KITTREDGE CHERRY AND ART THAT DARES

THE IMPORTANCE OF THE IMAGE

There’s little more vital for religion than the images we have of it and of God. Although it’s scarcely a Biblical image many people are half paralyzed in their spiritual development by the picture of God as an old man in the clouds with a beard which is really something to do with the Senex, Old Man archetype spontaneously generated by the unconscious rather than the Bible as such. In Judaism, which is nevertheless the pretext for this limiting and limited God imago, (the title, “The Ancient of Days”, in the book of Daniel is the nearest approximation to the idea)depiction of God is inappropriate and forbidden, God being Spirit and incomprehensible to (normal) mind.

In Christianity after a brief iconoclastic phase the portrait would be allowed because the divine was believed to have entered the material realm so as to be seen and hence legitimately copied. However the copies, or rather later imaginings, of Jesus have often been contradictory ones that have not always added to mystical and devotional perception. At the same time a not too remarkable piece of art like Holman Hunt’s rather Victorian Light of the World may have more impact upon people than more sophisticated offerings from greater artists due to some spiritual impression, some light or aura that gets conveyed. It’s hard to predict reactions to religious art because its depictions so often engage personal beliefs and feelings beyond the aesthetic. We nonetheless know that for especially people at the various social and sexual margins typical Jesus imagery has often been only further alienating, something that keys him into the establishment. Today when artists are no longer as in medieval and Renaissance times portraying a society Messiah worshipped by kings and rich donors, some artists are finally trying to realize a Jesus truly for everyone, a Jesus outside conventional imaging.

VARIETY IN EXPERIMENT

Kittredge Cherry is showing us the results of this new trend. Her controversial Jesus novel that I reviewed in May has been followed up with publication by Androgyne Press of Art That Dares: Gay Jesus, Woman Christ and More. This in its way complements and continues Cherry’s post modern pilgrimage and employs her talents as art critic – one of her three degrees is in art history. Her book concentrates on alternative yet inclusive artistic renderings of Jesus, either as a woman, the Christa, or the more biblical, mysterious figure of the divine Wisdom (Sophia) or as a gay male figure. Whether it will delight or infuriate you Cherry’s is a well written guide that is timely, an important resource that nicely represents main trends in this field also presented at a major exhibition in Taos, Arizona, in May that accompanied the book’s launch.

The eleven artists examined are Christian, agnostic and in one case a Buddhist who finds Christian images more challenging than the “too peaceful” Buddhist ones. They also span a wide range of styles: fantastic/mythic, modern poster and expressionist, iconic traditionalist etc. Two of the artists provide sculptures, one of the artists is a photographer, the Swedish Elizabeth Ohlson-Wallin who has produced some very striking work which it seems truly did dare since it provoked death threats against her in even liberal Sweden. Cherry’s book includes Ohlson’s Sermon on the Mount with Jesus surrounded by leathermen, a picture which despite everything appealed to someone I know of fundamentalist persuasion when I showed it to them.

Since similarly to Kittredge Cherry’s Jesus fiction so many issues are raised by Art That Dares I am only going to touch on a few main points that strike me as crucial to the whole field she is exploring. I shall also touch on the question of the future of Christian art which one can hardly avoid as one absorbs this work one of whose functions beyond any aesthetic pleasure will be quite simply to make the reader think.

IN PURSUIT OF THE WISDOM

Since perceiving Jesus as the Bible’s Wisdom figure, was a challenge always present if never taken up by whoever knew their theology, we should not have to have waited so long for what the artists in this book have attempted. And even if their work is daring we ought to be able to perceive it as a natural development for Christian art and ask if they have succeeded in this development. On this however the jury is still out and some of us are likely to remain undecided for some time.

Despite my strong belief in the need for Wisdom images of Jesus the given examples proved some of the hardest pictures in this book for me to relate to. I cannot warm to Janet McKenzie’s much praised (and criticized) Jesus of the People portrait of Jesus in the form of an androgynous, thick lipped black female, a picture which adorns the book’s cover. Initially aware of little more than that I was opening a book that would include some images influenced by modern queer theory and theology in my ignorance I imagined the cover must be showing me an unusual gay Jesus image especially as this person’s garb looked like a form of monk’s habit. Clearly I hadn’t got the message! Likewise, though it has mystery, I had problems with the Franciscan Robert Lentz’s icon of the divine Wisdom who, with the features and attire of an Indian woman, holds an ancient Venus figurine in her hand as though that was her true and original form. I feel the expansion of the Jesus image in this case has also dissolved a needed particularity through which the symbolism should shine.

It’s easy to criticize but what would I put in its place, how would I treat this most demanding of themes? Two things occur – but they didn’t occur at once! First I would try to anchor Wisdom in such themes and symbols as we are given for her because the Bible supplies us some and the Apocrypha quite a bit more. Sophia prepares a banquet, she serves her bread and wine. She is a workwoman who constructs her mysterious house of seven pillars. She gives increase, and kings rule through her. There are other things about her but this would do for a start. If she were the subject of Buddhist iconography she would be surrounded by, or simply be substituted by, a collection of specific symbols or the teaching themes connected with her. Neither are present in the mentioned pictures. Nor could they be said to be idealizing or beautiful in any conventional way and arguably that should be a consideration here. After all, not only is Wisdom like a divine consort, a companion of the Creator from the first, but the Song of Songs, though not strictly about Wisdom, features a Shulammite woman who is often identified with the Wisdom and this person famously declares: “I am black but I am beautiful”.

Another route to take would be a semi or wholly abstract one. The artist would suggest Wisdom through a symbol, like a Yantra in Tantric art or notably feminine signs but surrounded by colours and brilliance in line with notions of Jesus as the Light and Truth or enthroned surrounded by the rainbow as in Revelation. Thus the abstract would become visionary and suggest both the idea and person of Wisdom in one.




IMAGES GAY AND QUEER



The gay Jesus theme which is more represented in Art that Dares than the Wisdom/Sophia one presents problems of a rather different order. Whether or not you believe Jesus was an alternative figure in this way or would, for protest reasons, wish to be so portrayed, is something that presumably would always count in your assessment of the art. As opposed to the feminine/Sophia Jesus with its affinities for feminist theology (but with issues for traditional theology more generally) the gay themed Jesus is more obviously linked to current trends in gay/queer revisionist theologies and the rights movement. Nevertheless something of this theme was perhaps always implicit as a possibility if one gave enough thought to what Wisdom as an image for Jesus the man might signify. Could a female soul in a male body - an idea culled from Jewish kabbalistic mysticism by the earliest modern European Uranian theorists - apply?

In Art that Dares there is however very little connection between the art of the Jesus as Wisdom and the alternative Jesus. With the exception of Lentz’s interesting icon, Christ the Bridegroom, which shows Jesus with John (it was commissioned by the gay priest, Henri Nouwen for his meditations) the gay Jesus art tends to run along the rather political, protest type lines of modern gay theology which is predominantly rationalist in feeling, not notably mystical or visionary. Thus the Episcopalian, F. Douglas Blanchard’s Passion cycle (of 24 painting in total) is represented by several interesting and rather haunting pictures of Jesus attacked, on trial, resurrecting and ascending. I imagine the complete cycle could be quite impressive in its way. But each picture is a set protest piece in contemporary settings. A David Bowie-like Christ confronts hostile military or establishment or “God hates fags” people. When Jesus returns to God, it is more like two angels (or just two gays) greeting though in some mysterious turnaround it is God who now has the Bowie like features Jesus had had and the Father also has wings. No matter what one sees in all this it is not a meeting of father with son or divinity with divinity. An archetypal Senex/Puer theme that dominates in John’s gospel is not appropriated as it could well be for any specifically gay understandings.

Becki Jayne Harrelson who was raised Pentecostal and came out lesbian to the horror of her family is one of the most purely visionary/mystical in feeling of the artists but her Jesus is nonetheless gay for protest purposes not from any conviction that the historical Jesus was somehow gay/alternative. This permits her to present a crucifixion in which the headpiece on the cross is “Faggot” rather than “King of the Jews” because she believes that Jesus is re-crucified when queers are bashed or murdered. She also presents a vivid but peculiar Kiss of Judas picture meaning whatever about those involved and which occurs not as historically recorded in Gethsemane but a dark visionary somewhere that is also vaguely to be seen as a gay cruising ground according to Cherry. Here symbol well and truly floats free. In the art of a former AIDS hospice worker, Fr William Hart McNichols, his picture, St Francis Beneath the Bitter Tree goes if anything further into a postmodern blending of themes. A fairly traditional medieval image of crucifixion has the titulus above the cross carrying the titles "Aids leper, drug user, homosexual".

THE NEED FOR MEDITATION

Although it's listed in the bibliography of Art that Dares I don’t want to push a barrow here for my own work which, as in Signs for a Messiah, considers the historical and spiritual case for an alternative Jesus. Still, I do feel that artists of religious themes, who anyway surely always need to practice a bit of the icon painter’s meditation to be well attuned, need to decide if their Jesus was in fact of gay orientation or not. Their decision must and will affect their approach and some form of queer spiritual belief in this area could inspire certain mystical realizations in the way I have described.

The alternative to a more theological based and meditated art is too often and easily a sensationalist one where Jesus is simply a generalized symbol or name upon which various ideas are imposed to the point we are in danger of losing sight of him. I feel this danger most strongly in the case of Lentz’s otherwise potentially very meaningful, Lord of the Dance. A Jesus of and in nature is an image, and one this picture invokes, which is much needed. Its idea is already potently present in Celtic and African Christianity in which latter Jesus is often referred to as “Lord of the Deep Forests”. Also we know from Justin Martyr that due to an version of the Psalms our Masoretic OT Hebrew texts have subsequently edited out early Christians saw Jesus prophetically as the Lord who reigns from the Tree. Lentz’s Lord of the Dance is horned and clearly linked to the Celtic god of the forests, flocks and the hunt, Cernunnos. But this Jesus of Nature has been transposed upon a male god image that just doesn’t look Jesus-like at all. Even if it did it would have made him more like a god of the hunt he wouldn’t be than a Green Man, a Lord of the trees, that would be more in line with biblical understanding and some medieval depictions - yes, some cathedrals do display Jesus as the Green man.

