under the sun

Kevin Drum has written an article for the current issue of Mother Jones that situates the Tea Party in a historical context. Contrary to popular belief, the Tea Party was not a spontaneous, populist reaction to the bailouts and the stimulus. For the past 80 years, something like the Tea Party has reared its head every time the Democrats come into power. The Liberty League opposed FDR's New Deal; the John Birch Society flourished when JFK and LBJ occupied the Oval Office, and the black helicopter crowd fulminated against Bill Clinton.

All these movements have been characterized by a hatred of big government, a fear and loathing of the Other, and a tendency toward paranoia. "Fluoridation is a Communist plot! Vince Foster was murdered! Obama is a Muslim!"

That said, Drum maintains that today's situation differs from the past in two respects: 1. Tea Partiers spread the word via the internet, not mimeograph machines, and 2. There are no moderate conservatives pushing back against them.

Consequently, the wingnut right goes from strength to strength. Last time around they goaded Republicans into impeaching the President, despite the rebuke of voters in the 1998 midterms. Today, they've effectively taken over the Republican Party. Look at how the likes of Rand Paul and Christine O'Donnell have become the GOP standard-bearers in this year's elections. Even non-Tea Partiers like John McCain, who turned back primary challengers, did so by moving to the right.

In this light, Obama's governance over the past two years looks even more impressive. The Democrats have always been a coalition party. In the best of times, leading such a party is not unlike herding cats. Add to that the fact that the far right has driven all the moderate Republicans into the Democratic camp, and you're looking at a situation in which finding consensus is nearly impossible. And yet he found enough consensus to pass health care reform, banking reform and student loan reform.

When liberals carp about feckless Democrats (and I myself have done more than my fair share of carping), they (we) need to remember that we don't really have the overwhelming majorities in Congress the numbers seem to indicate. If the Two Party system accurately reflected the ideological spectrum in the country, Democrats would probably have much narrower majorities than they do today. But because the Republicans have been giving themselves a colonic for the past twenty years, yesterday's liberal Republicans are today's feckless Democrats.

That's why these major pieces of legislation look like they're born of compromise rather than a robust progressive agenda. Because they are. When the Two Party System is John Birchers versus Everybody Else, the bills that the Everybody Else Party passes will inevitably be a bit watered down.

Living large so that others may simply live

More than a few people are saying that since Washington has seized up, our only hope of jump-starting the economy lies with the Federal Reserve. Specifically, the Fed ought to fire up the printing press. Moderate inflation would encourage consumers the buy now, before the price goes up. Given that consumer spending accounts for 2/3s of our economic output, getting people to shop again is essential. Inflation would also make yesterday's debt cheaper tomorrow, a boon to those whose bottom lines keep them out of the malls and off the car lots.

This appears to make sense, but at another level, it seems seriously misguided. Sure, stuff breaks down and needs to be replaced, but let's be honest. If you can read this, you're in the top 97th percentile of the human race in terms of wealth. You don't really need to buy anything beyond food, clothing (only when your old clothes wear out), and shelter (No, it doesn't have to be a McMansion).

It's perverse. If we were all to do the right thing--save, save, save, don't borrow money, and discover the happiness inherent in simple living--then we'd be consigning a significant portion of the work force to idleness for years to come. I think the Dave Ramsey lifestyle is great, but one reason why it works is because it plays the rest of the population for suckers. They buy stuff; you buy shares in the companies that sell them stuff, and you, of course, come out ahead. But if we all got religion at the same time...

So, do we actually have a moral obligation to the less fortunate to drive Hummers and live in 4,000 square foot houses? Should policy makers encourage such irresponsible behavior?

No, because, beyond next month's unemployment numbers, there's a bigger crisis looming--the ecological crisis that our baroque lifestyles are slowly building toward. Are those our only two choices? A decade or more of economic pain, or an apocalyptic future for our grandchildren?

Makes me wonder about the ability of old wineskins to accept new wine. How do you create jobs in a low debt, low consumption economy? There may be an answer to that question that doesn't involve pain and suffering, but I doubt it.