Denison Journal of Religion

The

Denison Journal of Religion Volume XI: Number 1 Spring 2012

1 A Case for Heresy

11 Peter Berger on the Rise and

Claire Navarro

Dylan Reaves

Fall of the Theory of Secularization

20 The Baha’i Faith in America, 1893-1900:

Joshua Rager

A Diffusion of the America Religious Zeitgeist

37 Making Room for Two in One: The Conflictive Relationship between American and Catholic Identities in American Literature

46 We Swim, We are not Swallowed

Kimberly Anne Humphrey

Taylor Klassman

The

Denison Journal of Religion

Published by the Denison University Department of Religion Volume XI: Number 1 Š 2012

The content of the Journal shall be academic discourse which promotes and illuminates community dialogue. Appropriate topics of submissions include but are not limited to the secular critique of religion, inter religious dialogue, the interpretation of sacred texts, the interaction of religion and society, the validation of ethical discernment, and issues of race, gender, and class.

Student Editors Eleanor Swensson and Kimberly Humphrey

Faculty Editorial Board John Cort John Jackson Jonathan Moore Christine Pae Harold Van Broekhoven David Woodyard

And a special thank you to

Sandra Mead, Academic Administrative Assistant for all that she does to make this publication possible

About the Contributors Claire Navarro graduated in May of 2011.

Dylan Reaves is currently a junior. He is a triple major in Religion, Philosophy and Sociology/Anthropology.

Joshua Rager is currently a junior. He is a Religion major.

Kimberly Anne Humphrey is currently a senior. She is a double major in Religion and English.

Taylor Klassman is currently a junior. She is a double major in Religion and English.

Note from the Editors The past year has been filled with reading, discussing, selecting, and proofing essays for the editors of this journal. As a pair, we have spent considerable time discussing this Journal’s role in this department, this university, and as a showcase of student work. Students of the liberal arts are constantly asked to write. For any scholar, these papers can begin to feel like chores. It is for this reason that publications like the Denison Journal of Religion are so important—they offer students the distinct opportunity to take pride in their work and reflect upon the time, effort, and passion that are involved in the creation of excellent academic work. As editors, we are proud to introduce those outstanding pieces that are to follow.

Claire Navarro’s essay reflects upon the origins and current use of the words “heresy” and “blasphemy” and asks the reader to contemplate the possible politicization of their use. Furthermore, Navarro contemplates how open dialogue as opposed to dogmatic declarations could change the tone of mainstream Christianity. Dylan Reaves’s paper follows Peter Berger’s writings on the importance on prominence of secularization. Reaves is insistent upon the significance of this phenomena for all modern people—believers and nonbelievers alike and dives into potential consequences of its existence. Josh Rager analyzes Baha’i as a distinctly Americanized religion not rooted in the traditional Protestant Christianity. Rager’s piece opens up more broadly to contemplate the necessity of change in religion as it adapts to new landscapes and the creation of distinct religious identities. Furthermore, Rager’s piece makes it clear that any discussion of American religious history must recognize its great variety. Kim Humphrey’s essay looks at the depiction of Catholicism in American literature from the mid-20th to early 21st centuries and contemplates how these depictions clarify the possible tension of living as an American Catholic. Taylor Klassman’s paper analyzes queer theology in several contexts, most prominently Christianity, and reflects upon the possibility of a new relationship between homosexuality and religion that can rise above current social stigmas.

All of the issues these essays raise are particularly relevant to the modern context and the implications are thoughtfully considered by the authors. The constant and significant presence of religion in daily experience is also brought to the forefront in these essays. Finally, these essays show the seeds of possible solutions for the issues they so carefully consider.

We sincerely hope that you enjoy this year’s issue of the Denison Journal of Religion.

Regards, Kimberly Humphrey, Senior Editor Daniel McCready, Junior Editor

A Case for Heresy

A Case for Heresy Claire Navarro *Note to the Reader: “Heresy,” in this study ,is to be understood to signify the following. Within the context of ancient Palestine, “heresy” denotes all ideologies, beliefs and practices that did not fit within the agenda of the Early Church, this agenda being the unity of doctrine, belief and institution. Within the context of the more recent present and when referred to generally, “heresy” signifies all ideologies that are perceived as unacceptable by the mainstream and arguably exclusive understanding of God’s Word by Christianity today. Such “unacceptable,” “heretical” ideologies are vast in number and can be identified without much imagination on the part of the reader. One ideology, for example, might be the acceptance of homosexuals into the Church and the spiritual recognition of gay marriage. In this investigation, however, when referred to generally and in the present, “heresy” was imagined to mean, specifically, all ideologies that might clash with the following verse found in John 14:6: “Jesus answered, ‘I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.’”