In effect this problem of imposition has been a feature of western Christian art for a long time and even when less controversial issues are at stake than those Ms. Cherry’s book engages. Western art inclines to the extraverted rather than the introverted and this makes vision harder to capture and process. Western art by and large does not, like Chinese art, seek the core energy, the “chi” of its subject and strive to absorb and identify with it. It is only the icon painter, (who in my view was always overly restricted), is encouraged to work from the inside out instead of vice-versa. And this I believe is why comparatively little western art has the visionary stamp of an El Greco, himself so influenced by the iconic tradition. I believe that Christian art has always needed to be more theological and meditative so that where the collection of this book hits limits, it is I believe only hitting limits already inherent in much western religious art.

AN EAST/WEST AND “TIBETAN” FUTURE FOR CHRISTIAN ART?

I recall that the late Catholic seeress, Jeane Dixon, wrote somewhere that she had seen future art and that it would combine styles of East and West, that it would become more symbolic/abstract and spiritual. I rather hope she was right.

The direction in which I strongly believe a specifically Christian art needs to go is towards the Tibetan. It needs something of its luminosity, its symbolism, its otherworlds but also its details, its schemata. Indeed if there were ever to be a church in Tibet beyond the isolated groups at present in existence it would anyway surely need its theology to be realized in mandala and fresco forms, and especially the Old Testament schematized in the way the lamas set out the Dharma and scriptures. The churches should be experimenting with this. There is a religious/mystical quality to much Far Eastern art but also, as in Zen, a nearly secular feeling too that I feel the Tibetan avoids for a more purely visionary, theological, and dramatic worldview. It also goes beyond the “peaceful” themes of conventional Buddhism (and Asian art generally) to include some “wrathful” and demonic ones which again any Christian art in Asia would need to do.

I have always been very interested in issues of the cultural indigenization of Christianity in especially Asia having spent a lot of my life in Asia and my first book of any note that was commercially published (The Expansion of God) dealt with that. So I remain keen to see a translation of Christian themes into Tibetan styles. But I also believe the trends struggling to be born in Art that Dares could also use some reflection upon the Tibetan example as that tradition is inclusive beyond other Asian forms, able to cope with the kind of complexities such as the Wisdom theme presents while it has even had room of sorts for the alternative. (The cult of Manjusri, who in Japan became Monju, god of gay Kabuki actors, was to some extent a gay one. While this is a whole subject in itself and one that Christians would obviously not be seeking to duplicate its mere existence is a reminder of the breadth and flexibility of the Tibetan tradition and its value as model).

Anyone interested to look into questions of a Christian Tibetan art is welcome to contact me at my yahoo address. Anyone who wants to examine or debate further the issues raised by Kittredge Cherry’s groundbreaking study can order her book or contact her through her Jesus in Love
address. A few images from Art that Dares are included there.

THE CONFUSED AND CONFUSING MICHAEL GLATZE STORY

A CURED JOURNALIST CREATES A STIR

The story of journalist, Michael Glatze, sounds a bit confused and those listening to him, especially Christians now promoting him as proof of something "ex gay" and a long awaited "born-again" narrative of cure could extend the confusion.

Just about everything and everyone religious from the conservative World Net Daily to The Elijah List, a charismatic prophecy site, is in on the Glatze news though without mentioning - as I gather elsewhere on the Net is the case - that he has become a Mormon. It’s the gay male version of the lesbian story of a few months back when another editor and activist, Charlene Cothran, of Venus magazine declared herself converted and (messianically it seemed) ready to deliver a whole generation from the gay lies people are caught in. No one read the small print like the curious fact Charlene denied that she’d ever once thought of herself as born gay - it was a choice she’d always felt guilty about and now discounted.

Glatze's story, however sincere in itself, is likewise inadequate and its public hearing inadequate too. Which isn’t to deny Glatze may have found God as reported. There’s nothing to object to if he has and may he be at peace in a way he wasn’t before. However, finding through belief the true centre, identity and strength of character he needed (he calls himself “weak”) is still separate from the crucial question of whether he’s no longer gay and if it signifies anything if he isn’t. It’s taken him over a year to admit to change/conversion and he offers no evidence he’s anything more than out of a lifestyle that included drugs and editing Gay Young America i.e. We don’t hear he’s found the girl of his dreams or is even looking for her. But like Cothran Glatze wants to tell “the Truth” about homosexuality; by doing so he also wants to “atone” for being associated with it. David Kupelian’s The Marketing of Evil has much influenced him and I gather that book includes about certain deceits in the promotion of rights that have more to do with certain attitudes and beliefs of the secular leadership than any mainstream gay opinions.

There are people born gay who were meant to be so and will remain so. Whether or not Jesus referred to such persons, as some scholars believe, as those “born eunuchs from their mothers’ wombs” it’s high time Christians stopped kidding themselves and confusing people about this subject. In fact even fairly conservative Christians (like Evangelicals Concerned that Glatze doesn’t cite) would agree. Consider these points getting overlooked about Glatze and his story.

• He first had gay feelings at 14 and came out at 20. How odd! Any gay person with a memory reports their main interest, friendship and emotional drives were for the same sex when they were as young as five or six while most people living post liberation wouldn’t then take till 20 to be out and fully defined as gay. Actually the feelings emerged after Glatze's mother died when he was 13 and his out gay identity after his father died. Conversion occurred following stomach illnesses connected to the lifestyle of “sin and corruption” he considers gayness to represent.

• Glatze frankly describes himself as “weak” i.e. easily subject to influence. Clearly he was influenced. One may imagine as per the noted analyses of Prof. C.W.Tripp in The Homosexual Matrix, he was more sexual exporter than importer. He functioned in ways that would please people almost more than himself so if gay was there and wanted, that’s the way he went.

• Glatze wasn’t simply gay. Like many ex gays he reports being involved in “substance abuse’ and "other things", such as presumably the pornography he now describes the magazine he edited as being a mild form of. If one is too heavily involved in drugs one can finish up being and doing almost anything gay or straight. If one is confused drugs supply a missing identity. Pornography too can become obsessive and addictive.

• Glatze controversially maintains homosexuality is all “lust-based” and “neurotic”. Since lust is always a matter of degree this is absurd. Of course there are sex addicted gays who live for lust and perhaps a little more blatantly than straights because the opposite sex is not placing restraints. But lust exists. If you disapprove of it you arrive at the position of Ss Augustine and Jerome who (borrowing from pagans like Seneca) maintained sexual desire even within marriage is no better than adultery. Unless like Stoics and Buddhists you believe in eradication of all desire, you must learn to live with “lust” which is another word for desire. But such denial is not biblical though some Jews and Christians didn’t want the Song of Songs in the Bible because it seemed indecent. I return presently to the “neurotic” charge which is simply insulting to many gays.

• Glatze has an aunt who he says has greatly influenced him and whom he now compliments on having been not judgmental but firmly against his lifestyle. Perhaps the life style wasn’t too good but this aunt may paradoxically have been half the problem. Her attitudes may have fed internalized homophobia that left him incapable of ever adjusting to being gay - if he ever genuinely was, which can be questioned. (He now says he finds the thought of sex with men repulsive).

FOR AND AGAINST CHANGE

Since society is traditionally against homosexuality without positive support and self image there will always seem to be reasons for the gay person, especially in conformist societies like America’s, to doubt their orientation and seek change. When this is truly justified is a major question. In the case of seriously confused, undecided or addictive personalities (which appears to be Glatze’s self confessed profile) there can be some value. Also where people are already heavily committed (like the man with a wife and three kids who suddenly decides he’s gay) the case for therapy or change seems compelling. Why stagger through life used by others in roles not truly reflecting one’s core or be victim to various addictions or break up families one has somehow managed to begin because whatever one’s orientation one didn’t find straight sex so difficult in the first place?

I once met a married man with all of four children whom he had left having found a gay soul mate he believed God had blessed him with. I doubt personal or religious self deception could go much further and perhaps even some ex gay type therapy could help such a person whom I don’t feel religious organizations should so readily welcome as one had done in the interests of “toleration”. One's acquired attachments or one's vows are surely meant to mean something.

It’s also possible that especially in America the marketing of gay life (such as Glatze was involved in and which his reading on marketing caused him to question) has made homosexuality seem so exciting that suggestible personalities of the consumer society are dabbling in homo or bi/sexuality as a pleasure option rather than a matter of orientation. This is problematic especially religiously –“leaving their nature” or recreational bisexuality is what St Paul condemns in Romans according to the current Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams. Even Prof Tripp’s study admitted that homosexuality could be a space that men with extreme desires (such as in S&M) might gravitate to because women are less likely to play to their needs. So, a trendy homosexuality of convenience can exist but could use cure or renunciation.

This said it’s unwise, even ungodly, to tamper in the matter of alternative orientation which is not against nature – homosexuality is found throughout nature contrary to the beliefs of Aristotle that early Christians appropriated. The ex gay record that such as Ex Gay Watch has monitored is alarming in terms of failure, everything to “hypocritical” reversions to nervous breakdowns and the feeling of having to live a lie.

