Protestantism on Lewis' "Main Street"

Published in 1920, Lewis nails it again and again - the arrogance of the Midwest, its self-satisfaction, it's hatred of socialists, organizers, and unions ... and in this "sermon," Mormons, too. 

Is this a caricature?

Of course it is, but the very nature of a well-done caricature is to capture, in exaggeration, the nature of whatever's being described.

The easy cruelty of pompous religion, the vanity of dogmatic finality, tickling the ears of the already-convinced, ever so confident of their chosen status with Divinity, the rightness of their lives, and the truth of Capitalism, and how wrong everyone else is.

Chapter 28

With a rustle of starched linen skirts and stiff shirt-fronts, the congregation sat down, and gave heed to the Reverend Mr. Zitterel. The priest was a thin, swart, intense young man with a bang. He wore a black sack suit and a lilac tie. He smote the enormous Bible on the reading-stand, vociferated, “Come, let us reason together,” delivered a prayer informing Almighty God of the news of the past week, and began to reason.

It proved that the only problems which America had to face were Mormonism and Prohibition:

“Don't let any of these self-conceited fellows that are always trying to stir up trouble deceive you with the belief that there's anything to all these smart-aleck movements to let the unions and the Farmers' Nonpartisan League kill all our initiative and enterprise by fixing wages and prices. There isn't any movement that amounts to a whoop without it's got a moral background. And let me tell you that while folks are fussing about what they call 'economics' and 'socialism' and 'science' and a lot of things that are nothing in the world but a disguise for atheism, the Old Satan is busy spreading his secret net and tentacles out there in Utah, under his guise of Joe Smith or Brigham Young or whoever their leaders happen to be today, it doesn't make any difference, and they're making game of the Old Bible that has led this American people through its manifold trials and tribulations to its firm position as the fulfilment of the prophecies and the recognized leader of all nations. 'Sit thou on my right hand till I make thine enemies the footstool of my feet,' said the Lord of Hosts, Acts II, the thirty-fourth verse—and let me tell you right now, you got to get up a good deal earlier in the morning than you get up even when you're going fishing, if you want to be smarter than the Lord, who has shown us the straight and narrow way, and he that passeth therefrom is in eternal peril and, to return to this vital and terrible subject of Mormonism—and as I say, it is terrible to realize how little attention is given to this evil right here in our midst and on our very doorstep, as it were—it's a shame and a disgrace that the Congress of these United States spends all its time talking about inconsequential financial matters that ought to be left to the Treasury Department, as I understand it, instead of arising in their might and passing a law that any one admitting he is a Mormon shall simply be deported and as it were kicked out of this free country in which we haven't got any room for polygamy and the tyrannies of Satan.

“And, to digress for a moment, especially as there are more of them in this state than there are Mormons, though you never can tell what will happen with this vain generation of young girls, that think more about wearing silk stockings than about minding their mothers and learning to bake a good loaf of bread, and many of them listening to these sneaking Mormon missionaries—and I actually heard one of them talking right out on a street-corner in Duluth, a few years ago, and the officers of the law not protesting—but still, as they are a smaller but more immediate problem, let me stop for just a moment to pay my respects to these Seventh-Day Adventists. Not that they are immoral, I don't mean, but when a body of men go on insisting that Saturday is the Sabbath, after Christ himself has clearly indicated the new dispensation, then I think the legislature ought to step in——”

At this point Carol awoke.

She got through three more minutes by studying the face of a girl in the pew across: a sensitive unhappy girl whose longing poured out with intimidating self-revelation as she worshiped Mr. Zitterel. Carol wondered who the girl was. She had seen her at church suppers. She considered how many of the three thousand people in the town she did not know; to how many of them the Thanatopsis and the Jolly Seventeen were icy social peaks; how many of them might be toiling through boredom thicker than her own—with greater courage.

She examined her nails. She read two hymns. She got some satisfaction out of rubbing an itching knuckle. She pillowed on her shoulder the head of the baby who, after killing time in the same manner as his mother, was so fortunate as to fall asleep. She read the introduction, title-page, and acknowledgment of copyrights, in the hymnal. She tried to evolve a philosophy which would explain why Kennicott could never tie his scarf so that it would reach the top of the gap in his turn-down collar.

There were no other diversions to be found in the pew. She glanced back at the congregation. She thought that it would be amiable to bow to Mrs. Champ Perry.

9.20.21 - Happy to be Presbyterian

1 Corinthians 5 ... I wonder what's up?

Started reading through 1 Corinthians a few days back, and stopped for awhile this morning on the 5th chapter, wondering, and googling ... what were the circumstances?

And how easily the women in question is dismissed - and the man so easily condemned.

Sounds like a bunch of busybodies holding their noses without any regard for the two people in question, running off to Paul like 4th grade tattletales.

It occurred to me: was she much younger than the man's stepfather?

Was she abused?

Was the son rescuing her?

Were the woman and her "husband" divorced, or was she abandoned? Or had she run away?

