Marriage amendment in North Carolina

This past weekend, my husband and I drove from Ohio to North Carolina so that I could participate belatedly in a hooding ceremony for my doctorate, which was actually awarded to me last year. While we were there, we attended Sunday services at an Episcopal congregation we had been involved with while I was in grad school. North Carolina voters had just passed a traditional-marriage amendment to the state constitution. The congregation had done some activism opposing the amendment, and the diocese had adopted a resolution in opposition as well.  The vicar’s sermon was dedicated to coping with the disappointed aftermath.

As we chatted with the vicar afterward, she told us again how badly she felt about the passage of the amendment. She was so visibly down about it that I couldn’t help but laugh a little. “I’m grateful you feel badly about it,” I told her. “But for us, this is the same old same old.”

Earlier in the week, I had talked by phone with a former professor of mine who had told me that he felt optimistic the amendment would not pass. I was surprised by his optimism–particularly considering that he’s Jewish and has argued on previous occasions that the U.S. should indeed be understood as a “Christian nation” given how influential Christians have been in shaping American politics and culture. With that take on things, I would have expected him to be more clairvoyantly pessimistic about the strength of conservative Christian support for the amendment. I certainly wasn’t surprised by the outcome.

Let me revise that last statement. I was surprised to see how strongly some straight religious liberals I know–the Episcopal vicar, my Jewish professor–have come to identify with the cause for gay marriage. We’re past the stage where this issue is gays and lesbians trying to get straight progressives to sympathize with “our” cause. It’s become “their” cause, too. They’ve become more invested.

I don’t know how this issue will play out in the end. Will the defense-of-marriage movement eventually go the way of the pro-segregation or anti-miscegenation movements–movements that can no longer be “respectably” championed? Or will this issue be more like abortion–large numbers of voters falling out on both sides for decades to come, the country divided up into states that allow gay marriage and states that don’t, and religious conservatives constantly pressing back against what gains the marriage-equality folks manage to make? I have a hunch it will be the latter, but I favor gloomy predictions as a matter of policy. (It’s a policy that assures I will only ever be pleasantly disappointed.)

Whatever happens, we’ve arrived at a point where America’s Christian majority is divided on the issue in numbers big enough that we can no longer talk about a cultural consensus. The fact that Christians, specifically, are divided strikes me as key to that state of affairs. If gays and lesbians hadn’t won over Christians, I don’t think we’d be seeing public attitudes on this issue shift as dramatically as they have. That’s my armchair hypothesis, anyway.

Cafferty on apocalypticism

A few days ago, CNN’s Jack Cafferty posed the question, “What does it mean when one in seven people think the end of the world is coming?” He was responding to a Reuters poll which reported that, worldwide, “nearly 15% of people believe the world will end during their lifetime,” while “10% think the end could come as soon as this year,” based on the Mayan calendar hype.

Cafferty remarked that “for some reason this Mayan Doomsday prediction has attracted millions, maybe even billions, of believers.” Um… Billions, huh? I’d be curious to see some journalistic sourcing for that claim. Even with the qualifying “maybe” tacked onto it, it doesn’t quite mesh with the Reuters data. (Ten percent of the world’s 7  billion people do not “billions” make.)

I suspect that lurking behind Cafferty’s interest in this study is a sense that apocalypticism is irrational. If I’m reading this correctly, then the implied answer to his question, “What does it mean when one in seven people think the end of the world is coming?” is: One in seven people can’t be trusted to make rational decisions. “Only 6% of the French and 8% of the British fear Armageddon in their lifetime,” Cafferty reports, “compared to 22% in Turkey and right here in the United States.” No surprises there, really. I wonder, though, if Cafferty intends us to be startled by the pairing of Turkey and the U.S. I mean, a Muslim country, sure, you expect those folks to be backward. But how can the U.S. be at the same level? How can the American public be as benighted as Turkey?

Three of the first four responses that Cafferty used on air reflect what I’m suspecting is his own anxiety. The folks worried about the Mayan calendar “aren’t thinking logically,” says Nancy from Tennessee. (A rational voice from Tennessee! There’s hope!) “B.” warns that the 1-in-7 stat “may seem unimportant, but maybe the other six should be prepared for what that one might do out of fear, religion, or even hate.” That’s followed by Nate in North Carolina quipping that “the other six remember Y2K”–i.e., they’re being sensible.

Cafferty didn’t put on air any responses quoting the Bible as an authority in defense of apocalyptic predictions (though, predictably, some appear in the comments at the bottom of the blog). He did air, though, this possibly New-Agey, certainly environmentalist-minded comment from a Texan: “The human race cannot sustain itself on its current course of development. The 1 in 7 have ‘done the math’. It’s really quite simple, statistically speaking, without a fundamental change in consciousness the human race is doomed.” Amen, brother.

