"God is a distant - stately Lover - "

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God is a distant—stately Lover—
Woos, as He states us—by His Son—
Verily, a Vicarious Courtship—
"Miles", and "Priscilla", were such an One—

But, lest the Soul—like fair "Priscilla"
Choose the Envoy—and spurn the Groom—
Vouches, with hyperbolic archness—
"Miles", and "John Alden" were Synonym—

Emily Dickinson

image: 

"Dolly Dingle Paper Dolls," by Grace G. Drayton, courtesy of mainememory.net

How to say "fuck you" in Puritan

"Is this the Worst thy terrors then canst, why
Then should this grimace me terrify?
Why cam'st thou then so slowly? Mend thy pace.
Thy Slowness me detains from Christ's bright face.
Although thy terrors rise to th'highst degree,
I still am where I was. A Fig for thee."

- Edward Taylor, "A Fig for thee Oh! Death"

You're welcome, Part II

"Among the islands of Polynesia, no sooner are the images overturned, the temples demolished, and the idolators converted into nominal Christians, than disease, vice, and premature death make their appearance. The depopulated land is then recruited from the rapacious hordes of enlightened individuals who settle themselves within its borders, and clamorously announce the progress of the Truth."  (Herman Melville, Typee)

"We Americans are the peculiar, chosen people — the Israel of our time; we bear the ark of the liberties of the world." (Herman Melville, White Jacket)

 * * * * * * * * *

A group of American missionaries goes to Haiti in search of orphans to save (with every connotation that little verb can muster). They pick up thirty-three children and head to the Dominican Republic, but are arrested at the border for having taken the children without documentation or without verifying that the children were even orphans. Are these folks kidnappers? (see story here)

Well, to put it plainly, to evaluate the situation based on the act itself rather than on the internal world of these missionaries' thoughts, yes. Yes, they are kidnappers. But what of the world in which they fancy themselves God's elves? What of their belief that they were on a mission ordained by Christ, that they never had any intentions of trafficking children, that they were actually doing good? Must this be taken into account? Again, I say yes; but maybe not in the way Idaho's Central Valley Baptist Church would like.

For the record, I fully buy the story of the missionaries. I do believe that they acted with the best of intentions, and that their enthusiasm and naivete blinded them rather than that their Christian mission is a cover-up for some nefarious plot. And maybe the children had a darker future awaiting them in Haiti than they did in a Baptist-run orphanage in the Dominican Republic or in the custody of adoptive parents in the U.S. This viewpoint was partially validated when it emerged that some of the kids actually were not orphans, but were handed over to the missionaries by their own parents, who were promised that their children would be educated in America and placed in loving homes with swimming pools. So this will not be a commentary on if or how these people should be punished, because frankly I don't have an opinion. What they did was illegal, but was done with the best of intentions. You can't take children out of a country without proper documentation, but some of them were handed over by their own parents. So it's all criminal and beneficent and bad and good and on and on and on...we have courts to address those questions.

What bothers me is not the difficulty of finding an answer to these legal and ethical questions, but the mindset that would justify such actions in the first place. What bothers me is that the real problem resides in the very term thrown around in an attempt to exonerate these do-gooders for their do-gooding: Faith.

Understand, when I criticize faith I don't mean to criticize people of faith (though I think that label is unfortunate for reasons I'll soon disclose) or religion per se, but rather a particular brand of faith that subordinates ethical coexistence to unethical but well-intentioned behavior, and opens the door to a form of imperialism that can always revert back to an ethical standard derived from a plane unavailable for assessment by non-believers.

It's a deficient version of the paradoxical faith of Abraham as conceived by Kierkegaard. In Fear and Trembling, Kierkegaard describes the faith paradox as being predicated on the "strength of the absurd." After decades of barrenness, God has not only granted Abraham a son, but promised that this seed shall give rise to a great nation. Since Abraham has absolute faith in the word of God, he doesn't question the order to kill his son, but, on the strength of the absurd, believes that he can both obey the order and get his son back in some undisclosed way. Furthermore, in obeying the word of God, Abraham here must disregard the ethical--he must reject the social world and exist only to obey God. He can't explain his actions, since they are justifiable only on the strength of the absurd and are simply unjustifiable to the world at large. To the earthly world beyond himself, Abraham is, at the moment he reaches the top of Mount Moriah, no more than a premeditated murderer. That God stops him at the last second does not justify the silent preparation and intended execution (for it had to be intended, otherwise it wouldn't constitute an act of faith and then Abraham would just be some guy).

