The Awl http://www.theawl.com/ Be Less Stupid Fri, 06 Jan 2012 13:40:37 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0.2 Eat, Pray, Judge: Bean Pie With The Nation Of Islam http://www.theawl.com/2012/01/eat-pray-judge-bean-pie-with-the-nation-of-islam http://www.theawl.com/2012/01/eat-pray-judge-bean-pie-with-the-nation-of-islam#comments Fri, 06 Jan 2012 13:40:37 +0000 Dan Packel http://www.theawl.com/2012/01/eat-pray-judge-bean-pie-with-the-nation-of-islam I’ve seen them for years. On the way from my old home in West Philadelphia to the airport or the stadiums. Changing subway lines underneath City Hall. In front of the Lowe’s on the way to a past job. I’m talking about the well-dressed representatives of the Nation of Islam, who hawk neatly packaged bean pies (along with copies of the nation’s newspaper The Final Call) to commuters passing through these high-traffic locations. But only recently did it occur to me that I should be sampling their offerings as part of my halting, unsystematic inquiry into foodstuffs inexpensively proffered by various religious organizations.

With a little reflection came some reasons. The Nation of Islam is a religious movement that mainly focuses its energies on African-Americans; unsurprisingly, in the past, when whoever happened to be standing between lanes with the pies and papers saw me, a white guy, driving the car, he would reliably keep walking. Now if the hawker had been wielding "dry-aged, grass-fed porterhouse" or "dan-dan noodles," I'd probably roll down the window and wave my hands wildly anyway, but the words "bean pie" have never prompted me to raise a fuss.

But now I decided to actively demonstrate my interest. Approaching the intersection in Grays Ferry by bike on a late December morning I waved to the seller, a guy in his mid-30s attired in all black with the exception of a red scarf. He told me the pies sold for three dollars, or two for five dollars.

“And they’re made from beans, right?” I inquired.

He said they were small navy beans, ground up very fine. “Appreciate your support,” he told me, before I pedaled away. I was now in possession of one compact parcel, housed in a disposable aluminum pie tin, and tightly encased in plastic wrap. While the pies might have been hot at the beginning of the morning, mine was now the same temperature as this chilly-but-still-warmer-than-average December day.

I didn’t pick up a copy of The Final Call with my purchase, but I did have an alternate Nation of Islam publication on hand: the first volume of Elijah Muhammad’s How to Eat to Live. (The second volume is still being transferred to my local library, but considering the amount of repetition in the first 199 pages, I have a hard time imagining that Muhammad breaks significant new ground in the follow-up.)

Herein, Elijah Muhammad, who led the Nation of Islam for several decades until his death in 1975, reports the teachings of Allah with regard to diet and nutrition, as delivered to him by Fard Muhammad—in Nation of Islam theology, the earthly manifestation of Allah. Unsurprisingly, pork is a no-no. But Muhammad also puts the kibosh on many other ingredients vital to the African-American culinary tradition, which sprang up in the South and remains vibrant in black-dominated neighborhoods in Northern cities: sweet potatoes, cornbread, peas, collard greens. This, according to Muhammad, is fare for animals, not humans. For example, “sweet potatoes were never good for any human to eat. They are good for hogs, but not for you.” And Allah “considers most peas fit for cattle and herds of animals, but not for the delicate stomachs of human beings.”

Enter the navy beans—their surface toasted to a carmelized orange on my Saran-Wrapped pie. Writes Muhammad: "No beans did He advise, except the small navy — the small size and not the larger one — the little brown pink ones, and the white ones. This bean He valued to be very high in protein, fats and starches, and it is a safe food for prolonging life."

I read further, to see if followers are then urged to bake the beans into pies. No overt declaration, but Muhammad doesn’t slam the door on the idea either:

“Pastries and cakes—the kind made with crusts of white flour and sweetened with white sugar, so sweet you can taste them the next day—are not good for our stomachs… Use brown sugar and whole wheat flour for your pie and cobbler crusts.”

Repeatedly, Muhammad emphasizes the importance of eating one meal a day. Chapter headings include: “One Meal a Day,” “The Benefits of Eating Once a Day,” and “You Don’t Need Numerous Diets; Just Eat Once Daily,” in addition to “Our Big Problem is Eating Too Much and Too Often.”

Consequently, I deemed it legitimate to evaluate my bean pie for its belly-filling capabilities in addition to its gustatory virtues. Not ready to restrict my entire day’s consumption to the pie, I chose to treat it as my dinner. If the pie, roughly five inches in diameter, would prove satiating, it would pass the first test.

Still, as the afternoon wore on and I grew hungrier and hungrier, I approached my first bite with trepidation. I had no referents for the taste of the pie; as if I was about to step out of the airport into a country I’d never visited, nor even heard of before. More concretely, I had no idea whether the filling was going to be sweet or savory, nor was I sure which would be preferable.

When I removed the saran wrap and held my nose to its surface, the aromas were familiar. Pumpkin pie spices: brown sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg. I dug into a thick puree underneath the surface, the color the same creamy beige of the last batch of navy beans I cooked at home (these for a decidedly not Nation of Islam-friendly cassoulet.)

I worked my way through the pie, its buttery, crumbly crust yielding to the sweet, almost custardy bean puree. Neither cloying nor austere, this was far better than I’d expected. Furthermore, the portion size was ideal—I felt no need for anything else to supplement the meal. All this for three dollars. Still, considering the low prices of the ingredients, especially when purchased in bulk, I’m not certain whether the Nation of Islam was subsidizing my meal or whether my purchase was contributing to their bottom line. I’m content to call it a wash.

But I’m also left wondering whether Elijah Muhammad, Louis Farrakhan, or the personable man who sold me the pie would give a damn about any facet of my evaluation. As Muhammad concludes, “if the white man eats poisonous food and eats three or four times a day, that is his business.”

Previously: Pancakes With The Episcopalians and Lunch With The Sikhs



Dan Packel writes about food (and more!) from his home in Philadelphia. You can also follow him here.

---

See more posts by Dan Packel

4 comments

]]> I’ve seen them for years. On the way from my old home in West Philadelphia to the airport or the stadiums. Changing subway lines underneath City Hall. In front of the Lowe’s on the way to a past job. I’m talking about the well-dressed representatives of the Nation of Islam, who hawk neatly packaged bean pies (along with copies of the nation’s newspaper The Final Call) to commuters passing through these high-traffic locations. But only recently did it occur to me that I should be sampling their offerings as part of my halting, unsystematic inquiry into foodstuffs inexpensively proffered by various religious organizations.

With a little reflection came some reasons. The Nation of Islam is a religious movement that mainly focuses its energies on African-Americans; unsurprisingly, in the past, when whoever happened to be standing between lanes with the pies and papers saw me, a white guy, driving the car, he would reliably keep walking. Now if the hawker had been wielding "dry-aged, grass-fed porterhouse" or "dan-dan noodles," I'd probably roll down the window and wave my hands wildly anyway, but the words "bean pie" have never prompted me to raise a fuss.

But now I decided to actively demonstrate my interest. Approaching the intersection in Grays Ferry by bike on a late December morning I waved to the seller, a guy in his mid-30s attired in all black with the exception of a red scarf. He told me the pies sold for three dollars, or two for five dollars.

“And they’re made from beans, right?” I inquired.

He said they were small navy beans, ground up very fine. “Appreciate your support,” he told me, before I pedaled away. I was now in possession of one compact parcel, housed in a disposable aluminum pie tin, and tightly encased in plastic wrap. While the pies might have been hot at the beginning of the morning, mine was now the same temperature as this chilly-but-still-warmer-than-average December day.

I didn’t pick up a copy of The Final Call with my purchase, but I did have an alternate Nation of Islam publication on hand: the first volume of Elijah Muhammad’s How to Eat to Live. (The second volume is still being transferred to my local library, but considering the amount of repetition in the first 199 pages, I have a hard time imagining that Muhammad breaks significant new ground in the follow-up.)

Herein, Elijah Muhammad, who led the Nation of Islam for several decades until his death in 1975, reports the teachings of Allah with regard to diet and nutrition, as delivered to him by Fard Muhammad—in Nation of Islam theology, the earthly manifestation of Allah. Unsurprisingly, pork is a no-no. But Muhammad also puts the kibosh on many other ingredients vital to the African-American culinary tradition, which sprang up in the South and remains vibrant in black-dominated neighborhoods in Northern cities: sweet potatoes, cornbread, peas, collard greens. This, according to Muhammad, is fare for animals, not humans. For example, “sweet potatoes were never good for any human to eat. They are good for hogs, but not for you.” And Allah “considers most peas fit for cattle and herds of animals, but not for the delicate stomachs of human beings.”

Enter the navy beans—their surface toasted to a carmelized orange on my Saran-Wrapped pie. Writes Muhammad: "No beans did He advise, except the small navy — the small size and not the larger one — the little brown pink ones, and the white ones. This bean He valued to be very high in protein, fats and starches, and it is a safe food for prolonging life."

I read further, to see if followers are then urged to bake the beans into pies. No overt declaration, but Muhammad doesn’t slam the door on the idea either:

“Pastries and cakes—the kind made with crusts of white flour and sweetened with white sugar, so sweet you can taste them the next day—are not good for our stomachs… Use brown sugar and whole wheat flour for your pie and cobbler crusts.”

Repeatedly, Muhammad emphasizes the importance of eating one meal a day. Chapter headings include: “One Meal a Day,” “The Benefits of Eating Once a Day,” and “You Don’t Need Numerous Diets; Just Eat Once Daily,” in addition to “Our Big Problem is Eating Too Much and Too Often.”

Consequently, I deemed it legitimate to evaluate my bean pie for its belly-filling capabilities in addition to its gustatory virtues. Not ready to restrict my entire day’s consumption to the pie, I chose to treat it as my dinner. If the pie, roughly five inches in diameter, would prove satiating, it would pass the first test.

Still, as the afternoon wore on and I grew hungrier and hungrier, I approached my first bite with trepidation. I had no referents for the taste of the pie; as if I was about to step out of the airport into a country I’d never visited, nor even heard of before. More concretely, I had no idea whether the filling was going to be sweet or savory, nor was I sure which would be preferable.

When I removed the saran wrap and held my nose to its surface, the aromas were familiar. Pumpkin pie spices: brown sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg. I dug into a thick puree underneath the surface, the color the same creamy beige of the last batch of navy beans I cooked at home (these for a decidedly not Nation of Islam-friendly cassoulet.)

I worked my way through the pie, its buttery, crumbly crust yielding to the sweet, almost custardy bean puree. Neither cloying nor austere, this was far better than I’d expected. Furthermore, the portion size was ideal—I felt no need for anything else to supplement the meal. All this for three dollars. Still, considering the low prices of the ingredients, especially when purchased in bulk, I’m not certain whether the Nation of Islam was subsidizing my meal or whether my purchase was contributing to their bottom line. I’m content to call it a wash.

But I’m also left wondering whether Elijah Muhammad, Louis Farrakhan, or the personable man who sold me the pie would give a damn about any facet of my evaluation. As Muhammad concludes, “if the white man eats poisonous food and eats three or four times a day, that is his business.”

Previously: Pancakes With The Episcopalians and Lunch With The Sikhs



Dan Packel writes about food (and more!) from his home in Philadelphia. You can also follow him here.

---

See more posts by Dan Packel

4 comments

]]> http://www.theawl.com/2012/01/eat-pray-judge-bean-pie-with-the-nation-of-islam/feed 4 Atheists Should Be More Superstitious If They Want People To Like Them Better http://www.theawl.com/2011/11/atheists-should-be-more-superstitious-if-they-want-people-to-like-them-more http://www.theawl.com/2011/11/atheists-should-be-more-superstitious-if-they-want-people-to-like-them-more#comments Tue, 15 Nov 2011 15:00:09 +0000 Alex Balk http://www.theawl.com/2011/11/atheists-should-be-more-superstitious-if-they-want-people-to-like-them-more Why do God-believers hate atheists so much? Apparently they (the God-believers) find that an unwillingness to credit magical enchantment and mumbo-jumbo makes them (the atheists) untrustworthy:
Religion, in other words, has served a specific function throughout much of human history (beyond assuaging existential fears): It keeps people in line, discouraging them from engaging in selfish acts that hurt the larger community. Gervais and his colleagues point to recent research that bears this notion out; several studies have found people engage in less-selfish behavior “when reminded of watchful supernatural agents.”
If you believe – even implicitly – that the prospect of divine retribution is the primary factor inhibiting immoral behavior, then a lack of belief in a higher power could amount to a free pass. A 2002 Pew Research Center survey found nearly half of Americans feel morality is impossible without belief in God.
There you go, God-deniers: they hate you because, if don't live in fear of divine retribution from some celestial cartoon character, how will you ever know the difference between right and wrong?

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38 comments

]]> Why do God-believers hate atheists so much? Apparently they (the God-believers) find that an unwillingness to credit magical enchantment and mumbo-jumbo makes them (the atheists) untrustworthy:
Religion, in other words, has served a specific function throughout much of human history (beyond assuaging existential fears): It keeps people in line, discouraging them from engaging in selfish acts that hurt the larger community. Gervais and his colleagues point to recent research that bears this notion out; several studies have found people engage in less-selfish behavior “when reminded of watchful supernatural agents.”
If you believe – even implicitly – that the prospect of divine retribution is the primary factor inhibiting immoral behavior, then a lack of belief in a higher power could amount to a free pass. A 2002 Pew Research Center survey found nearly half of Americans feel morality is impossible without belief in God.
There you go, God-deniers: they hate you because, if don't live in fear of divine retribution from some celestial cartoon character, how will you ever know the difference between right and wrong?

---

See more posts by Alex Balk

38 comments

]]> http://www.theawl.com/2011/11/atheists-should-be-more-superstitious-if-they-want-people-to-like-them-more/feed 38 Ask An Ex-Mormon! A Conversation http://www.theawl.com/2011/09/ask-a-mormon-a-conversation http://www.theawl.com/2011/09/ask-a-mormon-a-conversation#comments Thu, 01 Sep 2011 12:30:53 +0000 Cord Jefferson http://www.theawl.com/2011/09/ask-a-mormon-a-conversation My friend Beau and I grew up together in Tucson, Arizona, where he was the quarterback of our high school’s football team. We’ve since traveled around Italy together, sipped wine and talked about music until sunrise, and, one memorable time, got drunkenly chased out of a Vegas casino. Beau and I have a lot in common, our vices included, which is why I always forget one big thing about him: Until very recently, Beau was a Mormon. He never went door-to-door trying to convert people, nor did he ever march against gay rights. But for 18 years he faithfully went to a Mormon temple every Sunday with his parents and three brothers.

Mormonism has become an increasingly visible part of our culture in the past few years, what with Big Love's five-year run on HBO, Book of Mormon on Broadway, Mitt Romney leaping on the cover of Newsweek and "I'm A Mormon" billboards in Times Square. Yet while we often hear about Mormons, we hardly ever hear from them. Instead, we often get our reports second-hand, and from a writer whose sneer (and I'm guilty of this, too) poisons the conversation immediately. In an effort to more honestly understand one of America’s most-feared religions—and one that’s getting bigger all the time—I turned to Beau, who has left the church despite protestations from his devout family and now manages a wine store in Brooklyn.


