Against the Stream

Obama and Religion

I hesitate to even bring this up, since it simply gives more space to a stupid issue, but since it's relevant to the kinds things I do, I figure I need to write about it.

The Washington Post, in an abandonment of anything resembling journalism, has run a front page story on the rumors (rumors, mind you!) that Barak Obama is a "secret Muslim." And no, I'm not kidding about this.

Let us count the ways that this whole matter is wrong.

In the first place, this is what counts as journalism at the Washington Post these days? A rumor propounded by whack job conspiracy theorists is a front page story? Woe unto us for the state of our news media these days!

But let's turn to the substance of the rumor itself. The basic claim is that Obama, whose father was Muslim, was raised as a Muslim and educated in a "madrasa" (in other words, a "school") in Indonesia. Furthermore, the story goes, he converted to Christianity in a cynical maneuver to gain power, and (apparently) intends to govern as a Muslim (whatever that means) should he be elected.

The whole conspirac theory is inane, as any amount of investigation at all would have uncovered. Actually, all you would need to do would be go to the Snopes Urban Legend Reference Pages in order to get the truth. And lo! The Post story even references the website!

First, Obama's father was an atheist, who had abandoned his Muslim upbringing by the time he married Obama's mother. Second, Obama is a member of the United Church of Christ. In fact, he's a member of one of the biggest UCC congregations in the country and has been very explicit and detailed about his faith commitments. Unlike, say, Bob Dole's switch from a moderate Methodist church to an evangelical Baptist church in 1996, which was clearly a cynical move, or John McCain's pandering to the religious right this time around, Obama clearly speaks the language and walks the walk of Christianity that he practices. He's been a member of Trinity UCC for years, and there's no evidence whatsoever that his faith is feigned.

It would be as if someone had claimed that Mitt Romney was a space alien from Mars, and the Post decided to put that on its front page.

But underlying the simple transparent falsehood of the claim is the underlying anti-Muslim bigotry. It's simply another dimension of the religious paranoia that has gripped so much of our nation since September 11th. The idea that to be a Muslim, or even affiliated with Islam, is to render one automatically suspect, allows both subtle and not-so-subtle religious persecution to pervade our cultural climate. One could not legitimately make similar claims about a Roman Catholic today (though even 40 years ago, that was still possible), and even Mitt Romney is getting a relatively easy treatment of his LDS background (though he's still experiencing considerable heat from some quarters). But people who would never breath a word of suspicion against a Catholic for being a Catholic, or a Mormon for being a Mormon, have absolutely no problem pillorying Muslims for no other reason than that they are Muslims.

The image of a global Islamic conspiracy against the West has become an implicit talking point on so much of the right these days that it is almost pointless to note that Islam is an extraordinarily diverse and disunified religion. There is no real global consensus among Muslims about any political or social strategy, and to suggest that somehow a "Muslim plant" in the White House is the culmination of a Manchurian Candidate type of plot ought to get someone the tinfoil hat treatment in our major media. But no. Instead, it's treated as front page news.

Were Obama a "secret Muslim" the real issue would be one of honesty, not one of religion. A Muslim, per se, is no less qualified to lead the country than a Methodist or a Mormon. Of course, that possibility is rejected on its face by the nutjob right in this country. But the point is moot in any event, since its been well established that this is a rumor without foundation.

'80s Videos Again

Andrew Sullivan has the winners of his '80s video competition over at his place. I just thought I'd link to his winner for Best Video:

And, I just can't resist, the Family Guy take off:

As for his other winners, I simply refuse to link to Lionel Richie's abysmal "Hello" (and remember, I'm the guy who linked to Bonnie Tyler!). But his winner for Best Worst is good for some laughs as well:

Total Eclipse of the What Now?

Andrew Sullivan is running a cheesy '80s video competition over at his place, and one of the nominees is Bonnie Tyler's "Total Eclipse of the Heart," a video which, until today, I had not seen in about 25 years. Sully seems to think there's something sublty sexual about Bonnie stalking through the hall's of a boy's school in a revealing white dress, but the whole thing has always had a kind of Village of the Damned quality to me. You be the judge.

Other interpretations abound. This guy thinks it's the best video ever, writing:

Imagine taking every hair-brained idea that pops into your head, mixing them in a blender, and pouring them into a boy's preparatory school. Then put Bonnie Tyler in a slinky milf dress and highlight Jim Steinman's bombastic production with plenty of slow-mo effects. The end result is truly a work of art.