Kierkegaard calls this rejection of ethics in the service of the absolute the "teleological suspension of the ethical," and if you don't have God whispering in your ear or thundering down at you from the mountaintops you can still teleologically suspend the ethical if you really think you're working toward a godly end. And therein lies the problem with those religious factions who value blind faith over less nihilistic versions of religious observance, like piety, for example. Any post-biblical version of blind faith must be deficient for two reasons: first, Abraham is an example that can't be emulated--otherwise, again, he wouldn't matter. Second, the "knight of faith" (as Kierkegaard refers to Abraham) is not viewed as such by his contemporaries, because of his suspension of the ethical--the very thing that makes him an exemplar of godly action would render him a criminal in his own age. To commend or excuse unethical behavior based on the faith of the transgressor makes no sense, since we don't have access to his revelation, and if we did, his actions wouldn't be exceptional.

So what does this have to do with these missionaries in Haiti? The problem is not that these individuals conceived of themselves as having received orders directly from God (although some have made statements eerily close to such a claim), but that the U.S. as a whole operates with this City on a Hill mentality that always justifies itself based on some hazy endpoint by which we consider ourselves essentially better than others. How is it even debatable that taking thirty-three children from their home country without documentation, without verifying whether they're all actually orphans, without getting permission from any of the three nations involved, would be a case of child trafficking? It's really only debatable if there's some essential difference between these kidnappers and real kidnappers. So when they say "we are not kidnappers," they can't possibly mean that they didn't take children without permission; what they can mean is that they aren't Ukrainian pornographers, Thai pimps, Mauritanian slave drivers, etc. What they mean is "we are Americans," and that's supposed to be a valid defense. Still, no one in their right mind would deny that such actions--even if committed with the best of intentions--have massive potential for now giving the green light to "real" traffickers. And yet every day on every channel defenders of these people's actions are taken seriously when they defend them not on the grounds that their violation of the law was a mistake, an idiotic and arrogant move that they regret, but that they didn't violate the law because they acted in good faith.

By this absurd logic a surgeon could retroactively excuse operating with blunt instruments if he just claimed belief that those instruments were somehow better than whatever else was available. And that's exactly the mentality with which we so often excuse our actions*. Take the horrors of Blackwater (whose CEO, by the way, saw himself as a Christian crusader) in Iraq and how they're so often handled by defenders of the Bush administration. They're not murderers, they just made some mistakes. That those mistakes actually include murder doesn't make them murderers. Why? Because they had the right idea, and so did we when we hired them. So although I'll reiterate that I believe the Central Valley Baptists acted with the best of intentions, I'd also add that those intentions are only any good within an all-too-prevalent ideology which dictates that the job of charitable Americans is not just to help the less fortunate survive and get back on their feet, but to save them from themselves and to do so by converting them to our clearly superior ways.


*Of course, this situation in Haiti is an isolated and highly unique incident; this kidnapping isn't part of American policy in that region, nor is it the modus operandi of the vast majority of Christian missionaries. However, it is indicative of an underlying sense of entitlement drawn from the popular (and almost exclusively Christian) notion of American exceptionalism. Would the conversation about this issue be so polite and receptive to their defenders if the missionaries had been Venezuelan? What if they represented a mosque instead of a church? I don't think it would.

Beyond the laundry.

Just when I thought the church would stop and leave me to practice passive heresy in peace, the pope goes and opens his mouth. Condoms contribute to the spread of AIDS now. I, as a white middle class American male, never felt the urgency of the church's disdain for prophylactics. I knew it was frowned upon (having never been married and all), but we were never talked at about birth control, and especially not about condoms. Abortion, yes, but condoms and birth control pills were simply an accessory to sex. That is, sex is wrong, but if you're ok with that you should probably use a condom.

Now, I think it's safe to surmise that the pope doesn't actually oppose the policy I just stated: if you're not worried about eternal damnation he probably prefers that you at least have some consideration for others and try not to spread sexually transmitted diseases. The problem, of course, is that he did not say this. He said that the distribution of condoms actually hurts attempts to fight the spread of AIDS. Meanwhile the Vatican's talking heads gushed about recent increases in membership.