Cord Jefferson: To start with, let's talk about your background in Mormonism, because I don't even really know it.

Beau Rapier: My dad's family converted before he was born and my mom's great-grandparents were Mormon—maybe great-great. My dad initially married a non-Mormon out of high school and had two kids with her (my half sisters), then went to Vietnam. After that he wasn’t really church going for some years but became so again when he got divorced and began dating my mom.

CJ: On a scale of one to 10, how Mormon would you say your childhood was? Ten being insanely strict? No soda?

BR: I guess a seven? We had soda. Because of my dad's first marriage and the fact that his dad was not a very observant Mormon. My childhood was Mormon but not in a fully sheltered way—and Tucson is not Provo. I always had non-Mormon friends.

CJ: Lately, everyone seems to be talking about the "strangeness" of Mormonism, but when I would hang out at your house, I never felt strange at all. Your parents were always super nice to me. I even remember your dad driving me and your brother to buy Bush tickets. It’s not like they were banning rock concerts and making you read scripture all the time.

BR: No, they loved pop and rock music. I can't tell you how many times I heard Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours. And I never felt like we were only Mormon—but I still definitely felt different than my friends, most of whom were not Mormon.

CJ: What do you mean you weren’t “only Mormon”?

BR: It never completely defined me. I recall being almost embarrassed by it.

CJ: Why embarrassed? Lots of other kids were religious in Tucson.

BR: Because I thought I was different. Other kids were religious, yes, but not Mormon, at least not the ones I was friends with. I couldn't go to birthday parties on Sundays, my parents weren't friends with the non-Mormon parents, etc.

CJ: Did you like hanging out with the other Mormon kids we went to school with?

BR: Nope.

CJ: I remember a bunch of the other Mormon kids were always way more tight-assed than you and your brothers, which is why it surprises me that you said your house was a seven. The [really, really devout Mormon family from our neighborhood] must have been like an 11 then.

BR: Yeah, they were pretty much already in the celestial kingdom. The idea that you can build a Mormon fortress in which to ignore all the realities of the outside world was epitomized by them, in my mind.

CJ: It sounds like you were skeptical from early on. Can you remember the first time you thought, "Y'know, this might not be for me"?

BR: I don't know about skeptical. I didn't really think about it. I think teenagers wonder how they fit in the here and now, not how their existence fits in the cosmos. Basically, I didn't really question my faith or background. I just hid it until I had to confront it, and that began at the very end of high school and then continued for years.

CJ: But you were drinking and having premarital sex, right? Isn’t that kind of an indirect way of questioning your faith? Is disobeying questioning?

BR: It can be, but I don't think I was really pondering questions of faith when I started drinking in high school, and the premarital sex didn't actually happen until after I graduated. I think looking back the answer is yes, I was looking at other options. But I didn't think about it in those terms then. I think lots of people of every faith experiment in these ways but ultimately decide to embrace their religion.

CJ: Sounds like your dad did that.

BR: For sure.

CJ: Did your parents know about your rebellion, or did you hide it from them?

BR: I did hide it, but they were having their own marriage issues at the time, so it was easier for me to do my thing without much scrutiny.

To be honest, I’ve held out the possibility of “coming back” to my mom for some years, and only in the last four or five did that possibility diminish to a point of becoming almost impossible.
CJ: So when did you actually start actively questioning the faith?

BR: In college, I guess. Kind of a cliché, but I really began to be interested in what I thought and believed and slowly began to question the principles and ideas that Mormonism is based on. Things came up and we all—you, I, our friends—were more and more interested in social, political, historical and even religious issues. That influenced me immensely.

CJ: Were you questioning the very simple red flags like, “Wait, Jesus was in America and nobody knows how he got here?" Or were you questioning big picture things like, "Do I believe in organized religion at all?” Both?

BR: Hmm. No to the first question. I think all religions expect a willing suspension of disbelief on the part of the faithful, so a god or a son of a god traveling to another continent is peanuts: he just got there. Of more interest to me was how the Mormon church responded to social issues: questions of morality around race, sexual orientation, etc. I think the questioning of big-picture things came later, but as a result of all the initial little stuff.

CJ: You and I spent a lot of drunken nights together during this period, and until right now I wasn’t aware that you were trying to hash out your faith that whole time. This was a really internal struggle for you, huh?

BR: Yeah, I suppose so. But I was having a great time and not being very introspective about it, except maybe in my writing from time to time. I don't think I really began questioning God and existence until a couple years ago, after I’d been married and had a kid. Drunken nights may seem like a great time to unload but in fact they often focus you on the exact moment—which is great and I celebrate it.

CJ: I imagine once you were out of your parents' house that you stopped going to church.

BR: Basically. I think I skipped a few times toward the end of high school and got away with it. But when I went to college I never once went to church on my own, which, looking back, is pretty telling.

CJ: Did your parents know?

BR: Sort of, though they always asked about involvement in the campus church, and I’m sure I let them think that I was participating in Mormon stuff. There were a lot of Mormons at Arizona State but I purposefully never connected with any of them.

CJ: I guess I went into this conversation stupidly thinking that there were going to be certain clear milestones that marked your move away from faith, but that's not really how life goes. It's all just gradual.

BR: I think there are milestones when you look back. One was certainly my decision to lose my virginity to my girlfriend at the age of 18. I did think about that one pretty long and hard.

CJ: Is that one a big no-no for Mormons?

BR: Sure. It isn't actually a game over, no-going-back decision, but at the time I thought it was. I think plenty of Mormons have premarital sex but then repent and ultimately rejoin the community. To be honest, I’ve held out the possibility of “coming back” to my mom for some years, and only in the last four or five did that possibility diminish to a point of becoming almost impossible.

CJ: What do you mean “held out the possibility of coming back”? You told your mom you might be Mormon again one day?

BR: Not exactly. I told her not to stop praying for me or thinking that I might repent. At the time I started doing that I had read a lot about writers and artists who had “returned” to religion later in life. I felt like I couldn’t rule that out for myself. Now I tell her that because even if I don't think it’s true, I respect other people's needs to order their universe.

CJ: And for your mother to be comfortable she needs to believe there's a chance you'll return to the fold one day?

BR: Yes, that is entirely true. She needs to believe that.

CJ: So, here’s something: While your move away from Mormonism was gradual, Mormonism almost immediately rejects people who question the faith. I remember when you couldn’t see your brother get married because you weren’t allowed to enter the temples. At what point did Mormonism stop considering you a Mormon? Was it before you stopped considering yourself a Mormon?

BR: They still consider me a Mormon, just not one with the privilege to enter the temples. I lost my temple privileges when I stopped applying, though I’m sure I could have lied.

CJ: Hold up, you have to apply for privileges?

BR: You need what’s called a “temple recommend,” which is given by the bishop of your ward. You have to say you obey the rules and pay tithes.

CJ: Do they give you a certificate or something?

BR: Yes, it looks more or less like a business card.

CJ: Holy shit. I had no idea. You can literally be "a card-carrying Mormon"?

BR: Exactly.

CJ: That’s a perfect segue. Let’s talk some Mormon myths. Everyone's favorite is the holy underwear. What's up with that?

BR: I would have to say that I don't know entirely since I’ve not participated in the ceremony that explains them fully. My understanding is that they represent a symbolic shield from the temporal and often immoral mortal world.

CJ: You only get them when you get married in a Mormon ceremony?

BR: Um, I think you also get them before you go on a mission.

CJ: The mission! I forgot! Did you ever consider the mission?

BR: Not really, though I never officially said I wasn't doing it. I just let the window of opportunity pass. Another instance of not manning up to my real feelings.

CJ: What’s the window?

BR: Most people go between 19 and 21, though a little later for women sometimes. There are also missions for retired couples.

CJ: OK, back to the myths. Why can Mormons drink caffeinated soda but not coffee?

BR: That's not exactly right. Some LDS authorities have said no caffeine, no Coke, no Pepsi, etc. Others, however, focus on the original “word of wisdom,” which says no coffee or tea. It's still unclear in my mind.

CJ: How about the racism? We’ve talked about this one a lot over the years. From what I’ve read, the church has backpedaled a ton on its racist positions, most likely in an effort to get more black converts. What’s up with the racism in Mormon doctrine?

BR: I hesitate to act as an authority on LDS doctrine, because I’m not. But clearly there was racism inherent in the doctrine. As I understand it, "blacks" could not receive the priesthood in the Mormon church until 1978. One question I always had was who is black and who isn't? Who decides?

CJ: Like, was anyone brown off limits, or was it just people of African origin?

BR: Right. The official church stance ended before I was born, and it is hard to say from a personal stance, because there weren't a lot of black people in Tucson and the ones who were weren’t Mormon.

You can join the church and, no matter what, everything is cool. It’s just a question of how cool. Do you want to give up smokes and whiskey for that extra level of eternal salvation?
CJ: I remember when a Mormon girl in my 6th-grade geography class straight up asked the teacher if it was true that blacks were marked for their sins. Some of that stuff was obviously still being taught

BR: Yeah. I never knew and still don't know what was considered black in the LDS church, other than they adhered to the Biblical idea of a curse on Cain and the African peoples (which is crazy enough!).

CJ: But now that’s all over, right? Blacks are now all good with the Mormons?

BR: I don't think most of the people I knew growing up in the church were racist, and certainly no more so than a random sampling of the population, which isn’t exactly comforting. But there were a few obvious ones, just like among the parents we knew.

CJ: How about Mormon sexism? I feel like pretty much every major religion, if you go back to its origin, is sexist. Is Mormonism more so?

BR: Not that I'm aware of, unless you take the outliers (i.e. polygamists), who are now not a part of the church by official decree. Though I should say that the conservative focus on “family values,” which many Mormons back, is, in my opinion, not without some hints of sexism

CJ: True. So polygamists are the Mormon radicals?

BR: Polygamists are not allowed in the church. They can't get temple recommends and thus are not, as you said, “card-carrying Mormons.” But I think they like it that way. They’ve established their own break-off religion, which has and wants nothing to do with mainstream Mormonism.

CJ: Based on a lot of what you’re saying, aside from the scripture and banning outsiders from temples, Mormonism doesn’t really sound so different from a lot of other Christian sects. Lots of Christians believe homosexuality is a sin, and a great many Christians supported Prop. 8. Why do Mormons get singled out so often?

BR: It’s a younger religion, for one. And there is less of a place for in-betweeners—those who want to be Mormon but less aggressively—as opposed to, say, Catholics who use condoms against the Vatican’s wishes. That in-or-out mentality can make Mormonism seem harsher, and it’s much less inviting to outsiders who want to explore it. Where Prop. 8 is concerned, I think a lot of other Christians supported it, but certainly not to the extent Mormons did. Also, because Mormons are relatively removed from the political sphere, when they do get involved it’s bigger news. I mean, how often do people mention that Harry Reid is a Mormon? He doesn’t publicly discuss his beliefs as openly as politicians from other faiths.

CJ: I think a lot of people who are non-religious, myself included, have this visceral idea that Mormonism is somehow “worse” than other religions. Like, it seems more cultish. Having taken a step back from Mormonism, do you see why people might think that?

BR: Sure, there is an inherent “other” issue on both sides here. Mormons were made to feel like outcasts by other religious groups in the middle of the 19th century. They then ended up embracing that and to this day they wear that status as a badge of honor. When they are singled out or “persecuted,” it’s just a sign that they are God's “chosen people.” Sound familiar? Personally, I think that narrative will fade with time as they become more integrated with society, as all religions seem to do.

CJ: Scientologists will probably always get fucked with.

BR: Haha! Maybe not. John Travolta’s triracial great-granddaughter will probably be president—and still a Scientologist.

CJ: You’re one of four brothers, and it amazes me that you're the only one of the four to leave the church. I don’t know your brothers well, it just seems strange that the oldest, the one the younger ones look up to, left, and the others stayed. Do you have any theories about why you're the only one to split?

BR: I can't really explain it. Maybe I'm naturally more skeptical? I think my individual experiences have something to do with it; my friends—my real friends, like you—certainly come into play. But I guess it is all of this and more. Recent studies suggest that children in the same family have very different experiences growing up based on birth order and mitigating factors in their parents and other family members’ lives. That being said I'm happy for all my brothers and the lives they lead. Even if we don't agree on everything, we love and respect each other, so I’m thankful for that.

CJ: Does your family believe you're going to hell?

BR: No. There is no “hell” in the LDS doctrine.

CJ: Oh! I did not know that. Is there anything comparable?

BR: There are different levels or kingdoms in eternity—three, I think—but only the top one allows you unfettered access to your family and loved ones. That level is reserved for card-carrying Mormons or those who were baptized post-mortem (yup, that happens). The bottom tier isn't hell, it's just not perfect paradise. It’s sort of like being stuck in a nice place forever.

CJ: And that’s for EVERYONE? Even nonbelievers?

BR: Yeah. It’s easy to see the appeal, right? Stuck in on OK place for eternity. It’s not so bad.

CJ: Totally. That’s actually really progressive compared to trying to scare people into thinking they've got a lake of fire to look forward to if they don’t obey all the rules.

BR: That’s part of the reason Mormonism is still growing big time. You can join the church and, no matter what, everything is cool. It’s just a question of how cool. Do you want to give up smokes and whiskey for that extra level of eternal salvation?

CJ: Unlike some people I’ve talked to who have drifted away from their childhood faiths, you don’t sound very bitter about your years in the church. It almost sounds like you think you could have had a happy life in the church. And it definitely would have been easier where your family is concerned. What’s the trade-off for you? What made leaving worth it?

BR: The trade-off? I don't know. A small part of me still hopes I might find some religion in a miraculous way later in life. But until then I have a wife and son whom I love and adore, and I don't think I would have them in another scenario in which I stayed Mormon. I also have intellectual honesty. I feel totally in touch with myself, and when I feel something now, I know I’m feeling something real. I guess in place of searching for complete understanding I've decided to search for peace and happiness that I can have now. I don't think paradise or heaven is an absence of strife or problems; I think it’s an acceptance of them, and I want strife in this life.

CJ: Having been raised in a faith, and now raising a son, do you feel better about raising a secular child, or do you think he'll be missing out on something?

BR: Good question. I do feel a little guilty that I can't in true faith give him answers to some of the big questions. But I also feel that we all have to face questions of existence, and I'll be honest with him and he will know that I love him unconditionally and from there he'll have to do the same thing we all should do and become an adult. Hopefully, that will take a very long time, ’cause I like him as he is now.

CJ: OK, last question: Throughout its history, Mormonism has parted ways with plenty of former tenets (e.g., the polygamy, the racism, the caffeine). Do you think it's just a matter of time before gays are accepted into the fold?

