Big Tent Debate
I've been wondering where I fit in the political cladism system. I thought about "Sept. 10 Democrat," but that was awkward and not quite right. Now Right Wing Sparkle has me and my ilk pegged: "Southpark Republican." Thank you!
She addresses us as a thoughtful lady from the Christian evangelical Deep South. She has a favor to ask:
We can agree that there has to be a safe place for children to be children. And that there ought to be a place for adults to be adults. And that adult children are a pain in the neck. And that freedom to say anything doesn't mean that everything ought to be said.
Perhaps more than many people, I can appreciate your metaphor of faith as a child. I taught my child to honor the old gods of my ancestors, and he accompanied me to the little altar where I made devotions to them. I taught him after my tradition, the tradition of his ancestors. But I warned him not to talk about any of this in school, in his public school, where in 4th grade an "elective" course in Christianity was offered once a week -- down the road in the local Presbyterian church -- and every Wednesday afternoon every kid in his class but him trooped off to attend it.
The rhetorical device of equating faith with a child -- of one's own child -- is a serious eye-opener. You're asking me to understand that you feel about your faith the way I feel about my child. This could be seen as manipulative, but I'll accept it as legitimate: the Christ Child is an icon, after all, the helpless babe pursued by Herod's assassins.
And I think you've wrapped into one your experiences of motherhood and faith. As a parent, I know what you mean. Raising any child is an act of tremendous faith. Guiding a child into Christianity has got to be a difficult thing, with or without "South Park." I'm glad I never had to do it. Here, after all, is a faith based, to put it in the crudest possible terms, on a Father who sends his Son to die. There are some very adult ideas in the Bible -- genocide, incest, slavery, polygamy -- and it requires an adult sensibility to begin to fit them into a perspective of a loving God. May Athena guide you in it!
Yet the tendency to try to make a small world that is entirely child-safe is what led America to its distinctive living arrangement, suburban tract housing. The faults of the suburb have been damned to death, and there's truly a snobbish over-reaction in trash-talking the crabgrass frontier. But it's certainly the case that the burbs have proven as treacherous, in their way, as city streets when it comes to raising children in faith. They have not turned out to be the garden of Eden for the American family, and the echoing boredom of a youth spent there has turned more than a few smart young people into nihilists.
Your faith, if you step back from it and see it in a broader historical and cultural context, is not a child that needs protection. It is a thing of great power. Christians, in other situations, claim this, too. It requires but a brief acquaintance with the history books to know that, under the sign of the Cross, a great deal has been erased from many cultures, and not just frivolous pornography or idiotic cable TV blasphemy. I try not to be prejudicial, but forgive me my wariness.
Is Christianity an essential part of the American common culture? That's what its adherents claim when they justify its intrusion into public schools, for instance. There's a double-edge to this mingling of sacred and secular. Since the separation doctrine is usually called on nowadays by atheist or secular groups trying to keep government from promoting Christianity, it is easy to forget that the separation doctrine was meant to protect religion, not to dishonor it. Mixing religion with civil authority was wrong, the Founders knew, because it was wrong, as Roger Williams put it a century before them, "to pull God and Christ and Spirit out of heaven and subject them unto natural, sinful inconstant man."
Yet here we are in spite of him. Christianity is sifted into the loam and roots of modern American culture. That's why we promote civic celebrations of Christmas, post the 10 Commandments in Courthouses, and teach the Bible as a necessary document for understanding even ribald secular literature (from "The Wife of Bath's Tale" to "The Last Temptation of Christ").
It's too late to pull them apart. If you wish, you can attempt to live apart from the wordly culture, the common culture of a diverse people. You can live like the Amish or the Orthodox Jews, and devote your energies to remaining separate. Yet cruelly, as even these people learn, some of the horrors of life, like sexual abuse, can't be shut out. I'm talking about the real-life horrors, not the TV movie plots.
I appreciate your faith. Despite my frequent head-butting with assertive Christians, I've had many good experiences with others who were more interested in living their faith than in advertising it. And all I have to do is compare my experience with what it might be in, say Iran, to appreciate that, as a non-Christian, I am glad to live in an area where Christians are the dominant faith.