THE “TRUTH” ABOUT HOMOSEXUALITY

The Truth about homosexuality that Glatze doesn’t know and partly because the marketing and marketed gay world he served ignores deeper spiritual and psychological perspectives is the reason that the condition is not “curable”. Far from being a "neurosis" it’s a total spirituality and mind-set. It has its own archetypes, its own individuation processes. It’s a psychology before it’s a form of sexual activity. In a way some have found helpful I define a complete gay psychology in the first chapter of my A Special Illumination. Since there is a spiritual dimension I also believe, but am almost forbidden by various academic or religious or scientific prejudices to mention it, that the condition can be identified more esoterically: that there is a gay aura, colour, vibe, certain identifying patterns in astrology that almost no one wants to look at. It could nonetheless be very helpful if people were more aware of this as it would give better idea of who is genuinely gay and who is just floating confused or even just playing queer theory games.

Regardless, if you know several languages you don’t go back to speaking one. Due to factors like the element of androgyny present in many expressions of homosexuality, gay perspectives are often larger than for the average straight person. While I don’t want to bring out the old gay equals genius formula of justification, it’s a fact that from Michelangelo to the mathematician, Alan Turing, there is a gay imaginative, intellectual and sympathetic range which is quite special. Religion is far more owing to it than the religions care to admit but it is high time it learned more humility in relation to this fact but in many cases there’s a long way to go and there’s not even a real dialogue.

PATRICIA KING AND THE PROPHETIC SYNDROME THAT WON’T ANSWER

This whole subject, serious enough in itself, also neatly connects back to my last article (The Bad Manners of Good Christians) because two messages of May 7th and May 27th despite their extreme relevance to the gay issue and the views of a popular charismatic media Pastor, Patricia King, at Extreme Prophetic have never been answered by so much as one line of acknowledgment.

Patricia King is a trendy, pin up Christian media mother and grandmother with what from interviews sounds like a bit of a hippie past. She is pleasant enough as a person and even in some respects for her background innovatory and enlightened. In terms of the Bible about which she is basically fundamentalist – selectively as most fundamentalists are! – she arguably qualifies as all of an abomination St Paul would throw out of any church. She prays with her head uncovered and she frequently teaches and preaches, (instead of keeping womanly silent!) in tight trousers (which makes her an abomination according to Deut. 22.5) while her coiffure is mannish short in a way to irritate St Paul but perhaps delight any lesbian. However she knows what true abomination is and it's not about any modern Christian variations on outdated themes but “homosexuality” which she refers to as though the Bible used the word (it doesn’t). Departing from the prophecies her programmes and site normally deal in she devotes 4 whole video sessions to talks on “Homosexuality: Good or Evil?” and based purely on her own ideas and biblical citations, the latter not even slightly informed by modern scholarship or psychology on the subject. Some of her views are either non PC or just plain silly like the view homosexuality was the fall of the Roman empire. (Breakdown of the slavery system and excessive imperial wars were the problem).

Since she is supposed to be a charismatic dealing in what the Holy Spirit reveals and gay charismatics do exist and claim revelations that are getting ignored in all this by herself and other high profile charismatics, I proposed that PK might not be listening to “what the Spirit says to the churches”. Speaking to her in her own language I further suggested that the situation she deplores in which gay rights are gaining ground to the point of compromising free speech and personal rights (which arguably sometimes is the case ) I proposed that paradoxically God might be permitting this and despite all the prayers against it. And the reason could be because the historical treatment of gays had never been the subject of collective repentance that church groups had directed upon Blacks, First Nation people and others as a matter of course in recent times. I pointed out that the very idea of proposing we “love” homosexuals but hate their sin is an idea only heard since Gay Liberation as a pretext to continue respectably to oppose homosexuals.

This has to be the case since across history scarcely one Christian apart from the Irish politician, Edmund Burke, who was never forgiven for it, questioned the execution and ill treatment of homosexuals. All manner of public punishments and tortures including of adolescents went on with the blessing of Christians. Against such a legacy I suggested Patricia’s angry insistence she had the right to speak against homosexuality which fashion and law were taking away from her but that she would gladly go to prison to defend, is inappropriate. Without suggesting all modern gays were victims, martyrs or even good people I suggested this situation was still anachronistic and an offence to God.

I received no answer but as I had sent to the general address for Extreme Prophetic perhaps it hadn’t been passed on. On the 27th May I wrote unmissably to Patricia’s personal address at EP and jointly to another soi-disant prophet, Cindy Jacobs, another of these self declared lovers of gays – really – whose views I felt should be challenged. This time I put to them the facts that it has been discovered that 42% of America’s homeless are believed to be gays many of them adolescents ejected from “good” Christian families because they have been taught their children are abominations they don’t have to tolerate. I said no matter precisely how one interprets Bible this is a situation offensive to God and itself needing repentance and it MUST stop.

Of course, I have never had a reply. However, since some groups have been fasting towards today, 7-7-7, and for world change and global revival the latest videoed broadcast from Patricia talks about fasting – from emails and correspondence in her case! Recently she wanted some hours alone with the Lord but instead got caught in a mass of emails that took her 15 hours of her day. And she was wrong because it distracted her from practicing the presence. God is the only one we really need to talk to, she says. Indeed!

INVOKING THE SPIRIT ON DAY 7-7-7

Well, in fairness perhaps my message was lost or accidentally deleted, but I doubt it and I want to gag at this kind of holy talk even though I don't doubt it's ultimately more important to talk to God than myself and useful if it is an experience of the divine graciousness and so makes a person more considerate in their dealings. In writing to PK I took care and time and as a published author citing sources and I wrote from outside America to offer different perspectives. This should have been noted and respected. In all the hours devoted to PK’s email replies on that day and surely other days since May 7th I, and more importantly my sensitive subject matter, deserved at least an acknowledgement though I dare say that in even speaking the gay word I am thrown again to outer darkness not worth her or Cindy Jacob’s reply.

But beyond my own concerns the offence to God of such views and behaviour is I believe not so excusable. There are thousands of gays homeless (and an above average suicide rate among young gays) in part because of the attitudes conservative believers refuse to moderate, reconsider or confess, their understanding of homosexuality not extending, nor trying to extend. beyond some of the wildest Gay Pride images.

On this day 7-7-7 devoted to calls for the outpouring of the Holy Spirit in a new Pentecost upon the world, in line with St Paul's condemnation of religious leadership as “a white washed wall”, I invoke the Holy Spirit against the spirit of unconcern, of rudeness, of both loud bigotry and silent dismissal that prevails in so many Christian circles. And let not media prophets hide from such invocation conveniently dismissing criticism (as Patricia King has absurdly just recently done of any criticism of herself and associates by Christians) as "witchcraft". What is involved is a matter of simple truth and righteousness, things required of those priveleged in terms of influence upon societies' attitudes. The measure we give is the measure we shall get say the gospels. May they be confounded by this same Holy Spirit all those who would try to compromise whatever movement of the Spirit may manifest through the invocations of 7-7-7, making such only a further excuse to speak, campaign or legislate in ways that can only harm the marginalized in their personal and religious lives.

THE BAD MANNERS OF GOOD CHRISTIANS (PART ONE)

MANNERS AND SPIRITUALITY

Last month I wrote about trendy atheism and mentioned concerning the abuse some believers can throw at unbelievers. Actually one doesn’t need to be an atheist to experience what the unbelievers complain about. Even my (essentially Christian) Lennon articles (April and May archives)not apparently seen as religious enough prompted an incredible tirade I didn’t publish in Comments but which included such lurid observations as: "Where will you go after that carcass of yours hits the ground and you are buried in a grave 6ft under. You don’t really care now eh? One day you will care and like those others screaming in hell for mercy, your time will come and when it does come, don’t say you haven’t been warned...you just didn’t want to believe your place, sir, is in the Lake of Fire with all unbelievers and heathen…...” The correspondent, at a guess from the American South, unlike some more truly religious individual didn’t say he would pray for my supposed blindness but merely “pitied” my madness and delivered his warnings - with doubtless some of the Schadenfreude atheist Dawkins noted of such persons.

While most Christian bad manners I’m familiar with are a bit more subtle they’re still ghastly enough to be memorable. But before giving examples let’s be absolutely clear why the matter should receive serious attention and isn't mere gossip.

In the best of all possible worlds Christians, especially in any representative, influential positions, should function as some kind of example or “witness” trying to practice the presence of God and/or attempting to perceive Christ in others. If they can’t do that, and obviously we can’t all be saints, they can at least express the generosity and concern implied by good manners. Courtesy should be (as in Buddhism) regarded as an aspect of spirituality itself. Failure to display good manners (which is a failure in sensitivity hence to “do as you would be done by” or to be “meek”) is openly criticized, not just born in silence by Jesus - vide his dealings with Simon the Pharisee who omitted to offer customary greeting dignities (Lk. 7:45). Moreover to the extent you hurt, offend and let others down you're requiring them to be half saints in the constant forgiving process you impose on them if they are not to become embittered.

In the last two centuries the notion of good manners as basically Christian owes something to Cardinal Newman and his Christian Gentleman ideal. Today, simple courtesy is less and less in evidence among Christians and I’m not referring to obvious cases like Bishops inexcusably turning away at their convenience from the distress of those who have suffered clergy sexual abuse and the like. It’s a whole wrong (unregenerate?) mindset one encounters again and again.

GOOD SAMARITANS IN REVERSE, AUSTRALIAN STYLE

Recently I’ve been in touch with a post grad student leaving China for studies in Australia who needed connections for his arrival in the new country. It chanced too he’d been developing an interest in Christianity, a reason he’d been keen to re-establish contact with an old school friend who converted to the faith after arriving in Australia a decade before. This lady appeared happy to help the student/immigrant settle in offering to let him spend the first few days at her home.

A week before he was due to leave she decided this was inconvenient unless for one night. Emphasizing the point she made no effort personally or through friends to collect her friend at the airport thus costing the not wealthy student hugely in taxi fares to reach her home. When she took him out for his first meal in a foreign land (he’d only ever left China briefly once and not to Australia) her way of treating him was to make him pay for both of them. Her alternative to the promised free home stay was to book him some inconveniently expensive accommodation the student was too weary and jet lagged to resist. This woman’s bullying of work subordinates of the Melbourne university with which she’s associated (and whom she might have used to help the student) was noted. She didn’t assist the visitor to find accommodation – she could at least have directed him to some Chinese community papers and centres in Melbourne – but when he did track down what some of us felt was a bargain she could only sneer he’d found somewhere too dear. As though she herself had not been the main cause of his expenses since arrival. And of course this woman didn’t offer to take her guest to any church.