Hooray for increases in membership! It's like the old days, but without the galleons and heavy artillery.

illustration by AD McCormick, in The Land of the Golden Trade, by John Lang

So fresh and so clean.

As I've mentioned before, I have an ambivalent relationship with religion in general and Roman Catholicism in particular. Suffice it to say that I'm usually a heretic among the faithful and an apologist among non-believers. The latter position--never easy to maintain--has recently become even more difficult due to an impressive streak of three news stories in two days which have revealed that the biggest threat to Roman Catholicism is the abject cluelessness of its own leadership.

The incident most attractive to the international media took place in Brazil, where the life-saving abortion of twins from a pregnant nine-year-old rape victim resulted in the excommunication of her mother and doctors.

The story most immediately troubling for Americans consists of a Chicago bishop threatening to close Catholic hospitals should the Freedom of Choice Act be passed.

And finally, remarkable for sheer absurdity, the Vatican's official paper, L'Osservatore, celebrated International Women's Day by publishing an article (which I can't find in its entirety anywhere) declaring that the washing machine is the invention most responsible for liberating women.

So, in the interest of saving children's lives, the Brazilian bishop punishes a group of people for saving a child's life while the rapist (the girl's stepfather) escapes excommunication, which should not surprise anyone familiar with the Vatican's procedure for handling child molesters within its own ranks. Meanwhile, in Chicago, the church cleverly denies its clout and plays the victim, vowing to engage in civil disobedience to the great detriment of millions of real victims. Its many mouthpieces are quick to point out that these are private hospitals, but neglect to mention that they receive public funds and seem to have forgotten that this same qualification has historically been the argument for refusing care based on race, inability to pay, and other no-no's for the Holy See. Then of course there's the washing machine, which liberated women much in the same way that Eli Whitney's cotton gin lightened the workload of southern slaves, or that the guillotine helped create a climate averse to capital punishment, or that the atom bomb has succeeded in deterring war since 1945.

What bothers me is not that I disagree with the church's positions--that's nothing new--but the belligerence with which it has suddenly decided to express its views. In these instances the church has picked its battles for the express purpose of provoking confrontation. From the absolutely disgusting display in Brazil to the vindictiveness of the threat in Chicago to the downright idiocy of the washing machine article, the Catholic Church has decided that its best chance at survival in the twenty-first century is to emulate the Jerry Springer show. Continuing to employ such a strategy will not only destroy the church in the long run, it will take a whole lot of credulous sheep down with it.

photo credit: Samsung

This is not an academic blog.

This morning I held the first session of the class I'll be teaching this quarter: Writing 39B, Critical Reading and Rhetoric--Class, Poverty, and the American Dream. Contrary to the barrage of horror stories we were fed in training, I found it a rather pleasant experience. These wide-eyed freshmen were sweet, polite, organized, receptive. They gave thoughtful answers to my questions and listened attentively when I explained to them why critical reading and rhetorical analysis matter.

By the end of the hour I had, on one hand, the sense that everything would be alright; the quarter was off to a good start. On the other hand, I was a bit irked by our preparation: why hadn't we been prepped more about logistics, policy and procedure, rather than spending so much time in teaching workshops training ourselves to think of our students as a herd of fundamentalist sheep out to destroy their leftist instructors? Sure, UCI's undergradute population is rather conservative, but why spend so much time talking about it--actually preparing for it with no little trepidation--prior to entering the classroom?

I was giving voice to these thoughts with my roommate this evening at the In-N-Out near campus when we were distracted by the following exchange taking place between two UCI undergrads just to my left:

Young Lady #1: Yeah, I thought about that, because it's like, Sarah Palin has a whole bunch of kids. And she just had a baby with Down Syndrome, so I just don't think she should be trying to take on that job right now. I mean, she can't really do that job, right?

Young lady #2: Well yeah, but that's not even why Democrats don't like her. They don't like her because, like, they're liberals. And, like, liberals don't believe in God.

I would like to thank these two for making me look like an idiot. For the record, I still have some faith in my students. More faith, apparently, than I do in God.

Maybe God still speaks Portuguese.

