Against the Stream

Violence, Regionalism, and Religion in the U.S.

Via Andrew Sullivan, I came across an article that attempts to understand political differences in the U.S. by breaking the country up into eleven distinct "nations," each with its own distinctive culture and history. This approach, the author argues, allows us to understand better some of the apparently intractable problems we're facing, particularly with regard to issues of guns and violence.

Why is violence—state-sponsored and otherwise—so much more prevalent in some American nations than in others? It all goes back to who settled those regions and where they came from. Nisbett, the social psychologist, noted that regions initially “settled by sober Puritans, Quakers, and Dutch farmer-artisans”—that is, Yankeedom, the Midlands, and New Netherland—were organized around a yeoman agricultural economy that rewarded “quiet, cooperative citizenship, with each individual being capable of uniting for the common good.” The South—and by this he meant the nations I call Tidewater and Deep South—was settled by “swashbuckling Cavaliers of noble or landed gentry status, who took their values . . . from the knightly, medieval standards of manly honor and virtue.”

Continuing to treat the South as a single entity, Nisbett argued that the violent streak in the culture the Cavaliers established was intensified by the “major subsequent wave of immigration . . . from the borderlands of Scotland and Ireland.” These immigrants, who populated what I call Greater Appalachia, came from “an economy based on herding,” which, as anthropologists have shown, predisposes people to belligerent stances because the animals on which their wealth depends are so vulnerable to theft. Drawing on the work of the historian David Hackett Fisher, Nisbett maintained that “southern” violence stems partly from a “culture-of-honor tradition,” in which males are raised to create reputations for ferocity—as a deterrent to rustling—rather than relying on official legal intervention.

 This kind of explanation appeals to the historicist in me, and does help to articulate why particular political attitudes seem to correlate with certain kinds of regional identity.

At the same time, I wonder whether it would be interesting to consider whether membership in a particular "nation" needs to be understood geographically. With the patterns of migration in the United States, particularly in the last fifty years, disrupting the kinds of ground in regional identities this article points to, at the same time that mass culture has generalized certain kinds of experiences beyond their particular regional identity, it seems to me that "nationhood" has a lot more to do in this instance with one's "elective affinities" than with one's geographic location (though clearly if you're geographically located in an area where most of your potential compatriots share particular elective affinities, the incentive is high to prefer those affinities yourself).

Anectdocally, what I'm suggesting can be summed by my own experience growing up in Connecticut (in the heart of Yankeedom), and nevertheless seeing a lot of guys with the Confederate battle flag on their t-shirts. I don't think it was all about being a Leonard Skynard fan.

To me though, the most interesting part of this is the way the article roots in the more communiarian and pacifistic tendencies of Yankeedom in the Puritan and Quaker history that the region shares:

Founded on the shores of Massachusetts Bay by radical Calvinists as a new Zion, Yankeedom has, since the outset, put great emphasis on perfecting earthly civilization through social engineering, denial of self for the common good, and assimilation of outsiders. It has prized education, intellectual achievement, communal empowerment, and broad citizen participation in politics and government, the latter seen as the public’s shield against the machinations of grasping aristocrats and other would-be tyrants. Since the early Puritans, it has been more comfortable with government regulation and public-sector social projects than many of the other nations, who regard the Yankee utopian streak with trepidation.

Again, this resonates strongly with my own sense of regional identity, though given the high percentage of Catholics that began to populate the region in the 19th century (particularly the Irish and Italians), I wonder whether their own sense of social solidarity simply merged well with the pre-existing trends within the region, or whether they reinterpretated their cultural and religious identity to match those trends. The article seems to suggest the latter.

But returning to the issue of violence, the article makes some interesting observations:

Scholars have long recognized that cultures organized around slavery rely on violence to control, punish, and terrorize—which no doubt helps explain the erstwhile prevalence of lynching deaths in Deep South and Tidewater. But it is also significant that both these nations, along with Greater Appalachia, follow religious traditions that sanction eye-for-an-eye justice, and adhere to secular codes that emphasize personal honor and shun governmental authority. As a result, their members have fewer qualms about rushing to lethal judgments.

The code of Yankeedom could not have been more different. Its founders promoted self-doubt and self-restraint, and their Unitarian and Congregational spiritual descendants believed vengeance would not receive the approval of an all-knowing God. This nation was the center of the nineteenth-century death penalty reform movement, which began eliminating capital punishment for burglary, robbery, sodomy, and other nonlethal crimes. None of the states controlled by Yankeedom or New Netherland retain the death penalty today.

The article's conclusion is not hopeful:

For now, the country will remain split on how best to make its citizens safer, with Deep South and its allies bent on deterrence through armament and the threat of capital punishment, and Yankeedom and its allies determined to bring peace through constraints such as gun control. The deadlock will persist until one of these camps modifies its message and policy platform to draw in the swing nations. Only then can that camp seize full control over the levers of federal power—the White House, the House, and a filibuster-proof Senate majority—to force its will on the opposing nations. Until then, expect continuing frustration and division.