You have picked some extreme examples of mass culture's bad behavior with regard to religion. I'm not familiar with most of them, directly. I can feel the revulsion in your descriptions.
I will gladly stand up with you against thoughtless denigration and Hollywood stereotypes of Christians -- or Southerners, or country people. I can pledge you that. It would help, too, if evangelicals continue to have the courage to distance themselves from the inevitable minority that breeds its own cruel personal hatreds behind holy masks -- the "God Hates Fags" church in Kansas, for instance.
But I do not see the face of Satan on every obstacle that greets every Christian. And I do not want to make decisions about which voices ought not to be given room in the public places of America based on one interpretation of one ancient holy text. We may well come to the same conclusions, by different paths, about things like violent misogynistic rap music. But I won't arrive speaking the word "blasphemy."
Col. Robert G. Ingersoll, the great American agnostic lawyer and politician, in 1887 took up the case of a New Jersey man who had been charged under an old state statute against blasphemy. This is part of what he said in the man's defense:
Ingersoll argued the case for free. The jury found the defendant guilty and sentenced him to $25 and court costs of $75, which Ingersoll paid.
She addresses us as a thoughtful lady from the Christian evangelical Deep South. She has a favor to ask:
So this is what I have to say to my Southpark Republican friends. Let me give you a little perspective if faith is not a part of your life. Imagine that someone you love more than anything in this world; your child, is constantly being depicted in a gross or perverted manner in print, TV, and movies. Imagine a show that depicts your child, calling him by the name you have given him, being sexually raped or molested with no hint that there is anything wrong with that. I would think you would be enraged. You would scream from the roof top.
That is the way religious conservatives feel about this culture. We feel that what we love is being put on display for ridicule and that we are having to raise our children in a culture than not only disrespects the faith we are trying to pass on to our children, but denigrates it in every way that it can from music, to TV, to movies. Every moral value that we convey to our children from pro-life issues to sexual issues to religious issues are considered "judgmental" or "prudish." We honestly feel our children are breathing in the venom our society puts out there and we feel helpless.
We can agree that there has to be a safe place for children to be children. And that there ought to be a place for adults to be adults. And that adult children are a pain in the neck. And that freedom to say anything doesn't mean that everything ought to be said.
Perhaps more than many people, I can appreciate your metaphor of faith as a child. I taught my child to honor the old gods of my ancestors, and he accompanied me to the little altar where I made devotions to them. I taught him after my tradition, the tradition of his ancestors. But I warned him not to talk about any of this in school, in his public school, where in 4th grade an "elective" course in Christianity was offered once a week -- down the road in the local Presbyterian church -- and every Wednesday afternoon every kid in his class but him trooped off to attend it.
The rhetorical device of equating faith with a child -- of one's own child -- is a serious eye-opener. You're asking me to understand that you feel about your faith the way I feel about my child. This could be seen as manipulative, but I'll accept it as legitimate: the Christ Child is an icon, after all, the helpless babe pursued by Herod's assassins.
And I think you've wrapped into one your experiences of motherhood and faith. As a parent, I know what you mean. Raising any child is an act of tremendous faith. Guiding a child into Christianity has got to be a difficult thing, with or without "South Park." I'm glad I never had to do it. Here, after all, is a faith based, to put it in the crudest possible terms, on a Father who sends his Son to die. There are some very adult ideas in the Bible -- genocide, incest, slavery, polygamy -- and it requires an adult sensibility to begin to fit them into a perspective of a loving God. May Athena guide you in it!
Yet the tendency to try to make a small world that is entirely child-safe is what led America to its distinctive living arrangement, suburban tract housing. The faults of the suburb have been damned to death, and there's truly a snobbish over-reaction in trash-talking the crabgrass frontier. But it's certainly the case that the burbs have proven as treacherous, in their way, as city streets when it comes to raising children in faith. They have not turned out to be the garden of Eden for the American family, and the echoing boredom of a youth spent there has turned more than a few smart young people into nihilists.