With the uneasy feeling that, then or now, women are treated as property ... women belong to the men, and in this case, the son is "violating" property law - stealing from his father, if you will.

This morning, I wanted to ask Paul:

"Don't you have bigger fish to fry?

Have you looked into the matter?

Or are you just going by what the busybodies offer?"

I read Paul with the greatest respect - he gets a lot of things right, as I see it.

But his easy condemnation of the man, with no interest in the details, or the possible suffering of the woman, and maybe the man's kindness to redeem her, leaves me uncomfortable.

With years of ministry behind me: I know something of "sin," in my own life, and in the lives of others - there is sin committed with hubris, arrogance, and ego, power, and domination.

Then, there is "sin" committed because there's no easy answer to so many hard moments in life. And what the community busybodies might label as "sin" is nothing less then folks caught up in a messy situation, not directly or immediately of their own making, working to make the best of it, to mitigate further harm, and to practice kindness, and to find a way through.

Here, as anywhere, the ease with which the "righteous" condemn "sexual" immorality ... it's so easy to do, and it's so rewarding.

Comments????

Disturbing Bible Passage

Today's Lectionary (March 7, 2015) includes Deuteronomy 9.1-12.

As I read it this morning, I was disturbed, seriously disturbed, by the ease with which the writer speaks of "dispossessing" nations, with great cities, well-fortified, "a strong and tall people" ... offspring of the Anakim, i.e., a bastardized race.

But don't be afraid, says the writer, the LORD will go before you so that you may dispossess and destroy them quickly. I chilled when I read those words.

Sure, the writer wants to keep Israel's ego in check by reminding the readers that all of this has nothing to do with their sterling character, but rather God's promise and because these nations are "wicked."

Wicked? You bet. Thus, demonizing a people who are otherwise worthy, strong, creative, talented, with families and farms and hopes and dreams, but they have what we want, and so we're gonna take it, and take it violently, because these people are unworthy to own the land, and besides, they're wicked, because they worship "other" gods, and shame on them, and thus have no right to even exist. Dedicate them for destruction.

I'm in the midst of reading a WW2 novel, featuring a Polish girl held in Ravensbrück and the hideous medical experiments performed on her by another young lady, a German doctor ... who, like all the Nazis, demonized the Poles and other nationalities as "bastardized," half-human, or sub-human, not worthy of life in the Third Reich, and not worthy of life at all.

I think of the Europeans coming to America and looking upon the land as if it were Canaan, and the peoples here were not entitled to this land, because they were "wicked," i.e. they weren't christian.

Victory of Joshua over the Amalekites, Nicolas Poussin, 1625

And, then, of course, slavery - millions of good and decent people yanked from their homes, with families broken, put on slave ships and condemned to a brief and brutal life of harvesting sugar cane or cotton.

But it was okay, you see, because the slaves were "wicked," i.e. not christian, and slavery at least saved them from the darkness of their paganism, and in spite of their slavery (because they were not fully human anyway), this gave them a chance to become christians and go to heaven when they died. That they should live in hell here is fitting, because of their sub-human character and their history of wickedness.

Jesus offers some serious alternatives to this bloody self-justification that to this day undergirds the State of Israel's abuse of Palestinians and America's continuing racism, homophobia, and, as of late, Islamophobia.

And, of course, all of this "dispossession and destruction" of peoples is undergirded by religion, because people doing horrible things to other people need to feel "good" about it, and no greater "feel-good" potion than religion, when twisted and turned to self-interest.

Sure, it's a human problem, spread around the globe and defining virtually all of human history.

But I can't accept any of it, because of what I know of Christ, and because of Christ, it's something that I have to fight against, with all that I have, of mind, body, spirit and strength.

Because God so loved the world ... and in Christ, reconciles the world to God, and the world to itself.

Passages like Deuteronomy have to be soundly and quickly denounced for what they are: lies that we tell one another to justify the most brutal of behaviors toward one another.

And as for me, God never said it ...

Or if God did, then God apologized in Christ ... God got out of the land business, for it sullied God's hands, and filled God with self-loathing, as this kind of behavior always does.

If God said it, then God no longer says it.

If God never said it, then we have to come to grips with the sad that truth that we said it, and still say it, "creating god in our own image," to satisfy our bloodlust and justify our inhuman treatment of other humans, deemed unworthy and wicked.

Christians have to read the text carefully, and so must Jews and Muslims ... every sacred text has more than its share of bloodlust, but also of love and the grandeur of mind and heart ... to either pick up the sword and kill one another in some fit of self-interest, believing that god justifies this violence, or turn the sword into a plowshare, so we can feed one another unto life.

The choice is ours. May we choose wisely.

Healing, Humiliation and Prayer

The life of faith, always ambiguous in its results ... frustrating at times, since there is no guarantee that prayer, or anything else we might call upon, will consistently "work."

In Mark 6.13, the disciples are hugely "successful" in their efforts to cast our demons and, by oil-anointing, to heal the sick.

What a spiritual high for them it must have been.