But then we are gifted with this, er, extensive, exposition of the true meaning of the song by another writer.

With the introduction of there being three shots of a chaotic Last Supper, Mulcahy uses the symbol of the number three throughout the entirety of the video. The number three is a powerful number and has a variety of meanings when used as a symbol, but one of the main characteristics the number three represents as a symbol is that of The Holy Trinity. The Holy Trinity is a religious reference to God the Father, The Son, and The Holy Spirit. Mulcahy uses the number three in ordinary ways, which upon first glance of the video could be undetected or unnoticed. It is the repetition and demonstration of the number three to create a strong emphasis, which is important and worthy of examination. The opening shot of the video is of three lit windows (0:06); there are then shots of three open doors; three lights hanging from the ceiling and each contains three little lights; three white lit candles; and three empty decanters within the first thirty seconds of the video (0:18-0:31). By presenting the audience with these images of three and the symbolism the number usually evokes of The Holy Trinity, subconsciously creates a religious viewing of the video, which in turn also produces a deeper moral issue for the persona of the song, as well as adding to the struggle and battle between what is morally right and wrong. Mulcahy continues with the use of the number three and the religious symbolism in a scene where Tyler is on a balcony above a set of stairs where six boys clad all in black leather are in rows of two, therefore making the number three the predominant visual, are ascending the stairs beneath her. While the audience is shown Tyler standing on the balcony with her legs astride, they are also presented with an image of looking down on the boys who then proceed to make actions that can be interpreted as beckoning Tyler's persona to come down to them, to join them. These images make it appear as though these desirable boys are asking her to make a decent into the underworld or to give into her temptations of desire and lust for them (1:55-2:04). The scene then ends with the camera panning down, and then zooming in for a tight shot on the architecture of an arch between Tyler's open legs (2:30-2:33). What is fascinating about Mulcahy's focus on this specific architecture, is that in many Roman Catholic churches and cathedrals, this Gothic style of arches have been used and are still incorporated into modern churches today is very sexual. These types of arches were normally found in the entryway to the churches and they were designed to look like the woman's labia, due to the fact that the church was thought of to be the female component to Christ, or in other words, the 'wife of Christ' (Marin). Weather Mulcahy deliberately presents the audience with this very sexual religious symbol; it does fit in with everything else he seems to be trying to accomplish with his video adaptation. These arches are probably the most sexually charged religious images within the video and in turn add to the previous scene of temptation the boys clad in black appeared to be offering her. Thus, also putting more of an emphasis on the sexual religious images, that in turn, fuel the persona's battle between what is morally right and wrong.

Jim Stienman's original lyrics to Bonnie Tyler's 'A Total Eclipse of The Heart' are laden with symbols and themes to emphasize the persona's internal struggle of desire from something she cannot have. Russell Mulcahy takes the internal struggle of the persona and the symbols Stienman created and propels and manipulates it into a music video adaptation. He not only draws on the original lyrics, but also enhances them, turning the inner struggle of the persona into a full-fledged battle within herself of what is morally right and what is wrong. Mulcahy accomplishes this feat by drawing on the themes Stienman created; the representation of light versus darkness, religious symbols and the sexual tension those symbols emanate. Though it would appear that when the lyrics and the video are examined at first glance, would appear to have almost nothing in common, but in fact correlate on a variety of levels. Both work together to create a piece of art that challenges social boundaries and the audience as a reader and a viewer to examine the efforts of their creators to see just how they work as one to draw attention to the moral issues faced by today's society.

Freshman comp students take note: The paragraph was invented for a reason!

You have to give credit where it's due though, it takes an enormous amount of dedication to spend this much time exegeting this particular song. I don't know if it qualifies as the worst video of the '80s, but it's definitely in the top 10. Of course, I watched it repeatedly when I was 13 and MTV was constantly on in the background.

Check out Sullivan's contest if you want to vote. If you're interested in watching more cheesy and sexually charged '80s video, check out the link above. Honestly! I don't know why my parents let me watch MTV when I was a kid. I suppose the expected most of that symbolism to go over my head, as it indeed did.

Of Pullman, Atheism, and Golden Compasses

Via Martin Marty's Sightings, I see that the soon-to-be-released film based on Philip Pullman's The Golden Compass has dealt with Pullman's rather strident atheism by ... totally ignoring it:

"With $180 million at stake, the studio opted to kidnap the book's body and leave behind its soul."  Rosin tells how author Philip Pullman, sometimes described as Great Britain's "Christopher Hitchens for kids," which means would-be God-killer and religion-destroyer, succumbed to fiscal lures and the wiles of Hollywood script-writers and producers to turn an anti-God children's book, one of several that wildly popular Pullman has written, into a theologically nondescript but otherwise highly "descript" film.