Such a person shouldn’t be dealing with any student’s welfare and shouldn’t hold membership in any church when their conduct would fit a good Samaritan in reverse. I imagine this woman originally adopted Christianity because she saw it could serve some personal advantage as an immigrant. The tale doesn’t end here:

I spent hours on the Net and phone trying to sort out the mess the lady’s unreliability occasioned and found other Christians no more helpful. Before the student left China I thought I’d discovered a good church associated hostel in an ideal area and rang for details. No one was available so I recorded a message. Still receiving nothing after several hours I sent an email and recorded another message to draw attention to the email. Three days later I received a crazy response inquiring did I still want the requested details because as I hadn’t rung back again that was doubted. I emailed saying of course I still wanted answer to my original queries as there was someone who needed cheap accommodation and could use somewhere church associated. I’ve never received a reply. What efficiency and concern (or intelligence?) does that represent? (Let’s not even speak of evangelical concern. That would be beyond the pale but if the religion wants to increase numbers it doesn’t have people running it to help the aim).

THE RUDENESS OF THEOLOGIANS AND WRITERS IN RELIGION

Several years ago when I met the late Robert Funk of The Jesus Seminar with the almost psychic reactions I sometimes have I recoiled from what felt like a vibe of unacceptable coldness and arrogance. I considered this exceptional but it’s my experience theologians are too often either pompously imposing on those around them or unnaturally defensive as though people are a threat to them or the church. One American Methodist theologian I haven’t personally met but who’s obviously ultra-defensive has a busy blog where at one time he actually posted his own Ten Commandments for those presuming to write to him! Not surprisingly quite a few of his Blog communications are reverent thanks and praise items.

You can’t communicate with this person unless publicly in message to his Blog as he supplies no contact I’ve found even through his college in the normal way. But I did discover a hotmail address established for contact regarding a debate he would be having this April with a church leader on gay issues. I wrote there a month in advance. I recommended looking at my article What’s Missing from the Church Gay Debate (March archive) and mentioned my A Special Illumination book (relevant for study of gay theories and theologies) though also honestly mentioning that this wasn’t the sole or even most important issue I wished to be in contact about.

I assume that using this hotmail address when I wouldn’t be attending the debate contravened one of this person’s 10 Commandments - or even a new eleventh. Anyway, I've never received one line of acknowledgement. OK...one can’t respond to every message (would I care to myself?) and it’s possible the message was a victim to spam deletes. However....this was a temporary address with a specific theme I wrote into. And this ultra busy blogger, long text author of everything would be the last person to be too inhibited by work loads to supply a sentence. Plus the relevance of my message as an expert in gay issues in religion would place more obligation than for some messages. What looks like an insult probably was. If so it’s no exception in theological circles and I’m even used to it whether for myself or others.

For example, there’s an American divinity college that teaches in my specialized line that neither I nor and another Australian theologian have managed to receive a response from, though they could well organize their courses around our books. That in itself is possibly a reason to ignore us, though numbers of people suggest it’s more likely that not being Americans in America is enough to be dismissive of us, so that we’re victim of a kind of “can any good thing come out of Galilee?” attitude which especially Christians should avoid. Whatever the cause omissions of this kind throughout America to acknowledge or assist have contributed to my and the other theologian’s problems with publishing, media, our studies, our work and just about everything. Whatever precisely is involved indifference, resentment, sometimes the plain lies of Christians (as mentioned in Part Two) makes an incredible picture.

However as regards indifference one will find the same from Christian writers including such as a leading one on spiritual issues otherwise full of sympathy for those “disappointed with God” and suffering various problems. His writing sounds great and is widely praised but one wouldn’t need to be disappointed with the author himself. I wrote him some insightful comments on his themes and also described some of my own problems which common politeness or concern might have answered however briefly. In this instance I couldn’t write to him directly.

The contact link from his website provides no (direct and personal) address - but shouldn’t a writer of helpful books wish to give help as part of his vocation? He is published by (the Murdoch owned) Zondervan Press who in their controlling way don’t want the hoi polloi to contact authors unless positively. With artificiality and arguably total disregard for religious and spiritual integrity in these matters, Zondervan Press, to whom their author links you, censors out difficulty by telling people to write to their authors saying how they inspired you. (American positive thought!) Hopefully you’d do that if you were inspired; but what sort of Christian organization is this so sold on the publicity set up? (Indeed what sort of Bible selling Christian organization is so remote from movements of the Spirit that in its worldly, commercialized way it can’t be approached except through agents and in line with the whole scheme of dismissive American competitive values?). And what sort of Christian author even if he disliked my message - it was hardly unflattering and unsupportive - would not bother for one line of acknowledgement or encouragement to another writer?

Perhaps the fact I deal with a whole variety of difficult subjects including gay theology is a grounds to throw me to outer darkness without normal attention to manners (though if I really do profile as “the enemy” that should be an opportunity to love one’s enemies!). On the other hand honesty requires me unchauvinistically to admit that those of the alternative world aren’t notably better. While I’ve had the support of some within it, on the whole I couldn’t associate many among such as gay Christians with any better behaviour - if anything they’ve repeatedly let me down. One of England’s leading gay Christian groups several times promised to review material of mine and again that of the gay theologian already mentioned but never after several reminders and 18 months delivered on the explicit promises and never promoted our groundbreaking material so much as to put our books in their lists on the Net. One of America’s leading Catholic gay writers himself flatteringly written about in my A Special Illumination was so unsupportive he had no more to say to me than to suggest I order his latest book from Amazon, a rudeness almost breathtaking.

All I can say is it’s as well I’m not a person to judge philosophies by their practitioners or I would have no faith at all. I certainly haven’t been “surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses”. It’s doubtful most Christians I’ve met would even grasp what being any witness might mean…...

(In Part Two I’ll look at the strange manners of Christian Journalists, Publishers and others and draw conclusions)

PRINCE CHARLES AND THE NAMES OF GOD

MIXING THE SPIRITUAL VIBES

Thanks to Prince Charles on June 19th the rafters of Westminster Cathedral are due to resound to the 99 sacred names of Allah conveyed in an oratorio-like piece, The Beautiful Names of God which England’s future head of the Church of England (if it survives in its present form!) has commissioned Sir John Tavener to compose. There will be protests. Does this religiously unusual event matter either way for good or ill as some believe? Is it the step forward for religious understanding that Charles and others hope for, or a step backwards into incoherence in matters of faith?

I suggest that even if you believe the monotheistic faiths are worshipping the same God – which is often assumed but doesn’t automatically follow – something is going wrong here, a general spiritual principle is getting overlooked, one that even somebody like the Dalai Lama without any specific Christian beliefs to weigh in with on the subject might remind us of if asked.

There is no question that the three major monotheistic religions worship towards one God in principle just as polytheists worship many gods in principle. But the God of Islam has no more for that reason to be the same God as that of the Christians than Mars is/was identical with Venus for polytheists. Undeniably the Koran makes statements (such as that God could never have a son or be any kind of composite One) which are at such variance with claims of Christian scripture that it would not seem possible the same God is revealed in the relevant scriptures. (Interestingly, it's recorded in the Hadith, the Sayings, that Mohammed originally had doubts about the source of his visions, doubts his wife resolved for him. The situation constrasts with the Biblical picture where doubts about the divine source are never really recorded outside perhaps Job's argument with God).

Contradiction of this kind raises issues of doctrine and logic that can get people arguing at the intellectual level, but this isn’t all that’s involved. There is hardly anything less true than as Christopher Howse has written in UK'S Daily Telegraph paper about this event that:
"In a way, the word used to refer to God is arbitrary. It functions as a common noun, in the same way as tree or mountain".
Not quite. The fact is that in almost every religion known to mankind the name or names of the gods or spirits were originally understood and experienced as something more spiritual, a secret or a special revelation, a vibration, a power in its own right. It’s true, and has been stated in defence of Charles’ project by such as Howse, that Arabic Christians can use Allah as a name for God. However that’s precisely a generic name just as God is a generic word in English. The “Allah” or the “God” word that believers use covers for other more essential names like Yahweh, Jehovah, Father, Lord, Jesus, the name Yahweh having been specially revealed to Moses. These, then, are the more private, devotional names of prayer and intimacy somewhat as within marriages and families people use special names.

GOD NAMES IN REVELATION AND DEVOTION

…..And that’s just the point. Even if there were not major doctrinal issues to consider like Christianity’s “No one comes to the Father but by me”, which cannot be lightly dismissed and is distinctive (Allah is not a Father nor related to as such) devotion would still need to act at the level of a certain “privacy”. The husband doesn’t automatically give out the pet name of his wife for all to use. And he presumably wouldn’t tell his wife that he loves her….just as he loves all other women. Which is where the Dalai Lama comes in because of his disapproval of syncretism as opposed to toleration among religions and his belief one just can’t muddle traditions and be true to one's deepest spiritual impulses which are a special exercise and a tradition that inevitably make for their own kind of exclusivity.

Beyond that we might add a sort of magic. Prayer and devotion generate their own energy, an energy sensitive people feel in some churches and buildings. Mixing the vibes can be a confusion, a chaos, a bad “magic”. If Westminster Cathedral was consecrated to the worship of the Christian God then that is the direction in which its worship should flow. It’s an esoteric claim that speech and music and especially praise have their own power. The walls of Jericho were understood to have fallen before the force of an insistent praise linked vibe.