Why You -- Yes You! -- Should Study Theology

I've been doing theology, in one way or another, for over 20 years, and for many people I interact with, even religious people, that seems a very strange thing to study. So I'm gratified to see that Tara Burton, in The Atlantic, makes the case for why theological study is valuable, even for those who do not believe in God:

The BA I did at Oxford was a completely secular program, attracting students from all over the religious spectrum. My classmates included a would-be priest who ended up an atheist, as well as a militant atheist now considering the priesthood. During my time there, I investigated Ancient Near Eastern building patterns to theorize about the age of a settlement; compared passages of the gospels (in the original Greek) to analogous passages in the Jewish wisdom literature of the 1st century BC; examined the structure of a 14th-century Byzantine liturgy; and read The Brothers Karamazov as part of a unit on Christian existentialism. As Oxford's Dr. William Wood, a University Lecturer in Philosophical Theology and my former tutor, puts it: “theology is the closest thing we have at the moment to the kind of general study of all aspects of human culture that was once very common, but is now quite rare.” A good theologian, he says, “has to be a historian, a philosopher, a linguist, a skillful interpreter of texts both ancient and modern, and probably many other things besides.” In many ways, a course in theology is an ideal synthesis of all other liberal arts: no longer, perhaps, “Queen of the Sciences,” but at least, as Wood terms it, “Queen of the Humanities.”

Yet, for me, the value of theology lies not merely in the breadth of skills it taught, but in the opportunity it presented to explore a given historical mindset in greater depth. I learned to read the Bible in both Greek and Hebrew, to analyze the minutiae of language that allows us to distinguish “person” from “nature,” “substance” from “essence.” I read “orthodox” and “heretical” accounts alike of the nature of the Godhead, and learned about the convoluted and often arbitrary historical processes that delineated the two.

Alana Massey at Religion Dispatches adds to Burton's point by noting that the study of religion is useful not only for understanding the historical processes that affected the world we live in today, but in actually understanding the lived religion of most of the people in the world"

“God will provide,” may seem like an empty, refrigerator-magnet platitude to the non-devout but it is a theological truth to adherents of the Prosperity Gospel in Nigeria. When a majorityof Muslims worldwide believe that poverty and wealth are predestined in accordance with theHadith of Gabriel, there are significant limitations on how effective it will be to upsell bootstrapping in business, education, and politics. Dissecting the Exodus story might be an interesting academic exercise for scholars of ancient Judaism but it is a very real reflection of the escape from political oppression to the approximately 100 million Christians just beginning to worship freely in China.

That motivating theologies aren’t being articulated in academic terms isn’t an indicator that they are not being understood with depth and rigor by those that believe.

One could multiply examples in addition to those offered by Massey, but the underlying point remains the same: To understand the people of the world, one needs to understand their religious outlook. In the absence of such understanding, or worse, in the presence of an attitude that treats all such worldviews as irrational and dangerous (cf. Dawkins, Richard), one will neither understand the motivations of the majority of hte world's people, nor be able to work effectively toward solutions to many of the besetting moral and politicla problems facing the world. One needn't agree with a worldview in order to understand it, but if one refuses to attempt to genuinely understand, than agreement on a wide variety of issues, beyond those of religion, will be much more difficult.

I'd add one another thing: The kind of modernist scorn that Dawkins and others direct toward people who take religion, either their own or others', seriously enough to attempt to understand it from the inside, represents a sort of privilaged condescension which is easy to rest upon when one lives a comfortable life in a privilaged society, and the idea of some form of universal justice or divine providence seems quaint at best. But, when one suffers under the yoke of injustice and oppression, with the knowledge that one will likely die without ever seeing justice, or feeling redemption, or sensing grace of any kind, even of the most earthly sort, the kind of comfort offered by the neo-atheists is cold comfort indeed. And again, one should be able to recognize that this is the case, even if one does not, in the end, agree with the underlying religious worldview that motivates such beliefs.

 

Does the World Need a Church-Based Reality Show (Answer: No)

So, apparently there's a new show starting on National Geographic that's sort of the church version of Supernanny, I guess? Here's a description from Religion News Service:

The trio travel across the United States to assist failing churches, using “the wisdom of Scripture and a little Southern ingenuity” along with some red-faced shouting at obstinate pastors.

So far, six episodes are planned, although the Church Hoppers said they hope to film additional shows. Their targets include a Full Gospel church, a biker church, a cowboy church and even a synagogue.

In the first episode, “Country Salvation,” the Church Hoppers visit a four-hour-long service at a “Bapticostal” church in North Carolina that meets in a sweltering sanctuary with no air conditioning.

They have seven days to fix the decrepit building and to persuade Pastor Larry Roseboro to work with the church he has instead of dreaming of a new sanctuary.

That sounds .... awful. Just awful. And unnecessary. But apparently there's no segement of the U.S. population that is not now subject to the humiliating public narcissism of reality television.