BR: If by “accepted” you mean “given the right to marry and all the other privileges” then I think it is definitely a matter of time, albeit a lot of time. I hope that that will happen in most major religions eventually, but it will probably be long after it does politically and socially. So we're talking decades, if not centuries, and I seriously doubt in our lifetime. But as it happens I think it will happen in the LDS faith, too. Before they become obsolete they will accept gays.

CJ: And President Romney?

BR: No chance.



Cord Jefferson is a senior editor at GOOD.

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]]> My friend Beau and I grew up together in Tucson, Arizona, where he was the quarterback of our high school’s football team. We’ve since traveled around Italy together, sipped wine and talked about music until sunrise, and, one memorable time, got drunkenly chased out of a Vegas casino. Beau and I have a lot in common, our vices included, which is why I always forget one big thing about him: Until very recently, Beau was a Mormon. He never went door-to-door trying to convert people, nor did he ever march against gay rights. But for 18 years he faithfully went to a Mormon temple every Sunday with his parents and three brothers.

Mormonism has become an increasingly visible part of our culture in the past few years, what with Big Love's five-year run on HBO, Book of Mormon on Broadway, Mitt Romney leaping on the cover of Newsweek and "I'm A Mormon" billboards in Times Square. Yet while we often hear about Mormons, we hardly ever hear from them. Instead, we often get our reports second-hand, and from a writer whose sneer (and I'm guilty of this, too) poisons the conversation immediately. In an effort to more honestly understand one of America’s most-feared religions—and one that’s getting bigger all the time—I turned to Beau, who has left the church despite protestations from his devout family and now manages a wine store in Brooklyn.


Cord Jefferson: To start with, let's talk about your background in Mormonism, because I don't even really know it.

Beau Rapier: My dad's family converted before he was born and my mom's great-grandparents were Mormon—maybe great-great. My dad initially married a non-Mormon out of high school and had two kids with her (my half sisters), then went to Vietnam. After that he wasn’t really church going for some years but became so again when he got divorced and began dating my mom.

CJ: On a scale of one to 10, how Mormon would you say your childhood was? Ten being insanely strict? No soda?

BR: I guess a seven? We had soda. Because of my dad's first marriage and the fact that his dad was not a very observant Mormon. My childhood was Mormon but not in a fully sheltered way—and Tucson is not Provo. I always had non-Mormon friends.

CJ: Lately, everyone seems to be talking about the "strangeness" of Mormonism, but when I would hang out at your house, I never felt strange at all. Your parents were always super nice to me. I even remember your dad driving me and your brother to buy Bush tickets. It’s not like they were banning rock concerts and making you read scripture all the time.

BR: No, they loved pop and rock music. I can't tell you how many times I heard Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours. And I never felt like we were only Mormon—but I still definitely felt different than my friends, most of whom were not Mormon.

CJ: What do you mean you weren’t “only Mormon”?

BR: It never completely defined me. I recall being almost embarrassed by it.

CJ: Why embarrassed? Lots of other kids were religious in Tucson.

BR: Because I thought I was different. Other kids were religious, yes, but not Mormon, at least not the ones I was friends with. I couldn't go to birthday parties on Sundays, my parents weren't friends with the non-Mormon parents, etc.

CJ: Did you like hanging out with the other Mormon kids we went to school with?

BR: Nope.

CJ: I remember a bunch of the other Mormon kids were always way more tight-assed than you and your brothers, which is why it surprises me that you said your house was a seven. The [really, really devout Mormon family from our neighborhood] must have been like an 11 then.

BR: Yeah, they were pretty much already in the celestial kingdom. The idea that you can build a Mormon fortress in which to ignore all the realities of the outside world was epitomized by them, in my mind.

CJ: It sounds like you were skeptical from early on. Can you remember the first time you thought, "Y'know, this might not be for me"?

BR: I don't know about skeptical. I didn't really think about it. I think teenagers wonder how they fit in the here and now, not how their existence fits in the cosmos. Basically, I didn't really question my faith or background. I just hid it until I had to confront it, and that began at the very end of high school and then continued for years.

CJ: But you were drinking and having premarital sex, right? Isn’t that kind of an indirect way of questioning your faith? Is disobeying questioning?

BR: It can be, but I don't think I was really pondering questions of faith when I started drinking in high school, and the premarital sex didn't actually happen until after I graduated. I think looking back the answer is yes, I was looking at other options. But I didn't think about it in those terms then. I think lots of people of every faith experiment in these ways but ultimately decide to embrace their religion.

CJ: Sounds like your dad did that.

BR: For sure.

CJ: Did your parents know about your rebellion, or did you hide it from them?

BR: I did hide it, but they were having their own marriage issues at the time, so it was easier for me to do my thing without much scrutiny.

To be honest, I’ve held out the possibility of “coming back” to my mom for some years, and only in the last four or five did that possibility diminish to a point of becoming almost impossible.
CJ: So when did you actually start actively questioning the faith?

BR: In college, I guess. Kind of a cliché, but I really began to be interested in what I thought and believed and slowly began to question the principles and ideas that Mormonism is based on. Things came up and we all—you, I, our friends—were more and more interested in social, political, historical and even religious issues. That influenced me immensely.

CJ: Were you questioning the very simple red flags like, “Wait, Jesus was in America and nobody knows how he got here?" Or were you questioning big picture things like, "Do I believe in organized religion at all?” Both?

BR: Hmm. No to the first question. I think all religions expect a willing suspension of disbelief on the part of the faithful, so a god or a son of a god traveling to another continent is peanuts: he just got there. Of more interest to me was how the Mormon church responded to social issues: questions of morality around race, sexual orientation, etc. I think the questioning of big-picture things came later, but as a result of all the initial little stuff.

CJ: You and I spent a lot of drunken nights together during this period, and until right now I wasn’t aware that you were trying to hash out your faith that whole time. This was a really internal struggle for you, huh?

BR: Yeah, I suppose so. But I was having a great time and not being very introspective about it, except maybe in my writing from time to time. I don't think I really began questioning God and existence until a couple years ago, after I’d been married and had a kid. Drunken nights may seem like a great time to unload but in fact they often focus you on the exact moment—which is great and I celebrate it.

CJ: I imagine once you were out of your parents' house that you stopped going to church.

BR: Basically. I think I skipped a few times toward the end of high school and got away with it. But when I went to college I never once went to church on my own, which, looking back, is pretty telling.

CJ: Did your parents know?

BR: Sort of, though they always asked about involvement in the campus church, and I’m sure I let them think that I was participating in Mormon stuff. There were a lot of Mormons at Arizona State but I purposefully never connected with any of them.

CJ: I guess I went into this conversation stupidly thinking that there were going to be certain clear milestones that marked your move away from faith, but that's not really how life goes. It's all just gradual.

BR: I think there are milestones when you look back. One was certainly my decision to lose my virginity to my girlfriend at the age of 18. I did think about that one pretty long and hard.

CJ: Is that one a big no-no for Mormons?

BR: Sure. It isn't actually a game over, no-going-back decision, but at the time I thought it was. I think plenty of Mormons have premarital sex but then repent and ultimately rejoin the community. To be honest, I’ve held out the possibility of “coming back” to my mom for some years, and only in the last four or five did that possibility diminish to a point of becoming almost impossible.

CJ: What do you mean “held out the possibility of coming back”? You told your mom you might be Mormon again one day?

BR: Not exactly. I told her not to stop praying for me or thinking that I might repent. At the time I started doing that I had read a lot about writers and artists who had “returned” to religion later in life. I felt like I couldn’t rule that out for myself. Now I tell her that because even if I don't think it’s true, I respect other people's needs to order their universe.

CJ: And for your mother to be comfortable she needs to believe there's a chance you'll return to the fold one day?

BR: Yes, that is entirely true. She needs to believe that.

CJ: So, here’s something: While your move away from Mormonism was gradual, Mormonism almost immediately rejects people who question the faith. I remember when you couldn’t see your brother get married because you weren’t allowed to enter the temples. At what point did Mormonism stop considering you a Mormon? Was it before you stopped considering yourself a Mormon?

BR: They still consider me a Mormon, just not one with the privilege to enter the temples. I lost my temple privileges when I stopped applying, though I’m sure I could have lied.

CJ: Hold up, you have to apply for privileges?

BR: You need what’s called a “temple recommend,” which is given by the bishop of your ward. You have to say you obey the rules and pay tithes.

CJ: Do they give you a certificate or something?

BR: Yes, it looks more or less like a business card.

CJ: Holy shit. I had no idea. You can literally be "a card-carrying Mormon"?

BR: Exactly.

CJ: That’s a perfect segue. Let’s talk some Mormon myths. Everyone's favorite is the holy underwear. What's up with that?

BR: I would have to say that I don't know entirely since I’ve not participated in the ceremony that explains them fully. My understanding is that they represent a symbolic shield from the temporal and often immoral mortal world.

CJ: You only get them when you get married in a Mormon ceremony?

BR: Um, I think you also get them before you go on a mission.

CJ: The mission! I forgot! Did you ever consider the mission?

BR: Not really, though I never officially said I wasn't doing it. I just let the window of opportunity pass. Another instance of not manning up to my real feelings.

CJ: What’s the window?

BR: Most people go between 19 and 21, though a little later for women sometimes. There are also missions for retired couples.

CJ: OK, back to the myths. Why can Mormons drink caffeinated soda but not coffee?

BR: That's not exactly right. Some LDS authorities have said no caffeine, no Coke, no Pepsi, etc. Others, however, focus on the original “word of wisdom,” which says no coffee or tea. It's still unclear in my mind.

CJ: How about the racism? We’ve talked about this one a lot over the years. From what I’ve read, the church has backpedaled a ton on its racist positions, most likely in an effort to get more black converts. What’s up with the racism in Mormon doctrine?

BR: I hesitate to act as an authority on LDS doctrine, because I’m not. But clearly there was racism inherent in the doctrine. As I understand it, "blacks" could not receive the priesthood in the Mormon church until 1978. One question I always had was who is black and who isn't? Who decides?

CJ: Like, was anyone brown off limits, or was it just people of African origin?

BR: Right. The official church stance ended before I was born, and it is hard to say from a personal stance, because there weren't a lot of black people in Tucson and the ones who were weren’t Mormon.

You can join the church and, no matter what, everything is cool. It’s just a question of how cool. Do you want to give up smokes and whiskey for that extra level of eternal salvation?
CJ: I remember when a Mormon girl in my 6th-grade geography class straight up asked the teacher if it was true that blacks were marked for their sins. Some of that stuff was obviously still being taught

BR: Yeah. I never knew and still don't know what was considered black in the LDS church, other than they adhered to the Biblical idea of a curse on Cain and the African peoples (which is crazy enough!).

CJ: But now that’s all over, right? Blacks are now all good with the Mormons?

BR: I don't think most of the people I knew growing up in the church were racist, and certainly no more so than a random sampling of the population, which isn’t exactly comforting. But there were a few obvious ones, just like among the parents we knew.

CJ: How about Mormon sexism? I feel like pretty much every major religion, if you go back to its origin, is sexist. Is Mormonism more so?

BR: Not that I'm aware of, unless you take the outliers (i.e. polygamists), who are now not a part of the church by official decree. Though I should say that the conservative focus on “family values,” which many Mormons back, is, in my opinion, not without some hints of sexism

CJ: True. So polygamists are the Mormon radicals?

BR: Polygamists are not allowed in the church. They can't get temple recommends and thus are not, as you said, “card-carrying Mormons.” But I think they like it that way. They’ve established their own break-off religion, which has and wants nothing to do with mainstream Mormonism.

CJ: Based on a lot of what you’re saying, aside from the scripture and banning outsiders from temples, Mormonism doesn’t really sound so different from a lot of other Christian sects. Lots of Christians believe homosexuality is a sin, and a great many Christians supported Prop. 8. Why do Mormons get singled out so often?

BR: It’s a younger religion, for one. And there is less of a place for in-betweeners—those who want to be Mormon but less aggressively—as opposed to, say, Catholics who use condoms against the Vatican’s wishes. That in-or-out mentality can make Mormonism seem harsher, and it’s much less inviting to outsiders who want to explore it. Where Prop. 8 is concerned, I think a lot of other Christians supported it, but certainly not to the extent Mormons did. Also, because Mormons are relatively removed from the political sphere, when they do get involved it’s bigger news. I mean, how often do people mention that Harry Reid is a Mormon? He doesn’t publicly discuss his beliefs as openly as politicians from other faiths.

CJ: I think a lot of people who are non-religious, myself included, have this visceral idea that Mormonism is somehow “worse” than other religions. Like, it seems more cultish. Having taken a step back from Mormonism, do you see why people might think that?

BR: Sure, there is an inherent “other” issue on both sides here. Mormons were made to feel like outcasts by other religious groups in the middle of the 19th century. They then ended up embracing that and to this day they wear that status as a badge of honor. When they are singled out or “persecuted,” it’s just a sign that they are God's “chosen people.” Sound familiar? Personally, I think that narrative will fade with time as they become more integrated with society, as all religions seem to do.

CJ: Scientologists will probably always get fucked with.

BR: Haha! Maybe not. John Travolta’s triracial great-granddaughter will probably be president—and still a Scientologist.

CJ: You’re one of four brothers, and it amazes me that you're the only one of the four to leave the church. I don’t know your brothers well, it just seems strange that the oldest, the one the younger ones look up to, left, and the others stayed. Do you have any theories about why you're the only one to split?

BR: I can't really explain it. Maybe I'm naturally more skeptical? I think my individual experiences have something to do with it; my friends—my real friends, like you—certainly come into play. But I guess it is all of this and more. Recent studies suggest that children in the same family have very different experiences growing up based on birth order and mitigating factors in their parents and other family members’ lives. That being said I'm happy for all my brothers and the lives they lead. Even if we don't agree on everything, we love and respect each other, so I’m thankful for that.

CJ: Does your family believe you're going to hell?

BR: No. There is no “hell” in the LDS doctrine.

CJ: Oh! I did not know that. Is there anything comparable?

BR: There are different levels or kingdoms in eternity—three, I think—but only the top one allows you unfettered access to your family and loved ones. That level is reserved for card-carrying Mormons or those who were baptized post-mortem (yup, that happens). The bottom tier isn't hell, it's just not perfect paradise. It’s sort of like being stuck in a nice place forever.

CJ: And that’s for EVERYONE? Even nonbelievers?

BR: Yeah. It’s easy to see the appeal, right? Stuck in on OK place for eternity. It’s not so bad.

CJ: Totally. That’s actually really progressive compared to trying to scare people into thinking they've got a lake of fire to look forward to if they don’t obey all the rules.

BR: That’s part of the reason Mormonism is still growing big time. You can join the church and, no matter what, everything is cool. It’s just a question of how cool. Do you want to give up smokes and whiskey for that extra level of eternal salvation?

CJ: Unlike some people I’ve talked to who have drifted away from their childhood faiths, you don’t sound very bitter about your years in the church. It almost sounds like you think you could have had a happy life in the church. And it definitely would have been easier where your family is concerned. What’s the trade-off for you? What made leaving worth it?

