Monday, April 9, 2012

"A Man Who Cannot Get Out of Bed in the Morning Without a hand from God and Karl Marx"



Charles Frost
            I'm reminded of what Alla said towards the end of last week's class with concerns to Theory--that scholars must begin to turn their focus to fundamentalist religion. Alla also mentioned that the academics/intellectuals were surprised that religion, in America and in the Middle East, has returned to the public sphere.. I'm surprised that religion has been playing such a prominent role in politics and world events. It seems natural to me. The extreme religious are already changing academia. After Theory (After Marx seems like a good title, too) is that response; the tools that we currently have do not adequately prepare us to navigate their terrain.

            Without the events of the last ten years, the discussion of (absolute) truth doesn't seem like it would have occurred so soon. Only with an agreed to term of what truth and the purpose of humans could the Left hope to communicate with the other side. Eventually, we probably would have returned to this idea. The framework for this discussion has already been set by those outside of academia and the institutions is now reacting. Is it reactionary?

            Following the idea that the framework has been preset by the fundamentalists: Anthropologist Susan Harding suggests that conversion is a two step process where people enter the "membrane of belief" where they absorb the language and mannerisms of a religious community. I have the feeling that it doesn't matter what type of a community it is. The first step begins to frame the thought process of the individual, something similar to understanding why the community does certain things. The next step is passing out of the "membrane of unbelief." The idea is that the first step happens unconsciously and makes it easier to entertain the idea of making a conscious choice to convert. Maybe this is what I experienced here at this institution.

            I'm not really concerned with the radical Islamic factions and customs. There is a huge chasm between western culture and the mid-east that the practice of mutilating female genitalia, stoning for women for "sins", and forcing them to wear Burkas would never come into style. The idea that this vein of religion will undermine our cultural ideas of human rights to the point where it changes us fundamentally seems unlikely. I'm much more concerned with western cultural religious heritage, the dangers seem subtler in contrast. There is a misconception that evangelical Christianity reaches back through the ages to find purity in a closer reading of the Bible. The present religious community is a step-sibling of postmodernism; the parent that they share is the cultural trauma of the twentieth century.

            I suppose the point is that Christianity, as Karen Armstrong asserts (in the The Battle for God), has been recovering from the one of the first historical criticism of the Bible that was published a few years after The Origin of the Species. It wasn't until the early 1900s in America that Christians began to combat evolution in the court system. Then there was the atomic bomb and Billy Graham came out onto the scene: judgment by fire. Then Francis Schaeffer in the mid to late 1970s, with the help of his son, infused politics into the American religious right (Crazy for God) with their revisionist video series, How Should We Then Live? They interpreted history through the lens of evangelicalism. At the end of the series they introduced the immorality of abortion and soon became a large voting bloc. Other issues were also divided into red and blue.

            unChristian, a book written by Cuningham, Kinaman, and Lyons who work at Christian polling organization The Barna Group, state that the Culture War has been lost. I forget the exact numbers, but the authors whittle evangelical Christians down to 30% of those claiming to follow Christian religion in America. However, they also assert that more Americans are coming into contact with Christianity than before. Considering the current election, I'm not sure that the Barna Group is right. There's a resurgence in the Culture War. Some people call it death throes, but I think that's wishful thinking on their part. It will be interesting to see what  happens when Dobson, Colson, Robertson, Franklin Graham, Hybels, LaHaye and others that rose to prominence from the 1980s pass on. I'm not very familiar with the up and coming generation of ministers and charlatans, but mostly they are offspring of the already powerful. I'm not sure that they will be a coherent group after the fathers pass.

            I see connections between evangelicals and academia. After our class discussion on incest, I'm seeing that all that we do in the humanities is discuss morality. We just don't use that word. Objective Reality means god, truth, and empiricism. Norms and normative are the words we use to say "morals." Existentialism is the term we use to discuss our fear of death, secret considerations of afterlife (some people don't, I acknowledge that), and purpose of existence. We use quotes from others to give credit, but also to displace ownership of ideas we accept but do not really want to be associated with. The Canon is our scripture. I know I don't belong with the church, but sometimes I'm not sure if I belong here either (once a Jesus freak, you're always a freak).

            As a community we are hyper-aware of the consequences of passing value judgments. The meta-ethical considerations that hovers at the edges of our classroom conversations paralyze our ability to come to a conclusion. For example; the "bad" or "evil" practice of cutting up girl's genitals. Or serial killers. Or exploitation. Or child rape. Maybe even petty workplace politics that disrupt peoples' lives should belong on the list. I do agree with Heyne that our culture allows us to express evil thoughts in how we wish to torture or punish these people. I don't think lableing something evil means we respond in an equal fashion of brutality. I feel comfortable in the ability to categorize these activates with a term that expresses my evaluation of these actions. I think Eagleton would agree with me to a point. I don't believe that "evil" is a metaphysical substance, these are natural actions occurring in the natural world.

            I did enjoy the portions where Eagleton discusses Biblical text. I felt like I was in familiar waters. The reliance on Marx troubled me a little but that could very well be my capitalist subconscious. I would like to see what would happen if Eaglton would have placed the last four pages on his book in the beginning. I'm not sure I would classify him as bitter, but this feels like a book written by an old man who just wants to speak his mind.

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