The Portuguese community in Artesia has for many years circulated a statue of Our Lady of Fatima to homes of community members for increments of a week at a time. The idea is that during that week families are to pray the rosary together. Despite its nod to devotion, such an affirmation of faith seems to me an unintended yet rather obvious acknowledgment of the failure of the very thing it aims to safeguard. That is, if we really believe, why don't we pray the rosary more often? Putting a statue in one's living room (although voluntary) practically makes devotion obligatory. That is probably the point to many, but forced devotion can't be called faith anymore than forced obedience (playing with Machiavelli here) can be called love.

The fact that I can even still pray the rosary in Portuguese is something of a source of pride despite the fact that I haven't been a practicing Catholic or praying Christian in quite some time. I was raised Catholic and served as an altar boy when I was younger; even now I must admit that I've remained more than a little enamored with the pageantry and imagery of Catholicism. Furthermore, deaths in the community (and, in a tightly-knit community such as ours, one stays updated on plenty) are always observed with a rosary, resulting in frequent opportunities to practice over the years. For me the rosary, prayed in Portuguese, has always been more of a way of remaining connected with my culture and community. Sometimes I wonder if that's disingenuous, but I do not think it's particularly unique.

It has always seemed to me that the apparition at Fatima has more significance to Portuguese people as a national event than a religious one. The Catholic Church does not mandate belief in it, and I've known people whose avid faith results in unquestioning adherence to the story of the shepherd children as told by Lucia dos Santos even as they give rational explanations for their disbelief in the apparitions at Guadalupe or Lourdes. From any skeptic's perspective, the only substantive difference between the three stories is the nation in which each takes place. So we venerate Nossa Senhora de Fatima as a matter of Portuguese pride rather than Catholic faith and, in doing so, pray the same rosary that the French pray in honor of the Lourdes sighting and Mexicans pray in honor of the Guadalupe sighting.

If I'm right about this, I suppose in a way it matters more that you remember the words than that you believe in their efficacy. There's something tragic about that realization which is not blunted for someone like myself who--even as a faithful, credulous altar boy--had severe doubts about why the hell Mary would concern herself with Soviet politics.

Getting to the point, I'm visiting my parents this weekend and they have the statue. On my way to the shower, I hear my father ask, "You want to pray the rosary with us?" Now, he can tell I don't want to; I can tell he really wants me to. "It's only ten minutes," he says. And he's right. If anything, it isn't inconvenience that bugs me but rather the creeping sense of my own disingenuousness. I sit down with them in front of the statue and my dad, almost apologetically, remarks, "Might as well. It's been here all week and we haven't even been praying." Then he proceeds to lead the rosary, occasionally stumbling over certain parts and laughing at his own mistakes.

Having personally witnessed my father's crises of faith over the years, the first thing I noted at that moment was that when I was a kid there's no way he would have chuckled in this way. He would not have likely made the little mistakes in the first place. Here again, prayer as such seemed to take the backseat: if to me it's a way of staying Portuguese, to my parents it's a way of gathering the family peacefully in one place.

Oddly enough, realizing this was a bit scandalous to me. If my parents don't fully believe, where does that leave me and my polished Portuguese-ness? For an instant I found myself the returning tourist angered that the quaint village he'd once loved had moved on and, catching myself in that sentiment, I felt ashamed. How dare I exoticize my own parents in this way? And my own culture? Shame! Yet that is (again, assuming I'm right about what really matters here) precisely what we do to ourselves with this statue, with our traditions. Exoticize our past, our culture, our ethnicity, our little blip in space and time. We Portuguese-Americans go to visit our relatives in the old country and lament the fact that nobody goes to church anymore, but it has more to do with our romanticizing of a "quaint" past than with lamenting a loss of faith.

It's patronizing and embarrassing, and yet I genuinely love my culture and its traditions. Maybe I'm a hypocrite or an impostor, but if that's so then I'm not alone. Not within the Portuguese community or any other that I may be a part of. I don't suppose any overt affirmation of a movement or belief can help but serve as a marker for its eventual downfall. Nor do I think that any tradition can help being both bastardized and sentimentalized--otherwise it would fail as a tradition. It would simply die. Then what?

Well, then you wake up in the morning and see if you still agree with what you typed after midnight the night before without giving the thing much thought. That's what.