Lotus Temple, Spanish Fork, UT

A quick break from grading final papers and exams: Today’s post features ISKCON’s Lotus Temple in Spanish Fork, Utah, a town I lived in for a year when I was 10-11 years old. The temple was built after my family moved away from Spanish Fork. I attended a couple events at the temple in the early 2000s, while I was living in Salt Lake City.

This is a fabulous photo of the temple with the Wasatch mountains in the background, taken from the temple’s online photo gallery.

I assume from the cloud of pink dust over the amphitheater and the light snow on the mountains that this photo was taken during Holi. Here’s a video the temple has produced about that festival. I am, frankly, astounded by the video’s production values, as well as by the size of the crowd. A good number of these people have probably come down from Salt Lake City, an hour away. On Sundays, I suspect, some of them could be found at the big drum circle in Liberty Park. And a good number of these folks are probably Mormons, including students from nearby Brigham Young University.

Out on a Limb

A blast from the past–a clip from Shirley MacLaine’s ostensibly autobiographical made-for-TV movie, Out on a Limb. I showed this clip to one of my classes last week to accompany a discussion of counterculture and New Age religions. The realization that this clip is older than most of my students drives home to me my age in a way I could do without.

Earlier during the same class session, students had tittered through our reading of texts by the “Jesus freaks.” But after they watched this clip, the mood in the classroom seemed more somber. I wish we’d had time to talk about that reaction. Were students “thrown” by the supernatural claims–e.g., the channeled Pleiadian driving the car? Did the clip leave them wondering, “Is this real?” Did the straight face I maintained while pointing out characteristic elements of MacLaine’s New Age worldview leave students wondering if I think this is real, making them cautious about their own reactions? Do I have evangelical students inclined to interpret these claims as demonic?

Demographic Winter

My university is celebrating “Intercontinental Week.” This is the poster I see as I walk across campus:

The first time I saw the poster, I blinked because for a second I thought I was seeing this image:

Demographic Winter is a documentary produced by a trio of Mormon filmmakers to support the work of the World Congress of Families, a American-based organization that describes itself as “an international network of pro-family organizations, scholars, leaders and people of goodwill from more than 60 countries that seek to restore the natural family as the fundamental social unit.” The documentary’s argument, supported by interviews with scholars associated with the WCF, is that falling birthrates, especially in developed nations, are precipitating a demographic crisis where we’ll have large aging populations without enough younger people to support them or replenish the population. This picture of the future contrasts, of course, with fears about global overpopulation–fears that the film asserts reflect a fundamental misapprehension of what’s really happening. The subtext is that people need to return to the pro-natal values that have been eroded, since the 1960s, by a rise in women working outside the home, the sexual revolution, liberalized divorce laws, and inaccurate beliefs about overpopulation (which the filmmakers regard as something approaching a conspiracy).

At the 2011 annual meeting of the American Studies Association, I sat on a panel with two colleagues, Sandra Garner and Rita Trimble, that analyzed Demographic Winter and two other documentaries by the same filmmakers. I said that this film exemplifies what legal scholars Doris Buss and Didi Herman call the “globalization” and “intellectualization” of Christian right politics. Like the WCF, whose work it supports, Demographic Winter represents the coming together of conservative evangelicals, Catholics, Mormons, Jews, and Muslims to create an interreligious pro-family movement that seeks to influence policy in the United Nations and around the world. Whether you applaud this movement or deplore it, it’s an important development in global politics. In my own work, I call this kind of interreligious collaboration “conservative pluralism.” Some of those who advocate this kind of collaboration call it “ecumenical jihad.”

Marketing halal

My husband is coeliac and therefore requires gluten-free foods. This evening, he was trying a new brand of gluten-free chicken tenders from a company called Saffron Road. I noticed that the box was marked “halal certified.” I flipped over to the back of the box and found the following explanation:

Saffron Road celebrates the memorable meals and mutual values families and friends of all cultures share around the dinner table. . . . All our chickens are Certified Humane and sourced from small sustainably run farms with 100% vegetarian feed and are never given antibiotics. Our Halal tradition demands their proper care and welfare.

Halal is a tradition that has nourished billions of people over the last 1,400 years. Halal promotes the sacred practices of respect for the land, fair treatment for farmers, humane treatment of livestock and wholesome food to eat. You’ll be amazed how good such carefully prepared food tastes and how it genuinely replenishes the body and soul!

I’m intrigued to see how halal is being marketed as world cuisine, organic food, and fair trade. I’m also intrigued that there are no overt references to Islam–although the reference to “billions of people over the last 1,400 years” and to “sacred practices” hints at that. Why the circumlocution? An attempt to avoid controversy? A complicated bid to pitch the food as culturally specific (for the sake of the “world cuisine” appeal) while avoiding association with a specific religion (which might impede the effort to crossover to a non-Muslim clientele)? Note how the company pitches halal as an expression of “mutual values” shared by “families and friends of all cultures.”