There seems little question that Charles, who would prefer to be defender of faith than “the faith” has a love affair going for Islam. Some, rather extremely, have even suggested he is a secret convert. Clearly, though, his intense interest in all things Islamic, his intellectual willingness to give even Sharia law its due, is on the extreme side as was his determination to include a mosque within plans for an estate he was overseeing despite local protests there was scarcely a Muslim around to justify the idea. Charles’s public defence of Islam owes considerably to the late Dr Zaki Badawi unofficial Grand Mufti of Britain who became a consultant and friend of the prince and took broad and apparently moderate views of how Islam and Muslims should integrate in England.

THE MODERATION IDEA: THEORY AND PRACTICE

But moderation in Islam is perhaps always a/the problem. Moderate, peace loving, liberal Muslims undeniably everywhere exist, it’s just that their voice is never notably strong because the religion has a certain dynamic, essentially fundamentalist and severe. which has always relied on an excommunication if not execution system guaranteed to silence dissent sooner or later and which regularly generates fear. Plus, in dealing with infidels complete open reciprocity is not a scriptural principle, so that peace deals and any deals could potentially disadvantage non Muslims. Certainly there is hardly a place Islam has been present where those of other religions are not sooner or later under some degree of threat – at very least they must pay infidels tax to be tolerated at all. Presently there is such frequent persecution of Christians in Muslim lands – Iraq where Christians are fleeing in great numbers, Iran, Egypt, Afghanistan, Sudan where they are being decimated, even in Israel where Palestinian fanatics have been making for a decline in the Christian centres of Nazareth and Bethlehem through constant harassment, that this dimension of the picture cannot be ignored however accommodating one might wish to be. Accordingly it is quite shocking that Charles is either not more aware of this or if aware not protesting it more as journalist Julie Burchill has said would be more to the point in the circumstances than just sweetly gesturing in the direction of harmony ( that is really an illusion).

And all said and done, though the Church of England is in a parlous state it is supposed to stand for something Christian within England and its future nominal head should be taking a more specifically Christian position. That he is not currently doing so arguably puts him in line with the faithless kings of Israel who compromised with other religions. (The person he has commissioned to compose the musical work has himself reportedly abandoned his rather noisy conversion to Greek Orthodoxy in favour of experiments with oriental faiths). It is incidentally an interesting speculative point with which I can close whether like the kings of Israel Charles is actually engaging divine disfavour as at least one would-be prophet has strongly maintained and well before the current controversy arose.

PRINCE CHARLES IN PROPHECY AND "WEIGHED IN THE BALANCES"?

Among vocal would-be modern visionaries I admit not to rate the American, Cindy Jacobs, very highly for reasons I needn’t outline here except to say I think she’s usually more intuitional than truly prophetic. Even so, and in harmony with some observations made in articles here about assessing modern visions (see April and May archives on Lennon) I’m always a little more interested and impressed when visionaries come up with claims somehow against the grain which in relation to Prince Charles Jacobs did in April last year. Jacobs claims an angelic visitation and a Word from the Lord “to the true church in England” during a service for Bishop Hamon and Christian International, a Word she didn’t perfectly understand at the time. She is quite simply American and not particularly knowledgeable about or concerned with Britain’s royal family.

The obvious, predictable thing for any attention seeking prophet to take up, particularly if they didn’t know much beyond the tabloid level, would be that Charles had displeased God on account of his love life. But this wasn’t at all the message. It was that darkness was beginning to close in on Britain and a door to negative spiritual influences had been opened. Also that Charles, apparently in relation to this general development “had been weighed in the balances and found wanting”. Only two days later while reading a paper did Jacobs finally have conviction that involved in the condemnation she’d heard was Charles’ over involvement in especially Islam to which he was, however unwittingly at a spiritual level, helping open the doors to in England.

Praise is almost central to the Jewish and Christian faiths. The dedication of Solomon’s temple and its invocation of God had to be in music and praise. Singing the music of the mystic names of Allah in a Christian church is a very special departure in the spiritual realm and like invoking Allah rather than the God of Israel (and Muslims seem to hate no country more) that Christians claim specifically to worship. Perhaps indeed Charles has been weighed in the balances and found wanting.

AND NOT SO SENSIBLE IN BRAZIL: ANOTHER NON PC STORY

THE COLOURS OF PROTESTANT PARADE

This time the problem isn’t persecuting Pakistanis but bigoted Brazilians, the sort that by their extremism encourage ratification of the kind of questionable laws I referred to in an earlier feature (Neither the Bullying nor the Protection, Please. See March Archive).

This Sunday Sao Paolo, the largest city in Brazil and one of the largest in the world, will be holding its gay parade. This will perhaps be the world’s largest party and for rather more than just gays and probably 3 million people will attend. 2,500,000 did so last year. Not to be outdone the evangelicals of Brazil put on a March for Jesus last Sunday which well over a million attended even if in the circumstances they appeared to be marching more to declare themselves against homosexuality and the popularity of gay parades than something, whatever, for Jesus.

Protestants, mostly evangelicals, are now a large minority in Brazil where they are worrying the Catholic establishment by having rapidly become 15% of the population. It’s noticeable that the Jesus March didn't just take place a week before the gay celebration but almost provocatively on Catholicism’s Corpus Christi day which traditionally features its own parades. Evangelicals have been successful not least because some of them have shown care and done good work in the many slums that otherwise the priests of a right wing church largely ignored. Some American missionaries have however belonged to the tele-evangelist, money making class and tales of corruption have ensued. The star couple leading the huge and successful Pentecostal church, the wealthy Estevan Hernandes Filho and Sonia Haddad Moraes Hernandes, are currently still under house arrest in Miami on alleged money smuggling charges.

It simply had to be the dramatizing Pastor Filho who initiated the Marches for Jesus in Brazil. Dubious people need scapegoats to divert attention from themselves so gays and homosexuality would be sure fire targets. By far the most distinctive and reported feature of last week's event was Pastor Andre Fabiano doing a quasi-Catholic exorcism style rant against all gays, blaring through loud speakers across the crowd “Vale retro Satan, Vale retro Homosexuality”. The object was in effect to curse Sao Paolo's party out of the country.

THE SPECIAL SCANDAL OF BRAZILIAN HOMOPHOBIA

Anyone is religiously and democratically entitled to disfavour gay parades. There are nevertheless two reasons why this Protestant chanting against gays is particularly scandalous. Brazil is the most violently homophobic society in the world, more gay murders are recorded there than anywhere. (2,680 between 1980 and 2006) so just imagine the bashings and violence that don’t end in death and are often not reported or properly dealt with by the often corrupt authorities. While it’s undeniable that some believers seriously believe gays are rejected, evil, damned souls, (a position other believers seriously question) given the social conditions in Brazil Christians are morally and spiritually obliged to express more acceptance. They should protest existing prejudice if only to stem unacceptable levels of violence which otherwise behaviour of Pastor Fabiano’s kind must be held responsible for contributing to. However, as far as one can see churches have done next to nothing in this direction so that now evangelicals can make the “Satanism” of gays part of a self fulfilling prophecy.

One doesn’t have to look far to find an answer to the question why it is that homosexuality now gets associated with “Satanism” in Brazil It’s well known that prejudice against gays is so great that many, especially in poorer districts, have joined the ubiquitous spirit house cults by way of finding spiritual self expression outside of rejecting mainline churches or even as a form of talisman and protection against the violence. Since the evangelicals will regard all trafficking with spirits as demonic, although those involved in spirit cults aren’t deliberately invoking Satan as such, they are now additionally libeled as persons in the same bracket as Alistair Crowley and Anton Le Vey who were outright Satanists (and not gay). There is no sociological awareness nor spiritual care of souls in all this, just the aggressive will of bigots to have scapegoats to condemn rather than help.

A SCATTERSHOT CHRISTIAN MORALITY

While Brazil is the epitome of homophobia whether religious or more fascist the tendencies involved are found elsewhere and the negative images of the homosexual and homosexuality they employ are so often focused around, (but not well focused on), the supposedly representative gay pride parades of modern liberal societies. The result is the woods are never seen for the trees. A good current example is the kind of insistent protest made against the San Diego Gay Parade by “ex-gay” anti-gay Republican campaigner, James Hartline. Since, (even given a few exaggerations and distortions), it’s pretty obvious Hartline has battled a seriously difficult life starting with an excess of parental physical abuse, I wouldn’t care to be a severe critic here or get into the endless arguments some people engage over whether Hartline really is or isn’t gay. All I note is the strange scattershot moral critique of the gay world, gay parades and gay values that Hartline increasingly provides and which, though lapped up and widely reported by some Christians and right wingers, raises questions. And not always because it’s wrong, just so curiously unfocussed.

I think for example that anyone could and should question as Hartline does that San Diego’s Pride Committee has encouraged the involvement of kids in the parade at the same time as it has employed former convicted pedophiles. I haven’t witnessed a San Diego parade but given how some parades (Sydney, San Francisco) will allow controversially suggestive floats or simulated sex in front of a crowd including children it’s ludicrous to make issue (as Hartline has done and some critics always do wherever the occasional straightforward, non sexual nudity of gay nudist groups is concerned) that “an almost completely naked man” (presumably one in a jock strap) was last year allowed to hand out candy to children in the crowd. The children, presumably accompanied by parents, would be unlikely to be corrupted by the sight of nudity, they would more likely be amused, but they could be rendered morbid and confused by the simulated sex that police and parade committees are less likely to censor out than simple nudity. Some plain common sense and pragmatism is needed here.

But it’s just this that isn’t the rule in the wonky modern Christian critiques of sexual issues especially as soon as anything gay is involved. Perhaps we should start talking about an unthinking “in your face” Brazil syndrome affecting attitudes and seek to critique and warn of it wherever it crops up. Unchecked its supposedly righteous wrath really can only encourage violence. Last year at the attempted Jerusalem parade one of the half mad Ultra-Orthodox Haredi, stabbed no less than three gays whom plainly he and other Haredis would like to have had killed - it seems some have stated gays should not be alive. In the spirit of this this year Haredis have already placed an eternal curse on parading gays.