BR: The trade-off? I don't know. A small part of me still hopes I might find some religion in a miraculous way later in life. But until then I have a wife and son whom I love and adore, and I don't think I would have them in another scenario in which I stayed Mormon. I also have intellectual honesty. I feel totally in touch with myself, and when I feel something now, I know I’m feeling something real. I guess in place of searching for complete understanding I've decided to search for peace and happiness that I can have now. I don't think paradise or heaven is an absence of strife or problems; I think it’s an acceptance of them, and I want strife in this life.

CJ: Having been raised in a faith, and now raising a son, do you feel better about raising a secular child, or do you think he'll be missing out on something?

BR: Good question. I do feel a little guilty that I can't in true faith give him answers to some of the big questions. But I also feel that we all have to face questions of existence, and I'll be honest with him and he will know that I love him unconditionally and from there he'll have to do the same thing we all should do and become an adult. Hopefully, that will take a very long time, ’cause I like him as he is now.

CJ: OK, last question: Throughout its history, Mormonism has parted ways with plenty of former tenets (e.g., the polygamy, the racism, the caffeine). Do you think it's just a matter of time before gays are accepted into the fold?

BR: If by “accepted” you mean “given the right to marry and all the other privileges” then I think it is definitely a matter of time, albeit a lot of time. I hope that that will happen in most major religions eventually, but it will probably be long after it does politically and socially. So we're talking decades, if not centuries, and I seriously doubt in our lifetime. But as it happens I think it will happen in the LDS faith, too. Before they become obsolete they will accept gays.

CJ: And President Romney?

BR: No chance.



Cord Jefferson is a senior editor at GOOD.

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]]> http://www.theawl.com/2011/09/ask-a-mormon-a-conversation/feed 40 Look At These Wacky Religions! http://www.theawl.com/2011/05/look-at-these-wacky-religions http://www.theawl.com/2011/05/look-at-these-wacky-religions#comments Fri, 13 May 2011 10:20:51 +0000 Alex Balk http://www.theawl.com/2011/05/look-at-these-wacky-religions Here you will find a list of five kooky religions, which somehow presumes that other religions are not equally kooky.

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]]> Here you will find a list of five kooky religions, which somehow presumes that other religions are not equally kooky.

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]]> http://www.theawl.com/2011/05/look-at-these-wacky-religions/feed 6 Eat, Pray, Judge: Lunch With The Sikhs http://www.theawl.com/2011/05/eat-pray-judge-lunch-with-the-sikhs http://www.theawl.com/2011/05/eat-pray-judge-lunch-with-the-sikhs#comments Tue, 10 May 2011 13:00:40 +0000 Dan Packel http://www.theawl.com/2011/05/eat-pray-judge-lunch-with-the-sikhs In the month since I’d dined with the Episcopalians for Shrove Tuesday, I’d been spending too much money going out to eat. It was time to take advantage of the generosity of another religious group and avail myself of a free meal, so I headed to the closest Sikh temple.

The trip from my South Philadelphia home took me to the tiny town of Millbourne, just outside the city limits, but serviced by the El train. Of Millbourne’s slightly more than 1,000 residents, the 2010 census found that over half are of Asian descent—and almost all of these are South Asian: Indians, but also Pakistanis and Bangladeshis.

From the El, I quickly found my way to the Philadelphia Sikh Society Guruwdwara, a squat brick building attached to the rear of a dollar store, and arrived at the stroke of noon.

With a massive, floor-standing mixer, a range hood that wouldn’t be out of place at a busy casual chain-dining establishment, and two industrial stainless steel fridges humming away, the kitchen at the society's gurudwara must sometimes be used for serious volume cooking. My Friday visit did not fall on one of those days.

Indeed there was no indication that the kitchen had actually been used to prepare the day’s langar, the daily free community meal that gurudwaras (sometimes spelled "gurdwara") provides for Sihks and non-Sikhs alike. No one was stirring inside of the kitchen. Three stainless steel pails of food rested on the long counter, but given the dormant look of the kitchen, the food in the pails could easily have been prepared elsewhere.

Three men sat on the narrow strip of carpet that ran the length of the long wall opposite the kitchen, eating off Styrofoam plates and quietly conversing in Punjabi. Two were clothed in the loose-fitting cotton kurta pajama that serves as a traditional standard of Indian clothing. The third wore trousers and a button-down shirt. All three wore turbans.

Entering the room cautiously, I clasped my hands in greeting and inquired about the food.

“Yes, please. Go ahead,” responded the man clad in western attire. “But first you must cover your head.”

Retreating to the foyer, I grabbed a blue cloth wrap (pre-tied for my convenience), fitted it over my head, and returned.

At the counter, I gave the contents of the silver pails a closer examination. Each was filled halfway to the top. In one: yellow dal, or lentils. Another held a mix of curried potatoes, in a strikingly similar color to the dal. The third: yogurt, both for protein and to cut the heat of the spices. While Sikhs are not strictly vegetarian, the langar always is, so that anyone who shows can partake.

I spooned a serving of all three onto my plate, added two room-temperature rotis, or flatbreads, that were stacked on a plate, and then grabbed two green chilies and a pinch of iceberg lettuce. The last element counted as the “salad.” (Pronounced “Suhl-ahd” in Hindi, this garnish of undressed raw vegetables—often including tomato, cucumber, and onion—has always struck me through multiple stints in India as an especially peculiar vestige of colonialism. The iceberg was an especially bland example of the practice.) From an insulated beverage dispenser, I filled a Styrofoam cup with milk tea.

Seated on the carpet, I dug into my free lunch. The dal was the highlight. In a standard preparation, the pressure-cooked lentils had been tempered with a paste of garlic, ginger along with onions and chilies. With my hand, I scooped up the pleasantly spicy mix with my roti. This was gone before anything else on my plate.

The potatoes were less appealing. What I’d initially judged (filled with hope!) to be aloo gobi failed to include any gobi (cauliflower). Alongside tender potato chunks were the chickpea-sized spongy orbs known in Indian cooking as “soyabean nuggets.” Simmered in an inoffensive masala paste, the mixture was certainly palatable—but not something to consume with much gusto.

While I ate, two of the men farther down the carpet rose to leave, discarding their plates in a garbage can by the door. All the while, they had barely acknowledged my presence. Perhaps random Caucasian visitors to the unadorned mess hall were more common than I presumed. Or maybe lunch was lunch, and they brooked no unnecessary distractions from their daily meal.

“Can I get you anything else?” asked the third, the same man who had responded to me earlier. Satisfied by the amount of food on my plate, I declined. I then took the opening to see whether strangers like me made regular appearances.

“If anyone is to come, we are to prepare food for them,” he responded inconclusively. “According to the spirit of the one above,” he paused, pointing at the ceiling, “we must provide to anyone who needs food or shelter, regardless of race or religion.”

An admirable creed. And a reminder that the quality of the food per se perhaps wasn’t the real issue here.

Still, finishing my meal, I sputtered a little when I started in on my tea, both lukewarm and lacking sugar.

Luckily, my host, nimbly balancing between solicitousness and unobtrusiveness, stopped in front of me and asked if I’d like my tea heated. “We have a microwave here.” He returned with a hot cup of tea and a cup full of sugar.

I thanked him and introduced myself. He shared his name (Sarwar) and soon wandered across the room. A young Indian woman walked in, served herself a plate, and sat down. I finished my tea, and rose to leave, thanking Sarwar.

“You’re welcome, Mr. Daniel,” he responded. “Please come again, anytime.”



Dan Packel writes about food (and more!) from his home in Philadelphia. You can also follow him here.

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]]> In the month since I’d dined with the Episcopalians for Shrove Tuesday, I’d been spending too much money going out to eat. It was time to take advantage of the generosity of another religious group and avail myself of a free meal, so I headed to the closest Sikh temple.

The trip from my South Philadelphia home took me to the tiny town of Millbourne, just outside the city limits, but serviced by the El train. Of Millbourne’s slightly more than 1,000 residents, the 2010 census found that over half are of Asian descent—and almost all of these are South Asian: Indians, but also Pakistanis and Bangladeshis.

From the El, I quickly found my way to the Philadelphia Sikh Society Guruwdwara, a squat brick building attached to the rear of a dollar store, and arrived at the stroke of noon.

With a massive, floor-standing mixer, a range hood that wouldn’t be out of place at a busy casual chain-dining establishment, and two industrial stainless steel fridges humming away, the kitchen at the society's gurudwara must sometimes be used for serious volume cooking. My Friday visit did not fall on one of those days.

Indeed there was no indication that the kitchen had actually been used to prepare the day’s langar, the daily free community meal that gurudwaras (sometimes spelled "gurdwara") provides for Sihks and non-Sikhs alike. No one was stirring inside of the kitchen. Three stainless steel pails of food rested on the long counter, but given the dormant look of the kitchen, the food in the pails could easily have been prepared elsewhere.

Three men sat on the narrow strip of carpet that ran the length of the long wall opposite the kitchen, eating off Styrofoam plates and quietly conversing in Punjabi. Two were clothed in the loose-fitting cotton kurta pajama that serves as a traditional standard of Indian clothing. The third wore trousers and a button-down shirt. All three wore turbans.

Entering the room cautiously, I clasped my hands in greeting and inquired about the food.

“Yes, please. Go ahead,” responded the man clad in western attire. “But first you must cover your head.”

Retreating to the foyer, I grabbed a blue cloth wrap (pre-tied for my convenience), fitted it over my head, and returned.

At the counter, I gave the contents of the silver pails a closer examination. Each was filled halfway to the top. In one: yellow dal, or lentils. Another held a mix of curried potatoes, in a strikingly similar color to the dal. The third: yogurt, both for protein and to cut the heat of the spices. While Sikhs are not strictly vegetarian, the langar always is, so that anyone who shows can partake.

I spooned a serving of all three onto my plate, added two room-temperature rotis, or flatbreads, that were stacked on a plate, and then grabbed two green chilies and a pinch of iceberg lettuce. The last element counted as the “salad.” (Pronounced “Suhl-ahd” in Hindi, this garnish of undressed raw vegetables—often including tomato, cucumber, and onion—has always struck me through multiple stints in India as an especially peculiar vestige of colonialism. The iceberg was an especially bland example of the practice.) From an insulated beverage dispenser, I filled a Styrofoam cup with milk tea.

Seated on the carpet, I dug into my free lunch. The dal was the highlight. In a standard preparation, the pressure-cooked lentils had been tempered with a paste of garlic, ginger along with onions and chilies. With my hand, I scooped up the pleasantly spicy mix with my roti. This was gone before anything else on my plate.

The potatoes were less appealing. What I’d initially judged (filled with hope!) to be aloo gobi failed to include any gobi (cauliflower). Alongside tender potato chunks were the chickpea-sized spongy orbs known in Indian cooking as “soyabean nuggets.” Simmered in an inoffensive masala paste, the mixture was certainly palatable—but not something to consume with much gusto.

While I ate, two of the men farther down the carpet rose to leave, discarding their plates in a garbage can by the door. All the while, they had barely acknowledged my presence. Perhaps random Caucasian visitors to the unadorned mess hall were more common than I presumed. Or maybe lunch was lunch, and they brooked no unnecessary distractions from their daily meal.

“Can I get you anything else?” asked the third, the same man who had responded to me earlier. Satisfied by the amount of food on my plate, I declined. I then took the opening to see whether strangers like me made regular appearances.

“If anyone is to come, we are to prepare food for them,” he responded inconclusively. “According to the spirit of the one above,” he paused, pointing at the ceiling, “we must provide to anyone who needs food or shelter, regardless of race or religion.”

An admirable creed. And a reminder that the quality of the food per se perhaps wasn’t the real issue here.

Still, finishing my meal, I sputtered a little when I started in on my tea, both lukewarm and lacking sugar.

Luckily, my host, nimbly balancing between solicitousness and unobtrusiveness, stopped in front of me and asked if I’d like my tea heated. “We have a microwave here.” He returned with a hot cup of tea and a cup full of sugar.

I thanked him and introduced myself. He shared his name (Sarwar) and soon wandered across the room. A young Indian woman walked in, served herself a plate, and sat down. I finished my tea, and rose to leave, thanking Sarwar.

“You’re welcome, Mr. Daniel,” he responded. “Please come again, anytime.”



Dan Packel writes about food (and more!) from his home in Philadelphia. You can also follow him here.

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]]> http://www.theawl.com/2011/05/eat-pray-judge-lunch-with-the-sikhs/feed 4 What Can Confession Mean Now? http://www.theawl.com/2011/02/what-can-confession-mean-now http://www.theawl.com/2011/02/what-can-confession-mean-now#comments Mon, 14 Feb 2011 17:30:19 +0000 Chris Lehmann http://www.theawl.com/2011/02/what-can-confession-mean-now The determined forays of hallowed Western faith traditions into the digital-media world rarely produce a non-embarrassing outcome. There are your teen-themed “Bible-zine” translations. There are your evangelical trade shows. There are your media churches. But the recent news that the Catholic Church was launching a quasi-official confession app on the iPhone was something else again—and not just because it got snapped up in the related Maureen Dowd column-generating software.

To be fair, the app—the brainchild of a pair of entrepreneurial Indiana-based Catholic brothers, Patrick and Chip Leinen—is not designed to supplant the traditional rite of confession, spoken in anonymity to a real-life priest sequestered in a box. It’s more in the nature of a confession aid—a customized digital enounter tailored to the special needs of a particular sinning demographic. “A priest won't have the same examination as a teen girl or a married man,” Patrick Leinen told the Catholic News Agency. "You will get something unique to you.” A scalable examination of the human conscience may not yet prompt a boom in digital contrition—at least not until it’s somehow customized further to work on an Angry Birds platform—but it’s something of a formal breakthrough for a faith tradition that hasn’t exactly made “user-friendliness” a watchword. (One also assumes that if the Church-sanctioned app solicits a confession of sexual abuse from a member of the clergy, it will trigger a Mission Impossible-style immolation of app, phone and—who knows?—user.)

Being no strangers to the hierarchical cast of Catholic devotion themselves, the Leinens cite the authority of the papal bureaucracy—namely, the directive from Pope Benedict XVI calling for greater engagement with the social media platforms favored by today’s youth. The Leinen brothers also took pains to win the imprimatur of South Bend Bishop Kevin C. Rhodes, and collaborated on the finer points of the app’s graduated sin-inspection software with a pair of priests, Thomas G. Weinandy, the executive director of the U.S. bishops’ Secretariat for Doctrine and Pastoral Practices, and Dan Scheidt, pastor of Queen of Peace Catholic Church in the nearby Indiana town of Mishawaka.

Still, for all this ex officio punctiliousness, one can’t help feeling that a confession app is a bit off-base. For one thing, it’s aimed at generating a profit, costing $1.99 per user. Has the senior Church hierarchy really forgotten that a mere six hundred years or so ago the open retailing of priestly forgiveness furnished a central grievance of the Reformation?