Today, heresy and its cousin, blasphemy, are negatively connoted and recognized. Calling someone a heretic or referring to his or her work as heresy is not only insulting, but also a strike against his or her perceived reputation, morals, and individual persona, not to mention an erasure of any and all credibility that he or she held in the past, present and would have held in the future. To condemn the opinions, beliefs and ideologies of an individual as heresy, especially publically, is to exclude this individual and his or her opinions, banishing him or her to the recesses of society. Such exile labels this individual as “contaminated,” a “poor influence,” a “misguided soul” and someone who should be avoided if those remaining within society wish to retain their credibility and status as ‘acceptable’ community members. It is perhaps this long history of social ostracism and marginalization of heretics that has caused the traditional societal and ideological exclusion of these extreme, unconventional and/or ‘bizarre’ individuals to be considered legitimate and acceptable in the mind of the public.

The following questions are those that inspired this study: 1a) What has been and what is considered religious heresy? 1b) Why? and 2) Ultimately, is the marginalization of those considered heretical merited, or is it political? When used 1

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in this way, “political” suggests that the assigned dominance of one ideology over another is due to merely the preference and perceived authority of the group in power. In short, this study explores the development and the history of the negative, condemnatory attitude against heresy, and then considers the implications that such an exploration holds for both today’s society and religious institutions.

The evaluation of the presence of heresy within the history of the Christian Church in particular should be perceived not as an attack, but rather as a case study for the way in which Christianity and, even more expansively, the religions of the world, approach the topic of heresy.

To begin answering the questions that prompted the study, an evaluation of the historical evolution of heresy is needed to document any changes in the form and/or understanding of the word “heresy”; such changes may hold implications for how heresy should be understood today. In his book, Heresy: A History of Defending the Truth (2009), Alister McGrath, the Chair of Theology at the University of Oxford in London reveals that in the original form of the Bible, the Greek word, hairesis, from which the term “‘heresy’ is derived…originally meant an ‘act of choosing,’ although over time it gradually developed the extended sense of ‘choice,’ ‘a preferred course of action,’ ‘a school of thought,’ and ‘a philosophical or religious sect’” (qtd. on 36, 37). Heresy or hairesis was first identifiable with the word “choice,” and then later developed the denotation of a particular religious group or sect. Hairesis was an alternative or a “separate, identifiable [group]…

[It was] clearly understood to be a neutral nonpejorative term, implying neither praise nor criticism…The term [was] descriptive, not evaluative” (McGrath 37).

There was no negative stigma or connotation associated with the word. When considering the word’s origins, the possibility that “heresy” prompts not condemnatory judgment, but rather describes merely that which is “different,” arises. A historical example that McGrath uses to support his terminological analysis of the word, hairesis, is the word’s use by the first-century Jewish historian, Josephus, who referred to the different branches or “groupings” of Judaism – Sadducees, Pharisees, and Essenes – as hairesis (37).

As mentioned by Paul D. Hanson, Professor of Old Testament at Harvard Divinity school, in his book, A People Called: The Growth of Community in the Bible, these three branches of Judaism where different in their approach to Scripture and their interpretation of how they had been “called” to relate themselves and their religion to the surrounding world (467); however, all hairesis were sects within the Hasidim (h˘asîdîm) movement. The Hasidim was “a community living in anticipation of what God would do to deliver and vindicate them” (Hanson 425); 2

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it was formed by the Zadokite priests who had been expelled from the temple by the more Hellenistic and pragmatic Maccabees or Hasmoneans (Hanson 346); unlike the Hasmoneans, the exiled Zadokite priests and their Hasidim movement was less focused on human agency and more socially, politically and economically reliant on the divine providence and intervention of God. The three different hairesis that developed – the Sadducees, the Essenes, and the Pharisees – were thus sects of the single, overarching Hasidim. “Heresy” in this context denoted merely ideological and religious differences; it did not condemn the different sects of blasphemy and it did not denounce them for holding unconventional, alternative and/or threatening beliefs.