Meanwhile….. this week the eminently hetero Paris Hilton who in more carefree times once fronted a Hollywood gay parade is now reading her Bible and declaring from jail that God has given her “a second chance”. A second chance is almost more than the Brazilian bigots feel that the “satanic” gays they want exorcized out of existence should have. They and much of the church have of course never absorbed that they might themselves need a few second chances since in the biblical teaching on anger as a form of, or preliminary to, murder, those who abuse others as “racah, you fool” are in particular soul danger (Mt 5:22). In the Aramaic of Jesus’ time abusing people as in effect pervert/faggot, (which is what the term Jesus uses actually means) is a serious matter, it’s almost a symbol of all the other violence associated racist and discriminatory attitudes which is doubtless why Jesus referred to it. So who’s talking to who amid the infectious Brazilian folly?

Those who find the evangelicals’ attitudes disturbing might like to support those who resist it like most notably in Latin America the rather needed and embattled Otras Ovejas (Other Sheep) society of Christian gays. They have a website at: www.OtherSheep.org

NOT SO SAFE IN PAKISTAN : A NON PC STORY

INNOCENT VICTIMS TO LAW AND CUSTOM

As though Pakistan wasn’t tricky enough for women – it's the original feminists’ nightmare of a place where hundreds of women get stuck indefinitely in prison for protesting they’ve been raped and can’t produce four witnesses to prove it - if you’re a Christian in Pakistan you can know all about the fact. The too evident mixture of corruption and intolerance can have you caught in injustice fit for the Roman Empire and the era of the martyrs. I paste below a horror story guaranteed not to get much publicity because the international media won’t want to upset religions and cultures. But I don’t record it here solely as a rights issue though it's all of one….

The following is precious, classic and proves a point. Historians of homosexuality and theologians with a poor understanding of the Bible’s Sodom and Gibeah Stories should alike note how this story is everything revisionist theologians try to stress about the biblical stories: a special kind of shaming behaviour which has little or nothing to do with “homosexuality” but a lot to do with violence, bullying, sadism, betrayal of hospitality and simple vice. Those involved are of course hypocrites, for a start they are not supposed to take alcohol.

Those troubled by this story should write to the given source of report and approach Pakistani embassies.

ASSIST News Service (ANS) - PO Box 609, Lake Forest, CA 92609-0609 USA
Visit our web site at: www.assistnews.net -- E-mail: assistnews@aol.com

Tuesday, June 12, 2007

Muslim men sodomize a Pakistani Christian youth
Mother faces threats to lose her job
By Sheraz Khurram Khan
Special Correspondent for ASSIST News Service in Pakistan

MANDI BAHAWALDIN, PAKISTAN (ANS) -- A Christian youth was critically manhandled and sodomized by several unidentified Muslim men on the night between June 2 and 3 rd after he picked up a quarrel with his Muslim age fellow while playing Cricket in a play ground near District Headquarter (DHQ) Hospital MandiBhawaldin, ANS has learnt.

The trouble for 16-year-old Christian man, Imran Masih started when his Muslim friend, Naveed called him by the words " Essai and Choora," the bywords for Pakistani Christians used often by the Muslims to disgrace them.
Not knowing that his protest against the unwelcome language would make his position more vulnerable, the youth expressed his anger in a bid to stop Naveed from using the offensive language against him. This triggered a physical altercation between them. Naveed's father, Muhammad Sadique, an ambulance driver of the DHQ Mandibahwaldin as well as the private driver of the Medical Superintendent, Amjad Iqbal arrived at the scene of incident and took the Christian youth to his home under the pretext of "reconciliation".

As the Christian youth entered Sidique's drawing room several Muslim men, who were waiting for their "victim" started forcing the minor boy to convert to Islam. Imran did not knuckle under the pressure and refused to embrace Islam. This angered the Muslim men and they started thrashing Imran with kicks and fists while some even bit him at his chest and other parts of his body to bully him into submission.
The Rays of Development (ROD), a non-governmental organization that investigated the case told ANS that most of the assailants were drunk.

"They threw liquor on his face and slapped and kicked him before subjecting him to sexual abuse", Farhan Mazhar , Chairman of the ROD told ANS.
He went on to say that the Muslim men tucked his mouth in a sofa and stood on his hands and feet.

Later, they subjected him to sexual abuse one by one, he added.
The Muslim men allegedly continued to bugger the Christian youth throughout the night between 2 nd and 3rd June and threw the unconscious youth in the street outside their house.

Imran was picked up by his family members the next day.
"Imran could not move any part of his body. He was not in his senses. We wondered what had happened to him, " Imran's family members told ROD.
The youth revealed the traumatic incident to his family when he restored his senses after some time.

Imran's mother, Kaneez bibi, who is a janitor at the hospital took his son to the Medical Superintendent of District Headquarter Hospital Mandi Bhawal Din for medical examination but he told her she was lying and showed him the door.
When the family approached the City Police Station Mandi Bahawldin for lodging a Police First Information Report (FIR) the police used dilly-dallying tactics and told them they should first obtain the Medical report.

The family members of the victim told the ROD that the hospital authorities and the Police kept them shuttling from the hospital to the police station and vice versa.
Imran's family members further told ROD that the Police have been pressuring them for reconciliation. The high-ups of local district administration, and some local members of the provincial assembly Punjab are allegedly forcing the Christian family not to file the FIR. They threatened them with dire consequences if they did not change their mind, the ROD told ANS.

The police filed a fake theft report against Imran wherein he has been accused of stealing cash worth Rs 50,000 (US$ 833.3) and a mobile phone.
The ROD told the ANS that the police did file a report number 82 but have not filed FIR against the Muslim men who manhandled and abused the Christian youth sexually.
The accused are yet to be brought to the book despite the passage of a week. The incident has only come as a strain on the budget of the poor Christian family. After they are shunned treatment from government hospital the family is buying basic medicines like painkillers from the private chemists.
________________________________________
The writer is a freelance journalist based in Pakistan.

CHALLENGES OF THE DAWKINS DELUSION

ATHEISM AS TREND

A run of books popularizing atheism from such as Sam Harris, Chris Hitchens, David Mills and Richard Dawkins have hit the stands since late last year. It’s a trend given impulse by the debate around ID (Intelligent Design) in science and the role of the Religious Right in the era of Bush. Especially with the likes of the Rational Response Squad popularizing the popularizers and issuing their Blasphemy Challenge, atheism is –almost -hot.

Oxford professor, Richard Dawkins’ contribution, The God Delusion, is divisive and even to some atheists slightly embarrassing in the fundamental (if not quasi-fundamentalist) simplicity of its core position which creates an Us-against-Them, as regards the superiority of science for “Truth”. If you’re not supporting science you’re as good as an ignoramus or a mad fanatic. It’s a position that sits uneasily with the fact that in some respects Dawkins’ brand of materialism can itself be considered old fashioned and his support of it a bit fanatic, a point worth stressing as marking the first Dawkins delusion before passing on to other issues the book raises.

As even New Age guru, Deepak Chopra, stressed in TV debate with Dawkins his radical materialism is arguably already dislodged by physics. Space-time depends on shaping forces beyond space and time. Dawkins the card carrying Darwinian evolutionist still believes in solid objects randomly colliding to form more complex objects, till after billions of years there’s human DNA with billions of genetic bits. The materialist very much believes in “matter”. Individual atoms of DNA are nevertheless more than 99.9% empty space while individual electrons have no fixed position in time or space. Nature’s constants like gravity and speed of light, are, besides, too precisely inter-related for just chance to operate. If any one of six constants were off by less than a millionth of one percent, the universe itself couldn’t exist. Events at opposite ends of the universe pair with each other and a change in the spin of one electron produces immediate twin effect in another. Such communication isn’t explicable by materialism a la Dawkins. It defies notions of cause and effect and chance. Every electron exists as a wave function that’s everywhere at once. When this wave function collapses, there’s a specific isolated electron but before the wave collapses the materialist’s “matter” is non-local. Chopra is arguing against Dawkins while not for a personal God for at any rate a “conscious” universe.

CONSCIOUSNESS RAISING BEFORE PHILOSOPHY

Dawkins’ materialism may be inadequate but even so….if only because it’s currently super popular and like The Da Vinci Code a sign of the times mood thing, The God Delusion is an important book. Certainly it’s one that I should regard as a wake-up call to Christians in ways I shall indicate. However, long before I arrived at the section of Dawkins' book where he identifies with feminist consciousness raising I’d concluded that this was probably what the book was mainly about and what its main effect would be, even the reason it’s gained rapid bestseller status a la Betty Friedan. Imagining I might get to read a rather philosophical work the book turned out to be considerably taken up with how religion can still function as the trump card in the competition for personal rights. We, therefore learn how, beyond the abuse of the rights system by Christians, Muslims and others how atheists lack rights and can get misunderstood, threatened or vilified in line with the many examples of the errors and abuses of popular religion, which prompt the idea that religious educations could be “child abuse”. (The idea that for some children religious education might generate security feelings in our troubled society is ignored - apparently it’s only adults are lulled to false security by religion!). Altogether the book is an implicit invitation to throw off the shackles of one’s Sunday School religious past and come out of the belief closet atheist and proud. Or perhaps non-theist and proud…

Dawkins is not one hundred per cent atheist - he even considers himself almost "religious" in the way of scientists and philsophers like Einstein and Spinoza who have admired nature and the order of things without believing in any personal deity or soul or anything supernatural. Dawkins simply considers the existence of God extremely improbable, a hypothesis lacking, and likely never to possess, sufficient “evidence”. This evidence must rest purely on the science, logic and reason which he regards as the ultimate basis of good living and society. The question of God is asserted to be a scientific one, not something for theologians or philosophers. Doubters in God are made to feel by this book they would be doing themselves and society a good turn not to believe in anything unless the progress and insights of modern science.