More troubling still is the question of anonymity. Yes, we are assured, the security protocols of the confession software are sound, but there’s a more fundamental reason that iPhone apps fall under the generic rubric of “social media”—users generally employ them in complete indifference to their surroundings, further denaturing the increasingly porous cultural boundaries that separate out public and private conduct. While the app may ultimately land a wrongdoer in front of a duly solemn confessor in the designated sanctum of a church, completing a subjective moral inventory isn’t something that’s meant to be done during some dead time on a conference call, or while you’re impatiently scouring the departure board at Grand Central Station.

In other words, it’s probably best that the buildup to confession be inconvenient, with a minimum of media distraction involved. According to all manner of Christian moralists, divine judgment is a harrowingly solitary affair, and one reason that the priest in the confession box is concealed—apart from ensuring full anonymity to both parties in confession—is to symbolize the impersonal nature of god’s judgment. Without that screened-in generic symbol of divine authority, Church fathers reckoned, confessors would be apt to conceal their mortal sins out of a sense of personal shame. Initiating that same process via an iPhone app, by contrast, is a bit like trying to administer extreme unction via a Netflix stream. There’s a reason that a fully mechanized vision of the confessional was trotted out as a joke, after all, in Woody Allen’s futurist farce Sleeper (back in 1973, that is, where the innovation seemed laughably remote, and Allen was still capable of executing convincing jokes on film).

Viewed from the logic of the new information age, a digitized confession is but another step in the broader diffusion of the vital human stuff of soul, intelligence and selfhood—the cyber-utopian, new-machine dynamism that Clay Shirky and Chris Anderson hymn (in different keys, to be fair) before the mirror each morning in their own rote and priestly fashion. Still, for all the soothing appurtenances that attach to way-new digital faith, it’s hard to see how the duly wired believer can significantly advance behind the dour Catholic counsel of Blaise Pascal: “All men’s miseries derive from not being able to sit in a quiet room alone.”



Chris Lehmann has been our religion columnist.

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]]> The determined forays of hallowed Western faith traditions into the digital-media world rarely produce a non-embarrassing outcome. There are your teen-themed “Bible-zine” translations. There are your evangelical trade shows. There are your media churches. But the recent news that the Catholic Church was launching a quasi-official confession app on the iPhone was something else again—and not just because it got snapped up in the related Maureen Dowd column-generating software.

To be fair, the app—the brainchild of a pair of entrepreneurial Indiana-based Catholic brothers, Patrick and Chip Leinen—is not designed to supplant the traditional rite of confession, spoken in anonymity to a real-life priest sequestered in a box. It’s more in the nature of a confession aid—a customized digital enounter tailored to the special needs of a particular sinning demographic. “A priest won't have the same examination as a teen girl or a married man,” Patrick Leinen told the Catholic News Agency. "You will get something unique to you.” A scalable examination of the human conscience may not yet prompt a boom in digital contrition—at least not until it’s somehow customized further to work on an Angry Birds platform—but it’s something of a formal breakthrough for a faith tradition that hasn’t exactly made “user-friendliness” a watchword. (One also assumes that if the Church-sanctioned app solicits a confession of sexual abuse from a member of the clergy, it will trigger a Mission Impossible-style immolation of app, phone and—who knows?—user.)

Being no strangers to the hierarchical cast of Catholic devotion themselves, the Leinens cite the authority of the papal bureaucracy—namely, the directive from Pope Benedict XVI calling for greater engagement with the social media platforms favored by today’s youth. The Leinen brothers also took pains to win the imprimatur of South Bend Bishop Kevin C. Rhodes, and collaborated on the finer points of the app’s graduated sin-inspection software with a pair of priests, Thomas G. Weinandy, the executive director of the U.S. bishops’ Secretariat for Doctrine and Pastoral Practices, and Dan Scheidt, pastor of Queen of Peace Catholic Church in the nearby Indiana town of Mishawaka.

Still, for all this ex officio punctiliousness, one can’t help feeling that a confession app is a bit off-base. For one thing, it’s aimed at generating a profit, costing $1.99 per user. Has the senior Church hierarchy really forgotten that a mere six hundred years or so ago the open retailing of priestly forgiveness furnished a central grievance of the Reformation?

More troubling still is the question of anonymity. Yes, we are assured, the security protocols of the confession software are sound, but there’s a more fundamental reason that iPhone apps fall under the generic rubric of “social media”—users generally employ them in complete indifference to their surroundings, further denaturing the increasingly porous cultural boundaries that separate out public and private conduct. While the app may ultimately land a wrongdoer in front of a duly solemn confessor in the designated sanctum of a church, completing a subjective moral inventory isn’t something that’s meant to be done during some dead time on a conference call, or while you’re impatiently scouring the departure board at Grand Central Station.

In other words, it’s probably best that the buildup to confession be inconvenient, with a minimum of media distraction involved. According to all manner of Christian moralists, divine judgment is a harrowingly solitary affair, and one reason that the priest in the confession box is concealed—apart from ensuring full anonymity to both parties in confession—is to symbolize the impersonal nature of god’s judgment. Without that screened-in generic symbol of divine authority, Church fathers reckoned, confessors would be apt to conceal their mortal sins out of a sense of personal shame. Initiating that same process via an iPhone app, by contrast, is a bit like trying to administer extreme unction via a Netflix stream. There’s a reason that a fully mechanized vision of the confessional was trotted out as a joke, after all, in Woody Allen’s futurist farce Sleeper (back in 1973, that is, where the innovation seemed laughably remote, and Allen was still capable of executing convincing jokes on film).

Viewed from the logic of the new information age, a digitized confession is but another step in the broader diffusion of the vital human stuff of soul, intelligence and selfhood—the cyber-utopian, new-machine dynamism that Clay Shirky and Chris Anderson hymn (in different keys, to be fair) before the mirror each morning in their own rote and priestly fashion. Still, for all the soothing appurtenances that attach to way-new digital faith, it’s hard to see how the duly wired believer can significantly advance behind the dour Catholic counsel of Blaise Pascal: “All men’s miseries derive from not being able to sit in a quiet room alone.”



Chris Lehmann has been our religion columnist.

---

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]]> http://www.theawl.com/2011/02/what-can-confession-mean-now/feed 6 Americans Get Hysterical: Oh No, a New Radical Muslim Egypt! http://www.theawl.com/2011/01/american-hysteria-grows-over-a-new-radical-muslim-egypt http://www.theawl.com/2011/01/american-hysteria-grows-over-a-new-radical-muslim-egypt#comments Mon, 31 Jan 2011 14:00:28 +0000 Chris Lehmann http://www.theawl.com/2011/01/american-hysteria-grows-over-a-new-radical-muslim-egypt There are countless reasons that the makers of U.S. policy have been caught flatfooted by the uprising in Egypt. As is often the case in human affairs, the most compelling reason is also the basest: We spend $1.2 billion in Egypt to provide “security” and support for U.S. interests in the Middle East—and all that money buys both parties the privilege of looking the other way as the sclerotic Mubarak regime grew more unresponsive to a restive democratic oppostion.

In broader terms, however, American leaders are puzzled by the uprising because so far it has failed utterly to conform to the “Clash of Civilizations” playbook. That is to say, popular revolts in Islamic countries are supposed to be rearguard Islamic protests against Western modernity, unto its innermost parts. That’s why the confrontational rhetoric favored by the Samuel Huntingtons, Dinesh D’Souzas and Daniel Pipeses of the world typically resolves into dark and foreboding talk of the “existential threat" that the antimodern masses in the Arab world represent to the West. That’s also why U.S. political leaders keen to play on such fears harp on their own gift for descrying “moral clarity” amid all that dangerously muddled tolerance preached by the liberal appeasers who shun the brute fact of evil unloosed among a ghastly group of medieval-minded imam-brainwashed zombies, who hate us because of our freedom.

So the wise men seeking to delimit U.S. diplomatic options in the region are rushing to depict a resurgent Muslim Brotherhood as the gravest threat in the uprising—even though there’s no evidence that the Islamist faction is involved in any real leadership capacity at all, or would come into power. The 1979 Iranian revolution is the most prominent instance of a theocratic seizure of power in the Middle East—and the country’s Shia majority, together with the overall assholic comportment of the Islamic Republic’s leaders, have made the Iranian regime widely reviled among its regional rivals, as the WikiLeaks cables have made abundantly plain.

What’s more, at the level of civil society, Egypt supplies few conditions for a militant Islamic movement—for the simple reason that mass Islamic observance is noncontroversial and already key to much of Egyptian identity. As Haroon Moghul argues at Religion Dispatches, “Egyptians know their religious identity is not under threat.” Despite the secular outlook of Mohamed ElBaradei, who may become an opposition leader, Moghul observes he took part in the “Angry Friday” protest by joining in Friday prayers “before going out into the streets. Whether Egyptians identify with political Islam or secular democracy, their Arabness and Islam tend to be mutually supportive, and certainly not incompatible.” That’s yet another strong point of contrast with the Iranian revolution, Moghul notes:

Muslim societies often have flourishing religious institutions and practices, organic and varied. But in the case of Iran, the regime paradoxically undermined that popular and organic religiosity when they sought to enforce faith through the state. This is an argument for keeping religion and politics separate in the Muslim world: in the interest of defending both from the negative effects of the other.

The other argument for popular sovereignty in the Muslim world is far more straightforward: It’s what the vast majority of Muslims actually want. The 2005-2007 Gallup World Survey of more than 30 Muslim majority countries found that, far from hating Western freedoms, most respondents coveted them—especially the freedom of speech and worship. It’s true that they also overwhelmingly endorsed the idea of Sharia law—but that is not a prescription for jihadist theocracy, as witless American commentators and state legislatures are prone to conclude. Sharia, rather, is a cultural tradition seeking to imbue broad ideals of personal conduct under the rule of law—and far from a monolithic regime of hand-amputating, honor-killing and adulterer-stoning one encounters in dispatches from the American right. Here, yet again, the Iranian theocracy has been made the poster regime for a wide panoply of Muslim believers it does not, in fact, actually represent. You’d think a conservative movement so besotted with lip service to the idea of democracy in the Islamic world would pay closer attention to such pesky details.

As Georgetown's John L. Esposito argues, the ultimate basis for Western antipathy among Muslims is not religion or culture, but rather diplomacy: The vast majority of the world’s Muslims dispute that the United States is sincere in its agenda of promoting democracy in the Middle East.

The same Gallup World Survey shows that:

only 24 percent in Egypt and Jordan and only 16 percent in Turkey agreed that the United States was serious about establishing democratic systems.... Failure to respond to the subversion of the electoral process in Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt, Musharraf's Pakistan, the attempt ‘to manage’ and determine the process of democratization in post-Saddam Iraq, and the refusal to recognize the democratically elected Hamas government in Gaza must be avoided if the West, and America in particular, is to avoid the charge that it operates on a clear double standard.

These perceptions of great-power hypocrisy stand out in still higher relief when contrasted with the benign Muslim views of other Western powers, as Esposito notes elsewhere:

while 74 percent of Egyptians had unfavorable views of the United States and 69 percent said the same about Britain, only 21 percent felt unfavorably toward France. These policy disagreements become especially sharp when we compare Muslims’ perceptions of the United States with their views of its neighbor to the north, Canada—i.e., America without the foreign policy. Sixty-six percent of Kuwaitis... reported unfavorable views of the United States, while just 3 percent assented to unfavorable descriptions of Canada.

Perhaps, in other words, it’s long past time for our exuberant exporters of the American ideal abroad to revise some of the most stubborn articles of their own delusionial faith.



Chris Lehmann is our religion columnist.

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]]> There are countless reasons that the makers of U.S. policy have been caught flatfooted by the uprising in Egypt. As is often the case in human affairs, the most compelling reason is also the basest: We spend $1.2 billion in Egypt to provide “security” and support for U.S. interests in the Middle East—and all that money buys both parties the privilege of looking the other way as the sclerotic Mubarak regime grew more unresponsive to a restive democratic oppostion.

In broader terms, however, American leaders are puzzled by the uprising because so far it has failed utterly to conform to the “Clash of Civilizations” playbook. That is to say, popular revolts in Islamic countries are supposed to be rearguard Islamic protests against Western modernity, unto its innermost parts. That’s why the confrontational rhetoric favored by the Samuel Huntingtons, Dinesh D’Souzas and Daniel Pipeses of the world typically resolves into dark and foreboding talk of the “existential threat" that the antimodern masses in the Arab world represent to the West. That’s also why U.S. political leaders keen to play on such fears harp on their own gift for descrying “moral clarity” amid all that dangerously muddled tolerance preached by the liberal appeasers who shun the brute fact of evil unloosed among a ghastly group of medieval-minded imam-brainwashed zombies, who hate us because of our freedom.

So the wise men seeking to delimit U.S. diplomatic options in the region are rushing to depict a resurgent Muslim Brotherhood as the gravest threat in the uprising—even though there’s no evidence that the Islamist faction is involved in any real leadership capacity at all, or would come into power. The 1979 Iranian revolution is the most prominent instance of a theocratic seizure of power in the Middle East—and the country’s Shia majority, together with the overall assholic comportment of the Islamic Republic’s leaders, have made the Iranian regime widely reviled among its regional rivals, as the WikiLeaks cables have made abundantly plain.

What’s more, at the level of civil society, Egypt supplies few conditions for a militant Islamic movement—for the simple reason that mass Islamic observance is noncontroversial and already key to much of Egyptian identity. As Haroon Moghul argues at Religion Dispatches, “Egyptians know their religious identity is not under threat.” Despite the secular outlook of Mohamed ElBaradei, who may become an opposition leader, Moghul observes he took part in the “Angry Friday” protest by joining in Friday prayers “before going out into the streets. Whether Egyptians identify with political Islam or secular democracy, their Arabness and Islam tend to be mutually supportive, and certainly not incompatible.” That’s yet another strong point of contrast with the Iranian revolution, Moghul notes:

Muslim societies often have flourishing religious institutions and practices, organic and varied. But in the case of Iran, the regime paradoxically undermined that popular and organic religiosity when they sought to enforce faith through the state. This is an argument for keeping religion and politics separate in the Muslim world: in the interest of defending both from the negative effects of the other.

The other argument for popular sovereignty in the Muslim world is far more straightforward: It’s what the vast majority of Muslims actually want. The 2005-2007 Gallup World Survey of more than 30 Muslim majority countries found that, far from hating Western freedoms, most respondents coveted them—especially the freedom of speech and worship. It’s true that they also overwhelmingly endorsed the idea of Sharia law—but that is not a prescription for jihadist theocracy, as witless American commentators and state legislatures are prone to conclude. Sharia, rather, is a cultural tradition seeking to imbue broad ideals of personal conduct under the rule of law—and far from a monolithic regime of hand-amputating, honor-killing and adulterer-stoning one encounters in dispatches from the American right. Here, yet again, the Iranian theocracy has been made the poster regime for a wide panoply of Muslim believers it does not, in fact, actually represent. You’d think a conservative movement so besotted with lip service to the idea of democracy in the Islamic world would pay closer attention to such pesky details.