Of the three hairesis, the Sadducees participated the most in Hellenized society, economy and politics. For this reason, they were the most wealthy and aristocratic of the three hairesis. Because they understood the Law of Torah only literally and therefore rejected the oral, more interpretive tradition of their fellow hairesis, their faith remained inapplicable and separate to their social, economic and political involvement in Hellenized society (Brueggemann 2; Hanson 349, 380).

The Essenes were quite the opposite of the Sadducees. While the Sadducees were the most socially immersed of the three hairesis, the Essenes were the most socially isolated. The Essenes perceived the surrounding Hellenized culture and “polluted” Hasmonean temple tradition as threats to the preservation of the Yahwistic Law. Because they viewed Hellenized society and the misguided practices and beliefs of the temple as a faith contaminant that would surely be destroyed upon the arrival of the apocalypse, the Essenic hairesis receded from society to form the secluded city of Qumran (Hanson 492). In Qumran, the Essenes interpreted the Law in isolation, becoming increasingly apocalyptic, lawfully regimented and exclusive of all outsiders not of their Essenic hairesis (Hanson 347).

The religiosity of the third hairesis, the Pharisees, was located between that of the Sadducees and that of the Essenes. Unlike the Sadducees, the Pharisees did not completely immerse themselves in Hellenized society and banish their religiosity to the private realm; nor did they, like the Essenes, abandon the increasingly Hellenized community of ancient Palestine by withdrawing completely from the boundaries of society. Rather, when interpreting the Law, the Pharisees understood their religiosity to be in relationship with the secular world; their religious interpretations corresponded with and adapted to the present social, economic, political and historic climate. As a result of their ability to understand and interpret their faith amidst a time of constant change (Hanson 349), the Pharisees were the hairesis that sustained the Israelite-Jewish tradition by evolving and renewing the 3

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Jewish tradition, and, because of their adaptability, eventually outlasted the other two sects within the h˘asîdîm (Hasidim).

The Sadducees eventually became so immersed in Hellenistic culture that their religiosity became secondary, fading into the background and eventually disappearing. The Essenes, on the other hand, so severely excluded themselves from the rest of society and so strictly governed themselves (i.e. their practice of celibacy, making Qumran a dying community (Hanson 372)), that they soon faced extinction, only later to be wiped out by invaders during the 70 C.E temple destruction (Hanson 378). Regardless of their interpretive preferences, all three sects – hairesis – were members of the overarching Hasidim movement, which greatly valued the Torah and the maintenance of the authenticity and survival of the Jewish tradition amidst an expanding Hellenized world and a corrupted temple.

Given that hairesis originally meant “sect,” denoting the mere presence of differences and not the presence of delinquency within a group, and given that without such hairesis, particularly the Pharisees, the Jewish tradition (from which the early Christian movement was born and/or continuous with) would have disappeared, it seems that the existence of hairesis or “heresy” was what ensured the survival of the Jewish tradition. By allowing the Jewish tradition to adapt and evolve in a way that made it relevant and applicable to the changing times, heresy permitted the dialogue between religion and the contemporary culture of the Hellenized world, ensuring the survival of the Jewish faith and making the future birth of Christianity possible. Considering that heresy historically served a very helpful and positive purpose, it is interesting that many people today believe that heresy should be avoided, especially if one wishes to evade post-mortem damnation.

It was not until the second century B.C.E. that the previously neutral meaning of the word, hairesis, began to adopt a more negative connotation. With “an increasing recognition of the importance of developing and sustaining a secure doctrinal core for the maintenance of Christian identity and coherence” (McGrath 23), the developing church began to identify alternative sects and religious groups negatively and target them as threats that would sabotage its attempts at doctrinal unity. During a time when the young, developing church was trying to institutionalize, organize and identify itself, there existed the concern that “factionalization [was] destructive of Christian unity and encourag[ed] rivalry and personal ambition” (McGrath 37, emphasis added). “Factionalization” was the division of Christianity into diverse factions or groups, each with its own opinions on how the message of Jesus should be interpreted and applied to the present. Though the early Church wished to avoided factionalization, it was not the existence of 4

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multiple and diverse hairesis or factions that was problematic, but rather it was the negative consequences that such diverse groups would have on the unity of the Christian church (McGrath 37). In other words, diversity was not the issue, but rather the consequences that that diversity had on the agenda and particular goals of the Church was perceived as the problem.