In some respects Dawkins and his book are strange, as strange as Pope Benedict in being rather iron hand in the velvet glove or rottweiler-like and sweetly sympathetic at the same time though in Dawkins’ case in a very English, rather donnish way. What might appear complex and contradictory in him could nevertheless indicate a tendency to be simply blinkered about self and others, not to say The Other. This is all-apparent in the already famous (“blasphemous”) opening of Chapter Two with which Dawkins warms audiences up at readings. Later in the book Dawkins concedes students should be educated in Bible as literature for cultural reasons but Chapter Two opens with a long tirade about how the God of Moses is the most revolting character in fiction, proud, sado-masochistic, bullying, jealous, vindicative, murderous, etc.

This is of course to caricature an aspect of the ancient God picture given. It totally ignores the other side and developed by the prophets “A God, gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness….” (Ex 34:6), traits which presumably must have registered with some people somewhere or the relevant religion would surely never have survived! Dawkins however is against any species of supernaturalism, any notion in any religion of a creator God with powers to know or understand or command humanity, the Old Testament God being merely one symbol of this wider objection. Moreover Dawkins doesn’t like philosophers any more than theologians (he regards them as people who accept no commonsense answers to anything) so he objects to traditional philosophical notions of God being “simple”. God must be irreducibly complex. Everything evolves into greater complexity so you can’t have a deity complex at the start and - reproducing a very popular notion - there can’t be a God or else who would have created/started this Being ? He would need to be at the outset irreducibly complex –a notion which perhaps believers not sold on Aquinas and the terminology of medieval philosophy wouldn’t have great objection to.

SCIENCE BEFORE ALL ELSE

The book’s would-be explosion of the belief bubble is greatly simplified by the fact that Dawkins does not and perhaps cannot think outside the science box. Although there is passing acknowledgment of development in religion and ethics basically Dawkins does not apply or appreciate any kind of broad evolutionary principle to belief issues in the way he applies it to nature and this to the point of letting evolution become like a substitute religion-cum-mysticism. (He does however try to explain religion as a by-product of other things in our condition like most notably the capacity to fall in love). I’m grateful to the book that it forced me to look further and at Dawkins sayings on the Net where he clarifies, better than in his book, that despite Hume and a few philosophers real atheism hardly existed before Darwin because it’s evolution theory that puts atheism on solid ground and provides an adequate (sort of) religion substitute. And clearly Dawkins is the original true believer where evolution is concerned. It’s common knowledge his bete noire the creationists are against it but then so too have been atheist scientists like Francis Crick and Fred Hoyle.

Really, though, the core of Dawkins' objection to the God hypothesis, when not perhaps psychologically coloured by an aversion to the idea any higher power should be organizing or commanding anything, is simply a radical objection to “faith” in any shape, form or size and the notion there should be any ‘will” to have faith in anything In short, only the rational/critical mind can and should judge whatever is. This may sound fair enough in the context of the book where it’s anecdotally backed up by innumerable stories of the endless follies and injustices of “religion” based on faith. It’s less so when we consider how we stand (as does even Dawkins as a lover or poetry, music etc), in plenty of non logical, non rational spaces when we deal with aesthetics, emotion and much else on which order, but not pure reason, can be imposed. In fact we run a lot of our everyday lives on “faith” assuming ideas for which if we may have some evidence we have little or just hearsay. The extent to which Dawkins ignores this could be considered another of the delusions he works with.

REASON/HEART CONFLICT

Having said that already I’m recalling not just Pascal on the heart having its reasons apart from Reason but a meaningful recent lecture given to Truth Dig by journalist Chris Hedges. This was made in critical response to ideas of Sam Harris (Letter to a Christian Nation, The End of Faith), a thinker popularizing atheism through America as Dawkins is through England. Certain points Hedges makes are relevant to the campaigns and obsessions of both writers. I’ll mention two.

First, Hedges insists that the problem of violence, fanaticism etc is never religion as such nor any other factor than the evil of the human heart. While admitting with liberals like the theologian, Tillich, that institutional religion in common with most institutions can function like a theatre of the demonic, he insists distinction be made between “professed” religion, which has dangerously tribal and social identity associations, and lived faith which is individual and if it’s worth anything must make for the ethical. “By their fruits you will know them”. (Hedges’ “Tribalism” in fact rather easily explains a lot of the lunacy, the bullying, the hate mail etc of which Dawkins gives examples Quite simply many people professing religion are just not religious enough. They have a well invested identity through religion but little else. They aren’t practicing the presence of God, studying scriptures or doing anything notably ethical or spiritual, but just serving socio/political agendas via religion. Modern America has had a line in this ever since having church affiliations lent people respectability within a frontier society. The chronic injustices of such as Pakistan seem involved in a particularly questionable kind of social identity Islam).

Second, it must be realized that religion develops/evolves and that beyond all failures the monotheistic faiths have produced the concept of individualism (that Dawkins and Harris take for granted though one can’t do that) and with it individual moral accountability, dissent and liberties. In short Hedges believes, rather like feminist philosopher, Irigaray, that from the purely practical standpint one can regard God as at least a “horizon” or basis for an all- important transcendence (which modern atheism could be considered parasitic upon in terms of what the individualism and accountability produces for society and individuals).

I shall make my own comment at this point re “evolution” in religion working towards individualism and human rights because it will link to the point I have to make about why Dawkins should be considered a wake-up call for the churches.

THE PERFECTION OR PRAGMATISM OF GOD?

Let’s for a moment assume, almost fundamentalistically, that the severest, most questionable parts of the Torah, the Law of Moses, were all given by Dawkins’ ultra-terrible God of the Bible and his servant the supposedly fascist Moses. Actually this is a more questionable assumption than fundamentalism would allow because a) certain of the lesser laws that we could consider “vicious” do show parallels in laws of the ancient world so are not especially original from on high, at most agreed to by God, b) because it’s distinctly stated that the essential covenant (Exodus 34:10) given during Moses’ forty days on the Mount was contained in the Ten Commandments. Thus everything else would have to be less essential, at best a sort of commentary on the core revelation whether or not it is claimed or believed this rest of the laws came directly from God. But anyway, assume everything marks something directly uttered by God rather than something more cultural and indirect and at best God permitted.

We can reasonably imagine there will not be a growth towards accountability, individualism and the ethical until the people have slowly worked their way through the values that existing tribalized societies already have. Take for example the case of executing willful offspring (Deut 21:18-21)that Dawkins mentions. Obviously it's something we couldn't possibly endorse today and hardly seems worthy of a good God in any era. The point here may nevertheless be that it was commonplace in ancient society for the father to have rights of life and death over wife and children. Arguably, then, if God is behind this God is rendering existing custom meaningful, an object of ethical restraint and reflection by getting it linked to specific moral issues and not just any issue (the right of a paterfamilias to lose his temper and kill with impunity!) while its realization is additionally checked by the system itself which because both parents will have to agree ( how many mothers will agree to execute their sons?) so this is going to be rather hard to carry through. In some respects this is perhaps modifying ancient custom even while it may to us today appear to be endorsing it.

Another example of horror law is the barbarous demand that the man who has raped a woman in open country must marry her and she must belong to him for life – in effect punishing the victim and denying her all chance of finding love (Deut 22:28-29) especially since if the unfortunate woman was subsequently romantic in search of love she could then be executed for adultery! What sort of a God (or society) would legislate for this? It sounds horrific and in its way it was, yet perhaps in context of the society and times where women were anyway chattels rated little better than heads of cattle it was almost a mercy. What would be the alternative? The woman has lost her bride price so she cannot properly marry. If she won’t be murdered or thrown down a well (as still sometimes happens among Palestinians to this day if a woman disgraces her family by losing virginity for no matter what reason) she is in danger of being thrown out and forced to survive alone which virtually means live as a prostitute. At least she has the economic protection and social respectability of being married to someone even if it was her attacker. In turn ardent youths will think twice if they know they will lifelong have economic responsibilities for their actions.

If one takes Hedges’ line all change is going to have to start somewhere. If the laws are believed to derive from God, then some fear of God is going to be necessary for them to be instilled if the Law is to become customary. Simply as story it will of course sound as ghastly as Dawkins proposes that God destroys the man who disregards the new covenant by collecting sticks on the Sabbath. It might seem petty and vicious of the God of Sinai to be bothered about the stick collector (Num 15:32-41) but what is the Sabbath rest favouring in larger human rights terms? Basically some rest for especially slaves and domestics who in surrounding societies enjoyed no such rights. Pagans long condemned Jews as being lazy for observing a Sabbath, forerunner of our weekend. Dawkins would have us mourn the life of the destroyed sticks collector but might he not represent the spirit of the ever busy slave driver type to tolerate whom will deprive the many of the rights to be gradually established through the Covenant?

I would also note the following and it agrees with the kind of “esoteric” reading I suggest presently may be necessary to clearer understanding of difficult texts. The draconian attention to rules, the minor as well as the major is typical of something quite specific: the army where minor infractions can count as major misdemeanours and be mercilessly punished. And this surely applies here. Not only is Israel formed on almost a war footing in an era of almost constant Lebensraum wars in which it is engaged in a rather special way but it is so in the era given to the sign of, Aries, the sign of war and the military. Ethics, whether as legislated by God or interpreted by humanity is going to be seen in very militaristic terms and this looks like an instance of it.

Whatever….I am suggesting we need to read sub-texts and codings and cultural situations and accept an “evolution” of consciousness is taking place if we are to grasp the biblical heritage and be fair to it. However we don’t just need to do this we now must do this.