Yet, in Mark 9, the disciples have a "mountain-bottom" experience - they can't heal a boy with convulsions. After Jesus heals the child, the disciples inquire as to why they failed. Cryptically, Jesus replies that some "demons" respond only to prayer (NRSV; other texts add fasting), leaving the disciples scratching their heads, I'm quite sure, as this leaves us wondering, too.

But Mark has a point - at no point in time can the disciples "patent" a process of healing ... sometimes it happens, and sometimes it doesn't, and there's no clear explanation of it.

How humiliated the disciples must have been when they failed, and worse, when the scribes went after them. Had the disciples perhaps been earlier boasting, after their earlier success? Heck who doesn't engage in "spiritual boasting" now and again, if not with others, at least within our own spirit?

Mark addresses the simple reality: sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn't, and there's no pattern to be claimed by the disciples, no method that "guarantees" anything.

Perhaps to keep in check the church's inclination to boast: "my god can beat up on your god," and so on.

Sort of like preaching: that one Sunday when it all came together and the angels sang ... and the preacher goes home to write a book about "successful preaching."

And then the following Sunday, with the preacher in full control of the method, full of confidence and self, and the sermon lands like a cow pie in the field - kerplop! And the preacher goes home humiliated and sad. And later in the afternoon, Jesus stops by and says something about prayer.

Oh well, there's another Sunday coming ... and another chance, and maybe it'll work ... and maybe it won't. Jesus my LORD!

Wealth and the Will of God

Wealth, like everything else in life, is a strange and mystifying combination of factors, very few of which have anything to do directly with "how good or skillful I am." 

Christians have always rightly attributed wealth to divine favor - which led many to still think of themselves as "deserving" or at least "chums with God." Nevertheless, a sense of "divine favor" laid the responsibility for wealth at the feet of God rather than seeing it as a laurel wreath for the victor. 

If God is responsible, then gratitude, even humility, is required, and its attendant social calling - compassion - and that is exactly the response shunned these days of finance-capitalism. Indeed, if I'm self-made, then I owe nothing to anyone except myself! 

The Gospel according to Jesus and Psalm 146

From this morning's (Jan. 21, 2014) Lectionary (PCUSA): Psalm 146

 Happy are those whose help is the God of Jacob,
          whose hope is in the LORD their God,
6   who made heaven and earth,
          the sea, and all that is in them;
     who keeps faith forever;
7        who executes justice for the oppressed;
          who gives food to the hungry.


     The LORD sets the prisoners free;
8        the LORD opens the eyes of the blind.
     The LORD lifts up those who are bowed down;
          the LORD loves the righteous.
9   The LORD watches over the strangers;
          he upholds the orphan and the widow,
          but the way of the wicked he brings to ruin.

In a time when many a politician takes a shot at the poor and questions their integrity, and makes sport of them in their poverty, as lazy, willingly dependent, a drain on the economy, laggards and sluggards, takers not makers, it's helpful to read of God's social agenda, God's priorities and the way God looks favorably upon those who are scorned and held in contempt by those who "live in ease and are proud" (Psalm 123.4).

When Jesus begins his ministry by preaching in his hometown, he's handed the Isaiah scroll and reads similar words, words of Jubilee, reflected here in Psalm 146.

Initially, the hometown folks thought he was preaching for them, and they were cheered and proud of this local boy, but when Jesus closes the scroll and begins to preach, they quickly turn on him, and seek to kill him. Why? Because Jesus makes it clear to them that God's purpose is ever-so much larger in scope and includes the very people whom these folks despise.

Jesus escaped their clutches and goes on to preach and heal, to lay before us a gospel that truly is good news for all - a gospel that never grows old, is always fresh, always a challenge, sometimes irritating, but always gospel.

"Our" God???? and Christian Music

"Our God is greater, our God is stronger, God you are higher than any other" ...

And if our God is for us, then who could ever stop us.
And if our God is with us, then what could stand against.

... and so the song goes.

It's biblical, I suppose, pulling out pieces of Scripture that "say" these things, but mostly disregarding context and history and what those words and images meant in ancient Israel/Judah.

When I listened, I felt uneasy, because I "heard" the crippling and tragic message of "christian triumphalism," a message of power, invincibility, conquest and victory.

And if "our" god is bigger and better and brighter and stronger, then so are we, and the "other" gods of this world, and that means other faith-traditions, other religions, other points of view, philosophies and ways of life, are inferior, and so are the people who hold these views.

What I didn't hear is humility, and that's biblical, too ... like seeing through a glass darkly. Nor did I hear anything of justice, welcome and mercy.

I know the biblical writers of the Old Testament - how they struggled to help Israel/Judah maintain identity in a swirling world of many nations and religions, and part of that identity is truth vs. falsehood,.

I understand that!

When it comes to the gods of racism and white-privileged culture, I will say that "my" god is better than that, and perhaps, by extension, so am I. The conjoining of one's god with one's identity is unavoidable, and can be good ... but it's always dangerous, and requires emotional and thoughtful vigilance.

Stripped of humility, "our" god, "my" god, becomes deadly.

Anyway, just some random thoughts about christian music and "our" god.