Whatever Pullman's motivations may have been for allowing the film to become watered down in this way (and truthfully, he may have had very little say), it's unsurprising to me that his anti-religion agenda has been for the most part elided. I've been curious for some time how they would be able to make a holiday children's fantasy movie out of these books without tampering with the fact that the chief villain of the trilogy is, in fact, God.

Whether it will be a good movie with whatever changes they've made is another matter of course. But it does strike me that to make the His Dark Materials saga without God as the antagonist is much like making The Lord of the Rings without Sauron. In any event, it will be a different story, on a fundamental level, than the book.

However, this has not stopped the ravening hordes of the religious right from beginning its bay and howl:

Predictably, Bill Donohue's Catholic League rose to the bait and is publicizing exposes and responses, directed more to the book and the author than to the sanitized but not dull film version.  "Golden Compass: Agenda Unmasked" is the League's blast: "It's a backdoor way of selling atheism. Unsuspecting parents will take little Johnny to see the movie. Johnny likes the movie. Johnny gets the trilogy [which is anti-God] for Christmas."

And this is a problem ... why?

In all seriousness, Donohue seems to be advocating the repression of any actual conversation about religious truth in the public sphere. Is it his aim to protect parents from having to actually answer their childrens' sincere questions about religion by making it impossible to raise those questions without having to face his blustering countanance? It is not, contrary to Donohue's rhetoric, anti-Catholic to challenge Christianity in general, or even Catholicism in particular, to defend and justify its beliefs! While Donohue would deal with such challenges by bullying and bluster, far better would be to attempt to engage the portrayal of religion in Pullman's books, and demonstrate how they are a distortion of religious faith. Donohue's authoritarianism is merely a confirmation of Pullman's points.

There is nothing wrong with advocating atheism in public. Pullman, Hitchens, Dawkins, and their fellows are engaged in a legitimate philosophical inquiry. More's the pity of religious believers are incapable of answering them! (Though, I'll note that I've done so several times on this blog myself).

Nevertheless, I find it amusing that New Line has attempted to deal with the Golden Compass controversy by instructing those involved with the production to "play dumb." Unfortunately, that strikes me as far too apt a metaphor for the entire way we deal with religion in this country in the first place.

Fish on Faith

Stanley Fish, from his perch on the New York Times editorial page, has a new column today on the topic of religion. I'm usually pretty skeptical of Fish's approach, particularly given his dismissal of the public role of religion in a liberal society. (Of course, I, unsurprisingly, think that religion both can and must play an important role in liberal society.)

Today, however, Fish draws our attention to two recent books, one on God and the Problem of Evil, and one by a famed atheist who has come to believe in the existence of God:

Bart D. Ehrman is a professor of religious studies and his book is titled “God’s Problem: How the Bible Fails to Answer Our Most Important Question – Why We Suffer.” A graduate of Princeton Theological Seminary, Ehrman trained to be a scholar of New Testament Studies and a minister. Born-again as a teenager, devoted to the scriptures (he memorized entire books of the New Testament), strenuously devout, he nevertheless lost his faith because, he reports, “I could no longer reconcile the claims of faith with the fact of life . . . I came to the point where I simply could not believe that there is a good and kindly disposed Ruler who is in charge.” “The problem of suffering,” he recalls, “became for me the problem of faith.”

This is, as far as I'm concerned, the crucial question with regard to the possibility of religious faith. Influenced as I am by the theology of Jürgen Moltmann, I differ from Ehrman in terms of what I see as the solution to this "problem of faith," but I recognize it as a problem nonetheless.

I'm frequently amused when Christopher Hitchens, among others of the neo-atheist crowd, discuss the problem of evil as though it has never occurred to anybody before, or as though the paradoxes inherent in it as a problem have not been contemplated even by faithful Christians, who were able to remain faithful despite their recognition of the problem. In his recent debate with Alasdair McGrath, Hitchens virtually quotes Dostoevsky, without ever acknowledging that Dostoevsky posed the problem from a stance of belief, not unbelief.