As Georgetown's John L. Esposito argues, the ultimate basis for Western antipathy among Muslims is not religion or culture, but rather diplomacy: The vast majority of the world’s Muslims dispute that the United States is sincere in its agenda of promoting democracy in the Middle East.

The same Gallup World Survey shows that:

only 24 percent in Egypt and Jordan and only 16 percent in Turkey agreed that the United States was serious about establishing democratic systems.... Failure to respond to the subversion of the electoral process in Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt, Musharraf's Pakistan, the attempt ‘to manage’ and determine the process of democratization in post-Saddam Iraq, and the refusal to recognize the democratically elected Hamas government in Gaza must be avoided if the West, and America in particular, is to avoid the charge that it operates on a clear double standard.

These perceptions of great-power hypocrisy stand out in still higher relief when contrasted with the benign Muslim views of other Western powers, as Esposito notes elsewhere:

while 74 percent of Egyptians had unfavorable views of the United States and 69 percent said the same about Britain, only 21 percent felt unfavorably toward France. These policy disagreements become especially sharp when we compare Muslims’ perceptions of the United States with their views of its neighbor to the north, Canada—i.e., America without the foreign policy. Sixty-six percent of Kuwaitis... reported unfavorable views of the United States, while just 3 percent assented to unfavorable descriptions of Canada.

Perhaps, in other words, it’s long past time for our exuberant exporters of the American ideal abroad to revise some of the most stubborn articles of their own delusionial faith.



Chris Lehmann is our religion columnist.

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]]> http://www.theawl.com/2011/01/american-hysteria-grows-over-a-new-radical-muslim-egypt/feed 12 For Your Own Good: Chipping Away at 'Roe' http://www.theawl.com/2011/01/for-your-own-good-chipping-away-at-roe http://www.theawl.com/2011/01/for-your-own-good-chipping-away-at-roe#comments Mon, 24 Jan 2011 14:00:32 +0000 Chris Lehmann http://www.theawl.com/2011/01/for-your-own-good-chipping-away-at-roe The Supreme Court’s historic Roe v. Wade decision turned 38 last week, and regardless of one’s ultimate view of the issue, the legal right to abortion on demand is clearly in the throes an awkward middle age.

This year’s Roe anniversary coincides with the indictment of Philadelphia abortion provider Kermit Gosnell on eight counts of murder. Gosnell appears to have been the sort of unscrupulous abortion mill operator you’d find in a Jack Chick comic—an answer to the many fervid prayers of pro-life activists keen to make the public abortion understand as murder in the most brutal and forceful terms. When state inspectors suspended his license and closed his clinic down in February, they noted that he performed abortion in any term of a pregnancy, heedless of basic health, safety or sanitation measures.

They reported finding “blood on the floor and parts of fetuses in jars”—though as the Philadelphia district attorney’s office notes, these conditions prevailed only in the high-turnover main facility of Gosnell’s clinic, which catered chiefly to low-income and immigrant pregnant women in the middle Atlantic. A separate part of the clinic, designed to serve better-heeled suburban white patients, was safer and cleaner, the DA reports. Gosnell himself got rich in the process, even though he was never actually licensed as an OB-GYN, charging about $3,000 per procedure, and making $1.8 million; the DA’s office had found $240,000 in cash in his home.

The grand jury report on the indictments spells out the routine butchery of the Gosnell operation in a wealth of horrifying, heartbreaking detail. Seven of the eight murder counts involve him (or one of his all-too-often untrained assistants) ending the lives of viable fetuses—another routine malpractice alleged in the indictments involved Gosnell blithely disregarding or misrepresenting the gestation of a fetus, so as to sidestep Pennslyvania’s Abortion Control Act, which forbids abortions after the 24th week. Gosnell or his fellow clinicians would terminate these more mature fetuses by crushing their spines or slitting their throats. The one non-fetus count in the indictment is a wrenching character study unto itself: In November 2009, a 41-year-old patient named Karnamaya Mongar died after an unlicensed employee of the clinic administered too much anesthesia to her. Mongar had arrived in the United States just four months earlier together with her husband, after spending almost twenty years in a Nepalese refugee camp; the couple had been expelled from Bhutan along with thousands of other dissidents for taking part in pro-democracy protests, and Mongar’s husband, Ash, had just found work at a Virginia chiecken factory. After a Virginia clinic refused her an abortion because Mongar was in her second trimester, she was referred to Gosnell’s operation; there, a clinic’s aide performed an ultrasound, and while Gosnell signed a form stipulating he’d met with Mongar beforehand, he hadn’t bothered to, instead leaving an aide who was by all accounts his least competent anesthesia hand to administer what the indictment. The initials of both Mongar and her daughter, who drove her to the clinic, were affixed to consent and waiver forms, even though Mongar spoke no English and her daughter scarcely spoke any. Mongar was a diminutive 4’11” and weighed 110 lbs, even well into her second trimester; a competent physician would have taken that into account with her anesthesia; but then again, a competent physician would have actually met with his patient and not signed a form falsely representing that he had done so. Over a grueling six-hour ordeal that sought to chemically induce cramping and labor, Mongar was administered heavy doses of sedative to be kept asleep. As the grand jury report tersely notes, “repeated injections of strong narcotics, administered in accordance with Gosnell’s standard procedure, killed Mrs. Mongar.”

Clearly, there is nothing for pro-choice activists to cheer in this grisly saga. And critics of the absolutist, no-slippery-slope defense of reproductive rights—“abortion on demand, without apology,” as the slogan has it—are seizing on Gosnell’s story as a limit-case of where this reasoning leads. The terms of engagement, as always, are the entirely arbitrary trimester-scheme of fetus viability that the Roe decision bequeathed to the partisans as its own sort of scripture. In the worldview of choice absolutism, as Slate’s Will Saletan writes...

...there's no moral difference between eight, 18, and 28 weeks. No one has the right to judge another person's abortion decision, regardless of her stage of pregnancy. Each woman is entitled to decide not only whether to have an abortion, but how long she can wait to make that choice.... You can argue that what Gosnell did wasn't conventional abortion—he routinely delivered the babies before slitting their necks—but the 33 proposed charges involving the Abortion Control Act have nothing to do with that. Those charges pertain strictly to a time limit: performing abortions beyond 24 weeks. Should Gosnell be prosecuted for violating that limit? Is it OK to outlaw abortions at 28, 30, or 32 weeks? Or is drawing such a line an unacceptable breach of women's autonomy?

Yes, the Gosnell case does raise these well worn issues anew—though one obvious rejoinder to Saletan’s rhetorical questions is that it’s not too much to ask that the state competently administer both later-term abortion limits and standard medical regulation and licensing protocols.

Still, Gosnell’s grotesque brand of malpractice, in the Mongar case especially, also touches on the emerging new legal and moral battleground of the abortion debate. As Mother Jones writer Sarah Blaustein notes, abortion foes are increasingly citing the well-being of the mother as the basis for restricting and—so they hope—eventually outlawing the procedure all together. South Dakota’s controversial 2005 bill virtually banning abortion was redrafted to stress the alleged long-term mental-health harm that abortions wreak on women who endure the procedure. And the U.S. Supreme Court, in its 2007 Gonzales v. Carhart ruling upholding the congressional ban on later-term abortions, employed a version of the same rationale. The majority opinion, written by Justice Kennedy, conceded that the proposition holding that abortions harmed the mental health of patients was “unexceptionable,” even though “no reliable data” actually upholds that view. In lieu of such data Kennedy cited the anecdotal testimony presented before the South Dakota legislature—even though, as Blaustein observes, that legislation itself contained no exception for the mother’s physical health.

Such acrobatics point up the rhetorically overloaded character of the seemingly never-to-be-resolved moral debate over abortion. For pro-life absolutists, the fetus in gestation possesses a sort of emotional supra-life, despite so much of the legal debate’s preoccupation of just when a fetus can be said to be defined as an independent human life. In this righteous scheme, the crocodile tears shed over the alleged mental health perils the procedure wreaks on would-be mothers almost entirely crowds out the actual plight of people like Karnamaya Mangar, who was no “culture of death” libertine. She had two daughters in addition to the one who drove her to Gosnell’s clinic, and a grandchild as well; in all likelihood, she and her husband reckoned an unplanned pregnancy was an economic burden they couldn’t fathom facing in a strange land on a chicken worker’s salary. And there’s no rhetorical percentage for the anti-abortion crowd to make the debate about victims such as her, since an outright abortion ban would vastly increase the volume of unscrupulous and unlicensed providers like Gosnell in the marketplace, and thereby multiply the body count among women seeking outlawed abortions.

Meanwhile, for pro-choice absolutists, the hard-fought legal goal of women’s bodily autonomy is the higher good that tends to suborn other moral or legal claims. As Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote in a stinging dissent to Kennedy, the Carhart opinion rested on “an antiabortion shibboleth for which [the Court] concededly has no reliable evidence.... This way of thinking reflects ancient notions about women's place in the family and under the Constitution—ideas that have long since been discredited.”

Still, one can’t help but thinking how little meaning such notions of choice and autonomy wound up having for Mongar, especially after she’d paid so heavily for agitating for democracy in her own homeland. The pat, passionately held certitudes on both sides of the abortion debate fall oddly silent before a system of health care that deliberately ensures a higher quality of basic care for the more affluent—and as the Philadelphia DA observed, even a shitheel like Gosnell knew enough about the real workings of the class-segmented health care market to reproduce its logic in his own facility.

Perhaps it’s no coincidence that the debate over universal health care is prey to the same theatrically gnat-straining brand of moral absolutism—or what amounts to the same thing, the wan subject of difference-trimming resolutions from clerics that are most notable for their eagerness to sidestep the culture-war landmine of abortion rights. The Gossnell indictment doesn’t note what religious beliefs Mongar may have held, but one thing seems clear: She was a collateral casualty of a sclerotic public discourse that, in its patent disregard for making choice a nonlethal good in a fiercely privatized medical marketplace, can fairly be described as faithless.



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]]> The Supreme Court’s historic Roe v. Wade decision turned 38 last week, and regardless of one’s ultimate view of the issue, the legal right to abortion on demand is clearly in the throes an awkward middle age.

This year’s Roe anniversary coincides with the indictment of Philadelphia abortion provider Kermit Gosnell on eight counts of murder. Gosnell appears to have been the sort of unscrupulous abortion mill operator you’d find in a Jack Chick comic—an answer to the many fervid prayers of pro-life activists keen to make the public abortion understand as murder in the most brutal and forceful terms. When state inspectors suspended his license and closed his clinic down in February, they noted that he performed abortion in any term of a pregnancy, heedless of basic health, safety or sanitation measures.

They reported finding “blood on the floor and parts of fetuses in jars”—though as the Philadelphia district attorney’s office notes, these conditions prevailed only in the high-turnover main facility of Gosnell’s clinic, which catered chiefly to low-income and immigrant pregnant women in the middle Atlantic. A separate part of the clinic, designed to serve better-heeled suburban white patients, was safer and cleaner, the DA reports. Gosnell himself got rich in the process, even though he was never actually licensed as an OB-GYN, charging about $3,000 per procedure, and making $1.8 million; the DA’s office had found $240,000 in cash in his home.

The grand jury report on the indictments spells out the routine butchery of the Gosnell operation in a wealth of horrifying, heartbreaking detail. Seven of the eight murder counts involve him (or one of his all-too-often untrained assistants) ending the lives of viable fetuses—another routine malpractice alleged in the indictments involved Gosnell blithely disregarding or misrepresenting the gestation of a fetus, so as to sidestep Pennslyvania’s Abortion Control Act, which forbids abortions after the 24th week. Gosnell or his fellow clinicians would terminate these more mature fetuses by crushing their spines or slitting their throats. The one non-fetus count in the indictment is a wrenching character study unto itself: In November 2009, a 41-year-old patient named Karnamaya Mongar died after an unlicensed employee of the clinic administered too much anesthesia to her. Mongar had arrived in the United States just four months earlier together with her husband, after spending almost twenty years in a Nepalese refugee camp; the couple had been expelled from Bhutan along with thousands of other dissidents for taking part in pro-democracy protests, and Mongar’s husband, Ash, had just found work at a Virginia chiecken factory. After a Virginia clinic refused her an abortion because Mongar was in her second trimester, she was referred to Gosnell’s operation; there, a clinic’s aide performed an ultrasound, and while Gosnell signed a form stipulating he’d met with Mongar beforehand, he hadn’t bothered to, instead leaving an aide who was by all accounts his least competent anesthesia hand to administer what the indictment. The initials of both Mongar and her daughter, who drove her to the clinic, were affixed to consent and waiver forms, even though Mongar spoke no English and her daughter scarcely spoke any. Mongar was a diminutive 4’11” and weighed 110 lbs, even well into her second trimester; a competent physician would have taken that into account with her anesthesia; but then again, a competent physician would have actually met with his patient and not signed a form falsely representing that he had done so. Over a grueling six-hour ordeal that sought to chemically induce cramping and labor, Mongar was administered heavy doses of sedative to be kept asleep. As the grand jury report tersely notes, “repeated injections of strong narcotics, administered in accordance with Gosnell’s standard procedure, killed Mrs. Mongar.”

Clearly, there is nothing for pro-choice activists to cheer in this grisly saga. And critics of the absolutist, no-slippery-slope defense of reproductive rights—“abortion on demand, without apology,” as the slogan has it—are seizing on Gosnell’s story as a limit-case of where this reasoning leads. The terms of engagement, as always, are the entirely arbitrary trimester-scheme of fetus viability that the Roe decision bequeathed to the partisans as its own sort of scripture. In the worldview of choice absolutism, as Slate’s Will Saletan writes...

...there's no moral difference between eight, 18, and 28 weeks. No one has the right to judge another person's abortion decision, regardless of her stage of pregnancy. Each woman is entitled to decide not only whether to have an abortion, but how long she can wait to make that choice.... You can argue that what Gosnell did wasn't conventional abortion—he routinely delivered the babies before slitting their necks—but the 33 proposed charges involving the Abortion Control Act have nothing to do with that. Those charges pertain strictly to a time limit: performing abortions beyond 24 weeks. Should Gosnell be prosecuted for violating that limit? Is it OK to outlaw abortions at 28, 30, or 32 weeks? Or is drawing such a line an unacceptable breach of women's autonomy?

Yes, the Gosnell case does raise these well worn issues anew—though one obvious rejoinder to Saletan’s rhetorical questions is that it’s not too much to ask that the state competently administer both later-term abortion limits and standard medical regulation and licensing protocols.