Your faith, if you step back from it and see it in a broader historical and cultural context, is not a child that needs protection. It is a thing of great power. Christians, in other situations, claim this, too. It requires but a brief acquaintance with the history books to know that, under the sign of the Cross, a great deal has been erased from many cultures, and not just frivolous pornography or idiotic cable TV blasphemy. I try not to be prejudicial, but forgive me my wariness.
Is Christianity an essential part of the American common culture? That's what its adherents claim when they justify its intrusion into public schools, for instance. There's a double-edge to this mingling of sacred and secular. Since the separation doctrine is usually called on nowadays by atheist or secular groups trying to keep government from promoting Christianity, it is easy to forget that the separation doctrine was meant to protect religion, not to dishonor it. Mixing religion with civil authority was wrong, the Founders knew, because it was wrong, as Roger Williams put it a century before them, "to pull God and Christ and Spirit out of heaven and subject them unto natural, sinful inconstant man."
Yet here we are in spite of him. Christianity is sifted into the loam and roots of modern American culture. That's why we promote civic celebrations of Christmas, post the 10 Commandments in Courthouses, and teach the Bible as a necessary document for understanding even ribald secular literature (from "The Wife of Bath's Tale" to "The Last Temptation of Christ").
It's too late to pull them apart. If you wish, you can attempt to live apart from the wordly culture, the common culture of a diverse people. You can live like the Amish or the Orthodox Jews, and devote your energies to remaining separate. Yet cruelly, as even these people learn, some of the horrors of life, like sexual abuse, can't be shut out. I'm talking about the real-life horrors, not the TV movie plots.
I appreciate your faith. Despite my frequent head-butting with assertive Christians, I've had many good experiences with others who were more interested in living their faith than in advertising it. And all I have to do is compare my experience with what it might be in, say Iran, to appreciate that, as a non-Christian, I am glad to live in an area where Christians are the dominant faith.
So maybe you Southpark Republicans can be a little more understanding of those of us who rant against the sexualization of our kids, the crudeness of our public airwaves, and the anger and sadness we feel fighting the Golaith of our society who seems to only care about what adults want and not what kid's need.
We want what you want, a better society. Whenever I look at an issue I don't only look at who is for it, I look at who is against it. That tells me a lot about it. Yall might think about that as well next time you disagree with a religious conservative. Look around you and see who is against us as well.
You have picked some extreme examples of mass culture's bad behavior with regard to religion. I'm not familiar with most of them, directly. I can feel the revulsion in your descriptions.
I will gladly stand up with you against thoughtless denigration and Hollywood stereotypes of Christians -- or Southerners, or country people. I can pledge you that. It would help, too, if evangelicals continue to have the courage to distance themselves from the inevitable minority that breeds its own cruel personal hatreds behind holy masks -- the "God Hates Fags" church in Kansas, for instance.
But I do not see the face of Satan on every obstacle that greets every Christian. And I do not want to make decisions about which voices ought not to be given room in the public places of America based on one interpretation of one ancient holy text. We may well come to the same conclusions, by different paths, about things like violent misogynistic rap music. But I won't arrive speaking the word "blasphemy."
Col. Robert G. Ingersoll, the great American agnostic lawyer and politician, in 1887 took up the case of a New Jersey man who had been charged under an old state statute against blasphemy. This is part of what he said in the man's defense:
Blasphemy is the word that the majority hisses into the ears of the few. Each church has accused nearly every other of being a blasphemer. The Catholics called Martin Luther a blasphemer and Martin Luther called Copernicus a blasphemer. Pious ignorance always regards intelligence as a kind of blasphemy. Some of the greatest men of the world, some of the best, have been put to death for blasphemy. After every argument of the church has been answered, has been refuted, then the church cries, "Blasphemy!" Blasphemy is what an old mistake says of a newly discovered truth. Blasphemy is the bulwark of religious prejudice. Blasphemy is the breastplate of the heartless. The Infinite cannot be blasphemed.
Ingersoll argued the case for free. The jury found the defendant guilty and sentenced him to $25 and court costs of $75, which Ingersoll paid.