I’m curious to know–has kosher food ever been cross-marketed like this?

Touchdown Jesus

Today I fielded a call from a reporter at the student newspaper looking for a religion professor who could help her interpret the “Touchdown Jesus” statue. I hadn’t heard of this until she asked about it; apparently it’s located on the other side of our county. Was located, I should say; it burned down a couple of years ago. The church that erected it has announced plans to build a replacement.

"Touchdown Jesus" a.k.a. "King of Kings"

I tried to explain to the student reporter that the question, “What does the statue mean?” presupposes that it has one meaning, whereas it’s in the nature of public art that while the people who put it up may intend it to mean one thing, they can’t control what it will mean to passersby. That problematic is especially relevant in this case, because the church has apparently announced (so the reporter told me) that the replacement statue will have a different design. As she explained it to me, the new statue will show Jesus’ entire figure, and his hands will be outstretched toward the passing highway, not uplifted to heaven. I read that shift as a sign that the church was unhappy with how the old statue ended up being interpreted–i.e., they didn’t appreciate the “Touchdown Jesus” moniker. (Officially, the statue was called “King of Kings.”)

Anyway, with the caveat in place that the statue doesn’t have just one meaning, I offered the student some possible evocations that I thought the church might intend, based on precedents in Christian art and scripture. According to the reporter’s description, the new statue will be standing on pillars in the water; perhaps, I suggested, that was meant to call to mind Jesus walking on the water. The association with water might suggest Jesus as the “waters of life.” (I’ve since learned that the pond serves as a baptismal font.) The old statue, I told her, did strike me as unusual, since I’m more used to seeing Jesus depicted in sculpture with arms stretched out (as if on the cross) or down (displaying the wounds, reaching down to the viewer). The uplifted arms seemed to suggest that Jesus was reaching up to God–perhaps receiving power from God, thus becoming a model for the Spirit-infused believer.

I suspect I told her way more than she’d wanted–I have a way of doing that. She probably just wanted a simple iconographic key: this equals that. One meaning, neatly decoded.

South Park on Passover

South Park takes on the Passover story, telling it from the point of view of the Egyptians–along with cartoonishly gruesome images of little lambs having their throats slit, which I will now never be able to get out of my head. (For some reason, those images bother me more than the depictions of human children’s heads exploding that appear in the same clip; but analyzing the logic of that reaction will be a task for another occasion.)

Watch the clip

By coincidence, we were discussing this story last week in my class on myth as part of a unit on the persistence and adaptation of ancient myths in modern societies. We used Chabad’s English Haggadah to represent a traditional seder and then compared it to the Reconstructionists’ New American Haggadah to see how the latter had adjusted the telling/performance of the myth to reflect modern sensibilities and promote a distinctively American Jewish identity.

Good Friday vacation?

I’m at school, between classes. Campus seems unusually quiet. One of my students told me, in my first class this morning, that she had an easier time than usual finding parking. (The student is Muslim, as it happens–she asked me to explain to her what Good Friday is.) Another student emailed me to say she’s gone home early for Easter. Oh–and there’s another.

My university, in Ohio, doesn’t suspend classes for Good Friday. We did get Good Friday off, though, when I was attending grad school in North Carolina. Presumably to avoid church-state problems, the break was called “Spring Holiday” (not to be confused with “Spring Break”). But the Spring Holiday always “happened” to fall on Good Friday.

I can’t remember if, when I lived in the Dominican Republic, schools let out for Holy Week. I just poked around online–it looks like schools there get the whole week off. Ah, the advantages of living in a predominantly Catholic, rather than Protestant, country. Of course, there are trade-offs.

Sacred Earth

As I’ve walked around campus the past couple of weeks, I’ve seen posters for an upcoming performance, “Sacred Earth,” by the troupe Ragamala Dance, who perform Bharatanatyam, a classical dance style from south India.

The performance is being promoted by the university’s Performing Arts Series as follows. I’ve highlighted phrases that invite commentary.

Experience transcendence. With magical grace, Ragamala dances the ancient temple art form, Bharatanatyam. Performed against a vivid backdrop of painted prayers, Warli paintings, on a stage covered with ephemeral Kolam rice flour drawings, Ragamala’s Sacred Earth transforms the stage into a sacred space. The stunning dancers give physical form to the spiritual expression of the Warlis and Kolams, illustrating the ephemeral nature of our existence and celebrating the ongoing, ever-renewing cycle of life.

I’m struck that among the performance’s sponsors is the “Ford Family initiative on Spiritual Meaning & Purpose.”

Thought question: What kind of experience do the performers understand themselves to be offering the audience? What kind of experience do planners here at the university understand that they are offering the audience? And what kind of experience do audience members understand themselves to be having? Artistic? Cultural? Religious? Spiritual? What’s the difference?