Once upon a time, when there was  thing called "Television Drama" that existed on channels other than AMC, I used to wish for a genuinely good TV series featuring a clergy person. A few anemic attempts were made over the years, and about the closest that anyone ever came was 7th Heavn, a show that I never watched because, in part, it was on the CW, and in part because it looked terrible.

Maybe one of these days there will be a TV show about churches and ministers that will be worth watching, but it sure as heck will not be a reality show about "church rescue consultants."

 

Religion and Doctor Who

At Exploring Our Matrix, James McGrath speculates on the signifiance of religion in the Whoniverse, especially during Russel T. Davies' era. He frames his analysis around a line from the Series 1 episode "The End of the World":

Shuttles five and six now docking. Guests are reminded that Platform One forbids the use of weapons, teleportation and religion. Earth death is scheduled for 15:39, followed by drinks in the Manchester suite.

McGrath argues that this need not be read as a complete prohibition on religion, but rather should be seen as contextual:

The jibe at religion need not be considered a statement that religion is dangerous and ought to be prohibited under all circumstances. Rather, it recognizes that the end of the world is precisely the moment in conjunction with which religion tends to become dangerous. And so ruling it out on this space station makes sense. But that doesn’t mean that it cannot have its place, even in the Whoniverse.

I think this is probably right. There's no reason to believe that the prohibition on Platform One extends to the entirety of the universe. But what I find interesting here is the way that it's framed: "Use" of these things is forbidden. But what does it mean to "use" religion in this context: Presumably it means to treat it as a tool, presumably for violent or nefarious purposes (as with weapons and teleportation). It is, as McGrath argues, "dangerous."

So the question becomes, what's dangerous about religion? If I had to speculate on the answer Davies would give, it would be that religion is dangerous because it divides us into warring, irrational tribes, which would be the sort of standard neo-atheist knock against religion (which, I'll note, doesn't mean that it's wrong, just incomplete). But of course, religion can be dangerous for lots of reasons besides that. For one thing, it can challenge the existing order of things, which every empire strives to preserve. It can actaully expand our circle of empathy beyond those to whom we're most closely related, actually becoming an enemy of tribalism as much, and perhaps more than, a defender of it.

My point here is that "religion" can't be boiled down to a particular thing, let alone be stuck with a label of purely "good" or "evil." Rather it is a multivalant reality which impacts the world in often unexpected and certainly unpredictable ways. And this is precisely what makes it "dangerous" -- there's no telling what it will do when it's allowed to roam free.

Of course, "forbidding" religion is only one way to constrain it's dangerous potential. Another way is to co-opt it, to make it an instrument of the predominating power structures of society. Still another way is to recognize it as dangerous, but to ensure that it's dangerous only in the right way at the right time and toward the right people. One could direct religions revolutionary potential toward those places where revolution is genuinely needed. And still another way is to open up the potential of religion to the creation of new communities in order to allow for a broader, discursive religious reality to emerge, one that prefers dialogue to destruction and openness to closure. 

There's no question RTD is not himself religious (this is widely known), and certainly uses Doctor Who to make some sharp satirical comments about religion. But at the same time, he's also cognizant of the symbolic power of religion, as illustrated in episodes such as "Last of the Time Lords," in which the Doctor is a clear Christ analogue (as I've argued before). Or in "The Impossible Planet/Satan Pit" in which a clearly demonic figure is defeated (exorcised?) by the Doctor.

But back to this particular example, I think the idea here is that in the future society, religion isn't seen as being "unnecessary" but as being an instrument for destruction. There may be time and places where such instruments can be properly used, but clearly Platform One at the end of the planet earth is not one of them.

One question that intrigues me is how Steven Moffat differs from Davies on this. After all, religion is clearly present and functional (if someone different from our own world) in his version of the show. We've got the Anglican Marines and the Headless Monks on the one hand, and on the other we've got the ritual in the "Rings of Akhatan" that is clearly religious in form. The main difference seems to be between religion which is designed to constrain some super-powerful but still finite threat (like the creature in the Satan Pit or the Grandfather in Rings of Akhatan) and religion as symbolic attempt to comprehend that which is in principle infinite (as in what H. Richard Niebuhr might call "radically monotheistic" faith).

Of course, in that last sense, the question is how religion is appropriated in the life of faith, and I think we some of the Doctor's companions, you clearly see the idea of self-giving and sacrificial love as being central to their identities. For my money, both Martha Jones and Clara Oswald most fully exemplify that aspect of faith, as both choose to undergo suffering, and potentially death, for the sake of offering the hope that the Doctor represents to those who need it (in the case of Clara, possibly even to the Doctor himself).

In all there is much to be said about Doctor Who and Religion, and James McGrath is among those trying to say it. There is apparently also a conference on Doctor Who and Religion going on at the University of Manchester this weekend as well. I wish I could have been there. I'm sure it's fascinating.