Still, Gosnell’s grotesque brand of malpractice, in the Mongar case especially, also touches on the emerging new legal and moral battleground of the abortion debate. As Mother Jones writer Sarah Blaustein notes, abortion foes are increasingly citing the well-being of the mother as the basis for restricting and—so they hope—eventually outlawing the procedure all together. South Dakota’s controversial 2005 bill virtually banning abortion was redrafted to stress the alleged long-term mental-health harm that abortions wreak on women who endure the procedure. And the U.S. Supreme Court, in its 2007 Gonzales v. Carhart ruling upholding the congressional ban on later-term abortions, employed a version of the same rationale. The majority opinion, written by Justice Kennedy, conceded that the proposition holding that abortions harmed the mental health of patients was “unexceptionable,” even though “no reliable data” actually upholds that view. In lieu of such data Kennedy cited the anecdotal testimony presented before the South Dakota legislature—even though, as Blaustein observes, that legislation itself contained no exception for the mother’s physical health.

Such acrobatics point up the rhetorically overloaded character of the seemingly never-to-be-resolved moral debate over abortion. For pro-life absolutists, the fetus in gestation possesses a sort of emotional supra-life, despite so much of the legal debate’s preoccupation of just when a fetus can be said to be defined as an independent human life. In this righteous scheme, the crocodile tears shed over the alleged mental health perils the procedure wreaks on would-be mothers almost entirely crowds out the actual plight of people like Karnamaya Mangar, who was no “culture of death” libertine. She had two daughters in addition to the one who drove her to Gosnell’s clinic, and a grandchild as well; in all likelihood, she and her husband reckoned an unplanned pregnancy was an economic burden they couldn’t fathom facing in a strange land on a chicken worker’s salary. And there’s no rhetorical percentage for the anti-abortion crowd to make the debate about victims such as her, since an outright abortion ban would vastly increase the volume of unscrupulous and unlicensed providers like Gosnell in the marketplace, and thereby multiply the body count among women seeking outlawed abortions.

Meanwhile, for pro-choice absolutists, the hard-fought legal goal of women’s bodily autonomy is the higher good that tends to suborn other moral or legal claims. As Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote in a stinging dissent to Kennedy, the Carhart opinion rested on “an antiabortion shibboleth for which [the Court] concededly has no reliable evidence.... This way of thinking reflects ancient notions about women's place in the family and under the Constitution—ideas that have long since been discredited.”

Still, one can’t help but thinking how little meaning such notions of choice and autonomy wound up having for Mongar, especially after she’d paid so heavily for agitating for democracy in her own homeland. The pat, passionately held certitudes on both sides of the abortion debate fall oddly silent before a system of health care that deliberately ensures a higher quality of basic care for the more affluent—and as the Philadelphia DA observed, even a shitheel like Gosnell knew enough about the real workings of the class-segmented health care market to reproduce its logic in his own facility.

Perhaps it’s no coincidence that the debate over universal health care is prey to the same theatrically gnat-straining brand of moral absolutism—or what amounts to the same thing, the wan subject of difference-trimming resolutions from clerics that are most notable for their eagerness to sidestep the culture-war landmine of abortion rights. The Gossnell indictment doesn’t note what religious beliefs Mongar may have held, but one thing seems clear: She was a collateral casualty of a sclerotic public discourse that, in its patent disregard for making choice a nonlethal good in a fiercely privatized medical marketplace, can fairly be described as faithless.



Chris Lehmann is our religion columnist now

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]]> http://www.theawl.com/2011/01/for-your-own-good-chipping-away-at-roe/feed 12 The Growth of a Pentecostal Congress http://www.theawl.com/2011/01/the-growth-of-a-pentecostal-congress http://www.theawl.com/2011/01/the-growth-of-a-pentecostal-congress#comments Mon, 17 Jan 2011 12:00:27 +0000 Chris Lehmann http://www.theawl.com/2011/01/the-growth-of-a-pentecostal-congress It’s hard to say in what, exactly, our elected representatives believe. Oh, this Congress got all sorts of attention for running, and winning, on a tea partyish platform of ideological purity, but when it comes to belief belief—in the cosmic stuff, last things and first scriptural principles—they’re a distinctly squishy bunch.

They are, like the country they represent, majority Protestant, according to a new study by the Pew Forum for Religion and Public Life. But as is the case with the country’s broader Protestant profile, it’s hard to say what, beyond a general feel-good affinity for Jesus, that faith entails. Not surprisingly, the 112th Congress includes stronger contingents of the well-to-do Protestant denominations: it has four times the percentage of Episcopalians, and three times the proportion of Presbyterians, than you find in the general US population.

But the fastest-growing contingent of the Protestant faithful on Capitol Hill are those who don’t specify any denominational leanings. These souls increased by 19 from the last Congress to this one, up to 58 members. Nor is it clear that these are doctrinally non-denominational believers—yes, the schismatic strain in Protestantism is traditionally so robust that not claiming a denominational affiliation can itself be a denominational affiliation—since only two members of the squishy Protestant sample specified such nondenominational membership.

Firm conclusions or demographic trends from this research are necessarily a matter of conjecture—but then, one does well to caution, so is nearly all discussion of religious doctrine. Some Pentecostal observers, mindful of their own denomination’s fervid growth in the spiritual marketplace, have rushed in to suggest the new vaguely churched Protestant bloc in Congress may be charismatically inclined.

As Charisma magazine correspondent Jennifer LeClaire notes, if you move the yardsticks back aways from the previous Congress, to the heyday of “mainline Protestantism”—the stuffier strains of Methodist, Baptist and Congregationalist faith—then the trendline would seem to favor the more experiential and less doctrinally rigid Pentecostal types of belief. The percentage of Methodists in Congress has dropped by half over the past half century, with Episcopalians and Presbyterians logging dropoffs between a third and a half. The poor Congregationalists have dwindled from 27 to four since 1961. “The religious composition of Congress shows a continued American religiosity, but one that is decreasingly associated with Mainline Protestantism,” Institute on Religion and Democracy President Mark Tooley reports. "Just as Mainline Protestantism no longer occupies the central place in public life as it did a generation ago, we are seeing fewer and fewer elected Representatives from those denominations.”

Of course, it’s in the interest of the Pentecostal brand to lay claim to the growth of an influential cohort of believers—however fuzzy it may have become in theological terms, American Protestantism is nothing if not entrepreneurial. But there are plenty of reasons that LeClaire’s surmise is plausible. For one thing, one of the significant trends in modern U.S. religion has been the rise of Pentecostalism—which originated as a hardscrabble, itinerant and disproportionately African-American Protestant denomination in the poorer stretches of the South and West—into a full-blown gospel of success. A particularly militant wing of Pentecostalism—the so-called Word Faith tradition—claims the adherence of Sarah Palin, the spiritual godmother of last November’s tea party semi-sweep, and the most signature on-the-make personage in today’s conservative political scene.

More broadly, however, Pentecostal preachers are the face of the new millennial equation of Christian observance with unbridled material well-being, in the preachings of such otherwise diverse figures as Joel Osteen and the aptly named chief shiller of the “prosperity gospel,” Creflo Dollar. It’s also the faith of world-class conspiratorial-nut-cum-presidential hopeful Pat Robertson, and has supplied an important tributary of the secretive “Fellowship” faith of high-powered DC spiritual elitists, chronicled expertly by journalist Jeff Sharlet.

Beyond its growing elite appeal, however, Pentecostalism has been a key formative influence in the rise of modern conservatism. As historian Darren Dochuck shows in his new book From Bible Belt to Sun Belt, the Assemblies of God movement in Southern California was instrumental in channeling the historically Democratic-leaning southern migrant population into the Reaganite GOP. Pentecostalism closely tracked the sudden postwar surge of prosperity among the golden state’s southern exiles—like the seemingly miraculous growth of the Angeleno aerospace exurbs, charismatic Christianity appeared to bear direct witness to the chosen character of a socially conservative yet anti-hierarchical and experiential cohort of southern believers.

Pentecostals also formed the vanguard of the 1960s and 1970s “Jesus People” youth movement in California and throughout the United States, helping to brand spiritual conservatism as a sunny, future-oriented faith, much as Reagan had. The features of Pentecostalism that the Protestant mainline had formerly found so off-putting—the glossolalia and faith-healing exploits of a primitive Church militant—now took a backseat to the slick musical spectacles produced at Melodyland, an early forerunner to regional megchurches like Rick Warren’s Saddleback empire, constructed fittingly enough in a former musical theater-in-the-round, just down the road from Walt Disney’s Magic Kingdom in Anaheim.

Pentecostals helped lead the way, in other words, toward a more self-consciously modern formulation of evangelical conservatism, one that stressed direct communion of believers with the Holy Spirit, and therefore was ideally suited to the explosion of televangelical and megachurch preaching alongside the rise of the evangelical right. Much as the original Assemblies of God was the lead spiritual outlet for displaced and disenfranchised agrarian southerners, so has modern Pentecostalism become the signature faith of the Amerian exurb—promising instant spiritual gratification and material earthly reward in a scheme of salvation that elevates the virtue of the striving individual believer above the mainline Protestant social model of the “priesthood of all believers.”

And for all the talk of the tea party’s incorrigibly libertarian skepticism when it comes to manning the well-dug bunkers of the culture wars, it bears reminding that the last election cycle saw evangelical voters turn out in record numbers—a show of strength that inspired former Christian Coalition leader (and Jack Abramoff crony) Ralph Reed to hail the dawning age of the “teavangelical.” The spiritual profile of the new Congress may be something of a work in progress still—but if its newly empowered tea party vanguard is smart, its members will clamor to herald the political gifts of the spirit in much the same fashion that Ronald Reagan did.



Chris Lehmann is our religion columnist now.

Photo from Flickr, by John McNab, 1962.

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]]> It’s hard to say in what, exactly, our elected representatives believe. Oh, this Congress got all sorts of attention for running, and winning, on a tea partyish platform of ideological purity, but when it comes to belief belief—in the cosmic stuff, last things and first scriptural principles—they’re a distinctly squishy bunch.

They are, like the country they represent, majority Protestant, according to a new study by the Pew Forum for Religion and Public Life. But as is the case with the country’s broader Protestant profile, it’s hard to say what, beyond a general feel-good affinity for Jesus, that faith entails. Not surprisingly, the 112th Congress includes stronger contingents of the well-to-do Protestant denominations: it has four times the percentage of Episcopalians, and three times the proportion of Presbyterians, than you find in the general US population.

But the fastest-growing contingent of the Protestant faithful on Capitol Hill are those who don’t specify any denominational leanings. These souls increased by 19 from the last Congress to this one, up to 58 members. Nor is it clear that these are doctrinally non-denominational believers—yes, the schismatic strain in Protestantism is traditionally so robust that not claiming a denominational affiliation can itself be a denominational affiliation—since only two members of the squishy Protestant sample specified such nondenominational membership.

Firm conclusions or demographic trends from this research are necessarily a matter of conjecture—but then, one does well to caution, so is nearly all discussion of religious doctrine. Some Pentecostal observers, mindful of their own denomination’s fervid growth in the spiritual marketplace, have rushed in to suggest the new vaguely churched Protestant bloc in Congress may be charismatically inclined.

As Charisma magazine correspondent Jennifer LeClaire notes, if you move the yardsticks back aways from the previous Congress, to the heyday of “mainline Protestantism”—the stuffier strains of Methodist, Baptist and Congregationalist faith—then the trendline would seem to favor the more experiential and less doctrinally rigid Pentecostal types of belief. The percentage of Methodists in Congress has dropped by half over the past half century, with Episcopalians and Presbyterians logging dropoffs between a third and a half. The poor Congregationalists have dwindled from 27 to four since 1961. “The religious composition of Congress shows a continued American religiosity, but one that is decreasingly associated with Mainline Protestantism,” Institute on Religion and Democracy President Mark Tooley reports. "Just as Mainline Protestantism no longer occupies the central place in public life as it did a generation ago, we are seeing fewer and fewer elected Representatives from those denominations.”

Of course, it’s in the interest of the Pentecostal brand to lay claim to the growth of an influential cohort of believers—however fuzzy it may have become in theological terms, American Protestantism is nothing if not entrepreneurial. But there are plenty of reasons that LeClaire’s surmise is plausible. For one thing, one of the significant trends in modern U.S. religion has been the rise of Pentecostalism—which originated as a hardscrabble, itinerant and disproportionately African-American Protestant denomination in the poorer stretches of the South and West—into a full-blown gospel of success. A particularly militant wing of Pentecostalism—the so-called Word Faith tradition—claims the adherence of Sarah Palin, the spiritual godmother of last November’s tea party semi-sweep, and the most signature on-the-make personage in today’s conservative political scene.

More broadly, however, Pentecostal preachers are the face of the new millennial equation of Christian observance with unbridled material well-being, in the preachings of such otherwise diverse figures as Joel Osteen and the aptly named chief shiller of the “prosperity gospel,” Creflo Dollar. It’s also the faith of world-class conspiratorial-nut-cum-presidential hopeful Pat Robertson, and has supplied an important tributary of the secretive “Fellowship” faith of high-powered DC spiritual elitists, chronicled expertly by journalist Jeff Sharlet.

Beyond its growing elite appeal, however, Pentecostalism has been a key formative influence in the rise of modern conservatism. As historian Darren Dochuck shows in his new book From Bible Belt to Sun Belt, the Assemblies of God movement in Southern California was instrumental in channeling the historically Democratic-leaning southern migrant population into the Reaganite GOP. Pentecostalism closely tracked the sudden postwar surge of prosperity among the golden state’s southern exiles—like the seemingly miraculous growth of the Angeleno aerospace exurbs, charismatic Christianity appeared to bear direct witness to the chosen character of a socially conservative yet anti-hierarchical and experiential cohort of southern believers.

Pentecostals also formed the vanguard of the 1960s and 1970s “Jesus People” youth movement in California and throughout the United States, helping to brand spiritual conservatism as a sunny, future-oriented faith, much as Reagan had. The features of Pentecostalism that the Protestant mainline had formerly found so off-putting—the glossolalia and faith-healing exploits of a primitive Church militant—now took a backseat to the slick musical spectacles produced at Melodyland, an early forerunner to regional megchurches like Rick Warren’s Saddleback empire, constructed fittingly enough in a former musical theater-in-the-round, just down the road from Walt Disney’s Magic Kingdom in Anaheim.

Pentecostals helped lead the way, in other words, toward a more self-consciously modern formulation of evangelical conservatism, one that stressed direct communion of believers with the Holy Spirit, and therefore was ideally suited to the explosion of televangelical and megachurch preaching alongside the rise of the evangelical right. Much as the original Assemblies of God was the lead spiritual outlet for displaced and disenfranchised agrarian southerners, so has modern Pentecostalism become the signature faith of the Amerian exurb—promising instant spiritual gratification and material earthly reward in a scheme of salvation that elevates the virtue of the striving individual believer above the mainline Protestant social model of the “priesthood of all believers.”

And for all the talk of the tea party’s incorrigibly libertarian skepticism when it comes to manning the well-dug bunkers of the culture wars, it bears reminding that the last election cycle saw evangelical voters turn out in record numbers—a show of strength that inspired former Christian Coalition leader (and Jack Abramoff crony) Ralph Reed to hail the dawning age of the “teavangelical.” The spiritual profile of the new Congress may be something of a work in progress still—but if its newly empowered tea party vanguard is smart, its members will clamor to herald the political gifts of the spirit in much the same fashion that Ronald Reagan did.