A WAKE UP CALL FOR CHURCHES

The popularizing new wave atheism has caught the churches off guard and slumbering like the ten virgins of the parable. Both sides of biblical interpretation, liberal and conservative are called to account and found wanting.

Dawkins like many modern atheists has no time for the liberals who believe they can discount laws of Moses or difficult biblical stories, because this is to be illogical and involves arbitrary picking and choosing, a game everyone could play but which betrays the religion must have got it wrong in the first place. Equally of course he has no time for the conservatives for whom their God is as biblically described, in which case he sees them are worshipping a monster and themselves acting often like monsters accordingly.

While I consider Dawkins’ own position on religion itself a bit warped I still take the objections seriously because a kernel of truth is there. I feel obliged to agree that if one is going to pick and choose one’s major and minor truths, laws, texts etc, one must at least have a reliable schematic basis, some well organized theory on which to do this. Not liking a passage or finding it irrational in modern terms isn’t sufficient. The lack of adequate hermeneutic (method of interpretation) is all-apparent today but also largely unnecessary I believe that one of the great skeptical critics of the Bible, Cady Stanton, in The Woman’s Bible, hit on, but didn’t develop, the important insight that without grasping the “occult” or esoteric assumptions within the biblical text much is lost on us.

Cady assumed, as would I, some connection to values and beliefs scattered about such as the tradition of Jewish Kabbalah, the mystical tradition which looks back to understandings of the Oral Torah, teachings of the Essenes and earlier. What I would consider a very obvious point never even considered by mainstream scholars is how the almost obsessive concern of the Mosaic laws with blood of all kinds from sacrifical to menstrual, or again all kinds of iron implements and swords, is completely in accord with the fact that the era of this Law corresponds as I have mentioned to the age of Aries, the sign quite specifically identified with blood and iron and war. One may need to absorb all these kind of mystical/esoteric sub-texts or much will remain a blank. The entire story of Sinai (a mountain the people must camp around but not “touch”) and the rites and revelations associated with it take us into a world much like that of shamanism or wicca but white and divine and practiced on a large tribal instead of an individual or small coven basis. One may not like these associations but refusing to see them cuts one off from the story and its spirit.

Conservatives, despite their emphasis upon a more literal belief, are also so remote from the mystical, esoteric and developmental that they too miss keys to ancient texts. Also by their passive acceptance of revelation - “God’s Word” is just God’s Word – which refuses dynamic, critical inter-action with the tradition ( the “argument” with God engaged by Job and many Rabbis) they don’t see/imagine the possibly, pragmatic, educational dimension that any “living God” would necessarily have to manage and that is hinted at when St Paul speaks of the Law as a schoolmaster bringing us to Christ (Gal 3:24)and implied by Jesus' mention that the provisions for divorce were influenced by the hardness of heart of the people. Conservative bibliolatry is such that only the individual self reverently reading the text and not the deity believed to utter at least parts of it is considered. A hermeneutic which examines the possible needs and psychology of God in the process the Bible unfolds was attempted in Jack Miles', God: A Biography, but it was the cynical product of an atheist Christian who from the standpoint of his Hebrew scholarship got a lot of facts wrong besides. Still, despite this failure or rather false new start, the idea was valuable and again in its way betrayed the terrible weaknesses of both liberal and conservative positions in describing and using for today a whole Bible in its complexity.

In the mind of the believers Dawkins criticizes plainly the God image remains uneven or unexplained. God can get described as “the kindest person I know” (title of a popular religious book) at the same time as he is the warrior and executioner of Moses’ law simply because the same two themes of love and hate are present in the Bible. A preacher can both preach a gospel of forgiveness and call for the institution of laws more fit for the times of Sinai. If there is this co-existence within the same Bible (and in personal religious experience) of such radically contradictory elements as regards divine character and sacred laws it is because there is precisely some development occurring which is larger and more psychologically complex than even the difference sometimes allowed between an era of Law and an era of Grace. It’s no good proclaiming, just because it’s in the Bible that somehow God is loving and good while (just because it’s also in the Bible) we should accept without reservation he is author of laws like those governing rape in their unacceptable injustice and which by no amount of turning can be (or should be) made into reflections of some higher principle “real” character of God. What may reflect a policy of divine pragmatism vis-à-vis cultures or levels of human understanding of the divine in a given era must not be passed off as describing divine perfection.

THE BIBLIOLATRY PROBLEM

But idolatry of scripture has always existed. There are traces of it in the Bible itself where the Psalmist describes the Law of the Lord as “perfect”, fit to be meditated on day and night. St Paul, despite calling Torah an education towards Christ, himself falls into calling the Law “perfect and true and good”, which he doubtless had also thought, a reason the former Saul caused such havoc among Christian believers imagining he needed to impose himself with recourse to the already archaically executionary values of the Torah system. Believers must move on from such thinking and say the Law may indeed have been “perfect” to achieve what God intended in terms of ethical and spiritual learning experiences across history but in itself, no, much of it is not perfect. Even its most sublime and challenging dicta such as loving the neighbour as one oneself is like a lotus amid the mud, or at least tangle, of minor provisions often just archaic or unjust and without any apparent shape or order in the telling – heavy editing, challenging for the pure inspiration thesis seems to have been at work on the minor laws. It's typical of the limitations of conservatives that prominent Southern Baptist leader, Albert Mohler, in his review of the The God Delusion is strongly critical of the atheism without even mentioning what the objections to the OT God image or the OT laws actually are. He proceeds as though, we could argue like Enlightenment era Deists for some abstract Deity. Which we can't do or not honestly. What's difficult, archaic, unjust by our standards etc in the Bible must be faced as part of the picture one deals with.

Even if the Torah were wholly inspired/dictated by Dawkin’s horror deity much of the Torah is, as current atheist critiques realize, anyway irrelevant to us (as when it speaks of buying and selling slaves, managing lost cattle or dealing with extra wives in polygamy!). It's accordingly a terrible illusion of Christians, one fit to parallel Dawkins own delusions, to imagine what is described as a "covenant" with a “chosen” people and evidently geared to making them be and feel people of a separate vocation, represents in its minutiae the basis of laws that are universal or intended to be such after the manner of the Natural Law theory of some philosophers.

Since it involves objective fact however strange I often use the example of blood types to make the point of the Jewish Law being for a specific people. I note that the Promised Land is one of "Milk and Honey" and the prophets invite us to drink milk. Some of us have dairy product allergies especially if we're born with Blood Group A, the group which should abstain from dairy products unlike those of Group B which the Jews nearly all are. Unfortunately however the Jewish Law viewed as universal plan continues to exist as the half hidden source and sometimes almost the dirty little secret for all manner of odd Christian policies, manuals, “new” discoveries and sermons from which conservatives pick and construct all manner of ideas. Fundamentalists may learn they are to tithe certain amounts certain ways to obtain certain benefits or treat thieves or punish children to obtain a better society and all because some obscure and ancient text of the OT can be cited to imply or commend it. This must stop or society, encouraged by vocal atheists, will judge Christians hopeless obscurantist, fanatical, and illogical, a virtual danger to society. It must be added Dawkins does also and without being PC about it criticize other faiths like Islam; he merely takes Christianity as symptomatic of a wider problem with faith issues.

THE PIED PIPER’S REVOLUTION

While Dawkins makes some meaningful critical points about religion that only fools and the insensitive would ignore, he is nevertheless a bit of a pied piper and thief of souls for his science/reason agenda. Despite extreme moments he is (by and large) fair and even sentimental in a donnish English way but for people wavering between intellectual or even political allegiances that stand to affect the rights of religion, education of children etc, just this could prove seductive. It is for example unlikely that America’s half crazy Rational Response Squad which sets up The Blasphemy Challenge against the Holy Spirit and has tried to justify involving youth in it would have done so without the shrill talk about religious education as “child abuse” issuing from Dawkins style neo-atheism. Dawkins’ extremely negative caricature of Yahweh may seem donnishly amusing to a certain type of university crowd and he himself would doubtless oppose anti Semitism, but might not his treatment of biblical history encourage feelings in that line in a society where only recently British universities have placed boycott upon Jewish scholars out of respect for Israel’s enemies? Dawkins has not sought converts but he has certainly made them starting with the late Douglas Adams whose “radical atheism” is due to Dawkins who dedicates the book to him.

For many who will never “come out” as, or even just be, atheists Dawkins nevertheless offers the lure of simplifying life by throwing reason like a net over everything so as to disregard whole tracts of experience and wittily despise even the most enlightened and spiritual religion as pure illusion. Again to cite Hedges one has to beware against making Reason itself a kind of deity (as happened at the French Revolution where a prostitute representing it was enthroned at Notre Dame). However well meaning and trying to be fair in his way, Dawkins is still a real spiritual influence for our times and not a healthy one. The review of Dawkins book and his influence in real terms and what he campaigns for is well treated in a Commonweal article worth reading.

It's nevertheless symptomatic of the deficient spiritual condition of religion associated people today that we find the likes of Joan Bakewell (a familiar figure in religious media in UK) or Ruth Gledhill, religion reporter of the England’s Times paper, hastening to praise the author’s brilliance and accomplishments - in a debate The Times sends Gledhill to witness she votes for him as a clear winner against God - blind to the potentially negative influence the accomplishments may be getting put to. Dawkins is a frankly divisive campaigner and he believes he needs to be to make his points. But sometimes, likewise, it can be a Christian duty to be divisive and recognize: “He who is not for me is against me” as Jesus had it. The Christian fans of Dawkins are not taking such dicta seriously and fail responsibly to grasp trends of the times that stand to affect modern society.

The one thing about which Dawkins is least deluded, and likewise such as Sam Harris in the opening of his Letter to a Christian Nation, is the curious viciousness, the unspiritual rudeness and sometimes aggression, (yet often supposedly supported by the scriptural) that some believers are capable of. My next entry will be about this under-treated, quasi-taboo subject of precisely the rudeness of too many Christians.