Nevertheless, I'm sympathetic with Ehrman's position, and I tend to agree with Moltmann that his brand of "protest atheism" the really the only respectable reason for being an atheist. (Hitchens, on the other hand, of course, isn't so much interested in the problem of God and evil, but of religion and evil, and on that basis his position is far less compelling to me.) I'll be interested in reading Ehrman's book (particularly as a fellow PTS grad!), but I'm still very much anamored of Moltmann's position, that it is our freedom and God's solidarity with us in the midst of suffering that are the most important elements in understanding how religion can be justified in the face of evil.

The second book mentioned by Fish is Antony Flew's new book, "There Is a God: How the World’s Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind." Flew, of course, has been recognized for years as one of the leading atheist thinkers in the English speaking world. It would actually be quite interesting to me to see a debate between Flew and someone like Dawkins or Hitchens, given their inveterate opposition to all things religious, and Flew's move on the issue.

When I first heard of Flew's "conversion" (which I put in quotes, because as he has made clear, and Fish reiterates, his belief in God was an intellectual, rather than a religious transformation, based on the arguments), I was actually a bit disappointed, because it seemed to be based on some fairly vulgar interpretations of the "Intelligent Design" argument. But as Fish presents it, it seems to be a far more sophisticated argument, which looks a lot more like the kinds of arguments that my old Princeton professor Diogenes Allen (isn't that a great name!) used to make. As Fish writes:

What exactly did he discover? That by interrogating atheism with the same rigor he had directed at theism, he could begin to shake the foundations of that dogmatism. He poses to his former fellow atheists the following question: “What would have to occur or have occurred to constitute for you a reason to at least consider the existence of a superior Mind.” He knows that a cornerstone of the atheist creed is an argument that he himself made many times – the sufficiency of the materialist natural world as an explanation of how things work. “I pointed out,” he recalls, that “even the most complex entities in the universe – human beings – are the products of unconscious physical and mechanical forces.”

But it is precisely the word “unconscious” that, in the end, sends Flew in another direction. How, he asks, do merely physical and mechanical forces – forces without mind, without consciousness – give rise to the world of purposes, thoughts and moral projects? “How can a universe of mindless matter produce beings with intrinsic ends [and] self-replication capabilities?” In short (this is the title of a chapter), “How Did Life Go Live?”

Flew does not deny the explanatory power of materialist thought when the question is how are we to understand the physical causes of this or that event or effect. He’s is just contending that what is explained by materialist thought – the intricate workings of nature – itself demands an explanation, and materialist thought cannot supply it. Scientists, he says, “are dealing with the interaction of chemicals, whereas our questions have to do with how something can be intrinsically purpose-driven and how matter can be managed by symbol processing?” These queries, Flew insists, exist on entirely different levels and the knowledge gained from the first can not be used to illuminate the second.

<snip>

The usual origin-of-life theories, Flew observes, are caught in an infinite regress that can only be stopped by an arbitrary statement of the kind he himself used to make: “ . . . our knowledge of the universe must stop with the big bang, which is to be seen as the ultimate fact.” Or, “The laws of physics are ‘lawless laws’ that arise from the void – end of discussion.” He is now persuaded that such pronouncements beg the crucial question – why is there something rather than nothing? – a question to which he replies with the very proposition he argued against for most of his life: “The only satisfactory explanation for the origin of such ‘end-directed, self-replicating’ life as we see on earth is an infinitely intelligent Mind.”

I think this is a completely intelligible argument for the existence of God. But, it should be noted, that even the most intelligible arguments will not lead most people from unbelief to belief. Rather, the most carefully crafted and strongly presented arguments can do is open one up to the possibility that one does not in fact have an adequate explanation for everything in the universe, and so perhaps religion has a valid perspective on the world. I can't for the life of me imagine that Christopher Hitchens would find Flew's new perspective convincing (particularly given the low level of sophistication in his own arguments), but if Flew's case succeeds in fending off the case against God, it at least leaves belief as an intellectually respectable option.

In the end, I think that Fish gets it right about the contribution of these two books:

Perhaps an individual reader of either will have his or her mind changed, but their chief value is that together they testify to the continuing vitality and significance of their shared subject. Both are serious inquiries into matters that have been discussed and debated by sincere and learned persons for many centuries. The project is an old one, but these authors pursue it with an energy and goodwill that invite further conversation with sympathetic and unsympathetic readers alike.

In short, these books neither trivialize their subject nor demonize those who have a different view of it, which is more than can be said for the efforts of those fashionable atheist writers whose major form of argument would seem to be ridicule.

And to that I can only add a hearty "Amen!"