Chris Lehmann is our religion columnist now.

Photo from Flickr, by John McNab, 1962.

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]]> http://www.theawl.com/2011/01/the-growth-of-a-pentecostal-congress/feed 21 Long Distance Projection: Believers Making Sense of Jared Lee Loughner http://www.theawl.com/2011/01/long-distance-projection-believers-making-sense-of-jared-lee-loughner http://www.theawl.com/2011/01/long-distance-projection-believers-making-sense-of-jared-lee-loughner#comments Mon, 10 Jan 2011 12:55:48 +0000 Chris Lehmann http://www.theawl.com/2011/01/long-distance-projection-believers-making-sense-of-jared-lee-loughner Truly senseless acts make for poor sloganeering. Jared Lee Loughner, the gunman who killed six people at a Tucson congressional town meeting, while gravely wounding his apparent target, Democratic Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, seems to have been not at all working from any traditional set of motivations. His now-infamous cache of YouTube videos throws around theories of a new currency and the illegitimate seizure of private property, together with a barely intelligible discussion of himself as a terrorist. He also announced plans to introduce a new number and letter to the alphabet, both represented as bursts of incoherent scribbling—a fair depiction, it seems, of the thought process involved in producing these conceptual breakthroughs. Loughner also described himself as a “conscience dreamer,” though it’s unclear whether he meant that as a sideways indictment of the absence of ethical probity in American life, or simply couldn’t spell “conscious.”

Nevertheless, even a very "different" worldview can be made to serve as a stand-in for one’s pet nemesis in the toy-soldier confrontation. Since Giffords was among the lawmakers featured in the crosshairs-graphics on SarahPAC’s thuggish pitch to unseat pro-health-reform Democrats from districts that went Republican in the 2008 presidential vote, many left-leaning commentators rushed to equate Loughner’s act with tea-party rhetoric run amok. (Palin’s operation has since scrubbed the graphic from the SarahPAC site, with typically dishonest and self-dramatizing flourishes.) Commentators on the right rallied just as briskly to deride “the media"—the right’s own scapegoat of first resort in culture-war agons—for dragging Palin and the Tea Party into the picture. Conservatives gleefully noted that Loughner counted The Communist Manifesto among his favorite books; the left sniped back that he also included Ayn Rand’s gruesome objectivist fantasy We the Living on the same list. Both sides pinned Mein Kampf on the opposition, in strict adherence to Godwin’s law. (Inexplicably, neither political tendency has come forward to denounce the other incendiary literary entries on Loughner’s YouTube profile; The Old Man and the Sea, after all, is a blueprint for violent mayhem right up there with The Anarchist’s Cookbook—and The Phantom Tollbooth may as well be subtitled “The Turner Diaries.”)

Most of this rampant political branding of the Despised Other can, and should, be written off to the desperate point-scoring outlook of the pundit world. But it also bespeaks a little-noted and more serious impulse: to make a delusional event somehow intelligible, arising from a discernible set of motives and designed to achieve a clear (if senseless) public end. It seems likely that Loughner was expecting to declare himself a sovereign ruler—so as to reward himself a fiat currency of his own devising?—in the wake of his crime. But we need him not to be simply a sad, burnt-out weirdo, any more than we can accept that the cast members of “Jersey Shore” are simply alcoholic dullards. This same quest for utter public certainty is a defining feature of the retrograde ideologies of communism and militia-ism that interested parties on all sides set out to denounce. You might even surmise that something like this comforting retreat into absolute postulates drove Loughner mad; or you might not, but it is, at any rate, at least as likely a culprit as The Phantom Tollbooth was.

Religion is another name for the effort to impose a fanciful narrative order on an uncooperative universe, and it’s often baffled me why we don’t own up to it more broadly in our public discourse. Oh, sure, there’s a longstanding theory of political belief as a surrogate—or “functionalist,” as the sociological jargon has it—form of religion. But it’s not so much that we cleave to ideology as a substitute for religion; rather, we typically find political affiliations shoring up the more basic foundation of our identities, even if just by the simple power of exclusion. Take the so-called sovereign citizens movement—the political formation that Loughner’s rantings seem to be in closest accord with. The Anti-Defamation League writes that sovereign adherents subscribe to:

an unusual form of right-wing anarchism that focuses, on the one hand on the importance of local control and, on the other hand, on the avoidance of virtually all forms of authority and obligation. Sovereign citizen ideology justifies these goals by claiming that at one time there was an American utopia governed by English "common law," a utopia in which every citizen was a "sovereign," and there were no oppressive laws, taxes, regulations or court orders. However, a conspiracy gradually subverted this system, replacing it with an illegitimate successor.

By the time America took its currency off the gold standard, sovereignty theorists hold, “the United States government was completely illegitimate, using emergency war powers and other unlawful measures to rule unconstitutionally.” From here it’s but a short step to the various self-dramatizing, and all-too often, self-destructive, flourishes of the sovereign citizen, living within U.S. borders, but proudly outside the country’s governing power (at least in his—and oh boy, are these autodidactic souls ever usually men—own private scheme of governance). Hence the rather bloody litany of the sovereign movement’s public exploits: your Montana Freemen uprising of the 1990s; the smug, ostentatious antics of Timothy McVeigh’s sovereign-minded confrere Terry Nichols at McVeigh’s court proceedings; and just last year, sovereign tax protestor Jerry Kane and his son’s slaughter of two Arkansas police officers. Kane, who had been killed with his son in an ensuing shootout at a Wal-Mart parking lot that wounded two other officers, was a sovereign prophet for the post-meltdown age, holding seminars purporting to show how lienholders could dodge mortgage obligations and foreclosure proceedings, even though his counsel had no actual foundation in law.

But as it happens, the efficacy of these remedies ultimately matters less than the mystical power believers ascribe to them. Groups such as the Freemen dub themselves “Christian patriots,” while last spring, a clutch of Christian militia members in Michigan called the Hutaree planned to stage an attack on local law enforcement as part of the run-up to the endtimes. It’s true that Loughner disavowed organized religion—writing a propos of the government’s illegitimate currency that he refused to “trust in God.” But it’s hard to know what else to call a belief system that outfits an adherent so thoroughly for citizenship in an alternative reality. As the Southern Poverty Law Center notes, the sovereign community—or as it’s sometimes known, the redemption movement—shares many affinities with the separatist subculture of the fundamentalist world (right down, it seems, to the literalist misreading of key founding scripture):

Once in the movement, it's an immersive and heady experience. In the last three decades, the redemptionist subculture has grown from small groups of like-minded individuals in localized pockets around the nation to a richly layered society. Redemptionists attend specialized seminars and national conferences, enjoy a large assortment of alternative newspapers and radio networks, and subscribe to sovereign-oriented magazines and websites. They home school their children so that a new generation will not have to go through the same learning curve that they did to see past the government's curtain to the common-law utopia beyond.

It bears repeating that Loughner’s relative interest in this, or indeed in any, formal political subculture remains largely a matter of conjecture—though according to a memo obtained by Fox News, the Department of Homeland Security has suggested that he had a “possible link” to the kindred anti-Semitic and racist American Renaissance group. (A link that the racist assholes at American Renaissance, for their part, deny.) It seems that at the least, some variant of the sovereign faith recommended itself to this confused kid, and he adopted it as a sort of private religion—that being, by the way, Freud’s definition of neurosis. Armed with the bogus certitudes of an alternate theory of the authentic American republic, Loughner could envision a new currency, an improved English grammar, a career as a terrorist—all while fantasizing about the unconstitutionality of the community college from which he would soon be suspended.

All of us are neurotics, to varying degrees, and we all cope with our condition by succumbing to recuperative fantasies of our own—like, oh, depicting a glyph-like assassin as an adherent of a rival ideological tendency. But then again, the other luxury that comes with a religious world view is the dogmatic conviction that woolly irrational beliefs only belong to heretics.



Chris Lehmann is our religion columnist now.

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]]> Truly senseless acts make for poor sloganeering. Jared Lee Loughner, the gunman who killed six people at a Tucson congressional town meeting, while gravely wounding his apparent target, Democratic Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, seems to have been not at all working from any traditional set of motivations. His now-infamous cache of YouTube videos throws around theories of a new currency and the illegitimate seizure of private property, together with a barely intelligible discussion of himself as a terrorist. He also announced plans to introduce a new number and letter to the alphabet, both represented as bursts of incoherent scribbling—a fair depiction, it seems, of the thought process involved in producing these conceptual breakthroughs. Loughner also described himself as a “conscience dreamer,” though it’s unclear whether he meant that as a sideways indictment of the absence of ethical probity in American life, or simply couldn’t spell “conscious.”

Nevertheless, even a very "different" worldview can be made to serve as a stand-in for one’s pet nemesis in the toy-soldier confrontation. Since Giffords was among the lawmakers featured in the crosshairs-graphics on SarahPAC’s thuggish pitch to unseat pro-health-reform Democrats from districts that went Republican in the 2008 presidential vote, many left-leaning commentators rushed to equate Loughner’s act with tea-party rhetoric run amok. (Palin’s operation has since scrubbed the graphic from the SarahPAC site, with typically dishonest and self-dramatizing flourishes.) Commentators on the right rallied just as briskly to deride “the media"—the right’s own scapegoat of first resort in culture-war agons—for dragging Palin and the Tea Party into the picture. Conservatives gleefully noted that Loughner counted The Communist Manifesto among his favorite books; the left sniped back that he also included Ayn Rand’s gruesome objectivist fantasy We the Living on the same list. Both sides pinned Mein Kampf on the opposition, in strict adherence to Godwin’s law. (Inexplicably, neither political tendency has come forward to denounce the other incendiary literary entries on Loughner’s YouTube profile; The Old Man and the Sea, after all, is a blueprint for violent mayhem right up there with The Anarchist’s Cookbook—and The Phantom Tollbooth may as well be subtitled “The Turner Diaries.”)

Most of this rampant political branding of the Despised Other can, and should, be written off to the desperate point-scoring outlook of the pundit world. But it also bespeaks a little-noted and more serious impulse: to make a delusional event somehow intelligible, arising from a discernible set of motives and designed to achieve a clear (if senseless) public end. It seems likely that Loughner was expecting to declare himself a sovereign ruler—so as to reward himself a fiat currency of his own devising?—in the wake of his crime. But we need him not to be simply a sad, burnt-out weirdo, any more than we can accept that the cast members of “Jersey Shore” are simply alcoholic dullards. This same quest for utter public certainty is a defining feature of the retrograde ideologies of communism and militia-ism that interested parties on all sides set out to denounce. You might even surmise that something like this comforting retreat into absolute postulates drove Loughner mad; or you might not, but it is, at any rate, at least as likely a culprit as The Phantom Tollbooth was.

Religion is another name for the effort to impose a fanciful narrative order on an uncooperative universe, and it’s often baffled me why we don’t own up to it more broadly in our public discourse. Oh, sure, there’s a longstanding theory of political belief as a surrogate—or “functionalist,” as the sociological jargon has it—form of religion. But it’s not so much that we cleave to ideology as a substitute for religion; rather, we typically find political affiliations shoring up the more basic foundation of our identities, even if just by the simple power of exclusion. Take the so-called sovereign citizens movement—the political formation that Loughner’s rantings seem to be in closest accord with. The Anti-Defamation League writes that sovereign adherents subscribe to:

an unusual form of right-wing anarchism that focuses, on the one hand on the importance of local control and, on the other hand, on the avoidance of virtually all forms of authority and obligation. Sovereign citizen ideology justifies these goals by claiming that at one time there was an American utopia governed by English "common law," a utopia in which every citizen was a "sovereign," and there were no oppressive laws, taxes, regulations or court orders. However, a conspiracy gradually subverted this system, replacing it with an illegitimate successor.

By the time America took its currency off the gold standard, sovereignty theorists hold, “the United States government was completely illegitimate, using emergency war powers and other unlawful measures to rule unconstitutionally.” From here it’s but a short step to the various self-dramatizing, and all-too often, self-destructive, flourishes of the sovereign citizen, living within U.S. borders, but proudly outside the country’s governing power (at least in his—and oh boy, are these autodidactic souls ever usually men—own private scheme of governance). Hence the rather bloody litany of the sovereign movement’s public exploits: your Montana Freemen uprising of the 1990s; the smug, ostentatious antics of Timothy McVeigh’s sovereign-minded confrere Terry Nichols at McVeigh’s court proceedings; and just last year, sovereign tax protestor Jerry Kane and his son’s slaughter of two Arkansas police officers. Kane, who had been killed with his son in an ensuing shootout at a Wal-Mart parking lot that wounded two other officers, was a sovereign prophet for the post-meltdown age, holding seminars purporting to show how lienholders could dodge mortgage obligations and foreclosure proceedings, even though his counsel had no actual foundation in law.

But as it happens, the efficacy of these remedies ultimately matters less than the mystical power believers ascribe to them. Groups such as the Freemen dub themselves “Christian patriots,” while last spring, a clutch of Christian militia members in Michigan called the Hutaree planned to stage an attack on local law enforcement as part of the run-up to the endtimes. It’s true that Loughner disavowed organized religion—writing a propos of the government’s illegitimate currency that he refused to “trust in God.” But it’s hard to know what else to call a belief system that outfits an adherent so thoroughly for citizenship in an alternative reality. As the Southern Poverty Law Center notes, the sovereign community—or as it’s sometimes known, the redemption movement—shares many affinities with the separatist subculture of the fundamentalist world (right down, it seems, to the literalist misreading of key founding scripture):

Once in the movement, it's an immersive and heady experience. In the last three decades, the redemptionist subculture has grown from small groups of like-minded individuals in localized pockets around the nation to a richly layered society. Redemptionists attend specialized seminars and national conferences, enjoy a large assortment of alternative newspapers and radio networks, and subscribe to sovereign-oriented magazines and websites. They home school their children so that a new generation will not have to go through the same learning curve that they did to see past the government's curtain to the common-law utopia beyond.

It bears repeating that Loughner’s relative interest in this, or indeed in any, formal political subculture remains largely a matter of conjecture—though according to a memo obtained by Fox News, the Department of Homeland Security has suggested that he had a “possible link” to the kindred anti-Semitic and racist American Renaissance group. (A link that the racist assholes at American Renaissance, for their part, deny.) It seems that at the least, some variant of the sovereign faith recommended itself to this confused kid, and he adopted it as a sort of private religion—that being, by the way, Freud’s definition of neurosis. Armed with the bogus certitudes of an alternate theory of the authentic American republic, Loughner could envision a new currency, an improved English grammar, a career as a terrorist—all while fantasizing about the unconstitutionality of the community college from which he would soon be suspended.

All of us are neurotics, to varying degrees, and we all cope with our condition by succumbing to recuperative fantasies of our own—like, oh, depicting a glyph-like assassin as an adherent of a rival ideological tendency. But then again, the other luxury that comes with a religious world view is the dogmatic conviction that woolly irrational beliefs only belong to heretics.



Chris Lehmann is our religion columnist now.

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