With the expansion of the Early Church, the negativity associated with the consequences of diversity based upon the beliefs of the particular, dominant group began to prejudice the understanding of diversity itself. With diversity or “heresy” now considered negative, there began to arise a dominant strand of thought perceived as the positive, mainstream and favored religious ideology. The idea of orthodoxia was born; it was the “binary opposite” of hairesis; the former was considered “good,” the latter was perceived as “bad.” While the orthodoxia represented order, unity and a secure identity, hairesis signified chaos, factionalization and a confusion and disorganization of beliefs and practices. Eventually, the manner in which an ideology or person was judged as either heretical or orthodox “began to emerge as a way of excluding certain groups and individuals from the Christian church” (McGrath 39). With the perception of diversity and its consequences as a consolidated threat, a shift in understanding occurred; rather than regarding hairesis as a neutral alternative and diverse ideology that could compliment and contribute to religious dialogue and theological interpretation and evolution, “hairesis now meant a school of thought that developed ideas that were subversive of the Christian faith” (McGrath 39, emphasis added), while the orthodoxia constituted “an authentic and normative version of the Christian faith” (qtd. in McGrath 39).

An orthodox criteria had been formed by the Church; to deviate from the criteria – from the mainstream thought and belief – was to be heretical and an enemy of the Church.

In addition to the risk posed by the expansion of Hellenism and the creation of a mainstream orthodoxia, the increasing military threat of foreign nations caused the Early Church intensify its focus on the establishment of a secure religious identity. “The struggle for survival in a hostile cultural and political environment often led to other issues being seen as of lesser significance” (McGrath 24); the rising tension with other nations further discouraged the existence of diverse understanding and hairesis and increased the myopic desire to create and maintain an identity and consistent creed. As Alister McGrath wrote, The rise of controversy forced increasing precision of definition and formulation. And with this increasing concern for theological correctness came an inevitable tightening of the boundaries of what was considered as authentic Christianity. The periphery of the community 5

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of faith, once relatively loose and porous, came to be defined and policed with increasing rigor…An idea [or hairesis] that was once regarded as mainstream thus gradually became sidelined, and eventually rejected altogether (25).

Definition and formulation were of the utmost importance; if the faith did not have these, the Early Church believed it would become exposed to outside corruption and influence. Such exposure was a dangerous consequence that could be detrimental to the survival, expansion, promulgation, and proselytizing of the new, mainstream faith tradition. Thus, the orthodoxia was formed to protect the integrity of the Christian identity and to provide a defined, non-diverse religious community that could unite under a single identity in the face of adversity. The hairesis, alternatively, were exiled and marginalized to the excesses of society.

Given, however, that the term hairesis began as a neutral term that merely described the differing sects within a particular tradition; and provided that it was not the hairesis itself that spurned the development of a negative connotation, but rather the consequences of the diversity implicit within the hairesis; and considering that the most significant early English translation of the New Testament – published in 1526 by William Tyndale (c. 1494-1536) – interpreted the word hairesis to mean “sect,” and it was not until the 1611 King James Bible version of the Bible that hairesis was referred to as “heresy” (McGrath 37-38), it is appropriate to ask the following: is the negation and negative connotation of heresy today as accurate and legitimate as presently thought?

It is important to remember that though the Bible is a holy doctrine, it is also a book that, though perhaps divinely inspired, was recorded, interpreted and translated by humanity. As Miroslav Volf notes in his book Exclusion and Embrace (1996), the lure of ‘mimetic realism’ – the belief that [people’s] statements can correspond exactly to reality – must be resisted; the notion that [people] can hold a mirror to the past and behold it in ‘pure facts’ must be rejected. What [individuals] see in the mirror of [their] reconstructions is the past mixed with some present, [they] will behold the other upon whom [themselves] are dimly superimposed (244).

With regard to the Bible, which is a literary document that contains the writings and recordings of various authors spanning a diverse chronological spectrum of ancient history, it should be understood that the Bible is not without its own biases and shortcomings. It is the product of interpretations of individuals years 6

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and centuries before. It is a particularized interpretation by individuals located in particular places within history, with biased backgrounds and specific experiences that have conditioned their life perspective. The world and how people perceive it, record it, and act in it is all based upon personal and biased interpretation and conditioning. For example, “history is…not denied or displaced; rather, it is interpreted, being seen in a particular way” (McGrath 23). That which is considered orthodoxia is really just interpreted as orthodoxy.

To use the terminology of theologians Paul Tillich (Systematic Theology (1951)) and James Cone (God of the Oppressed (1997)), the “ultimate concern” (Tillich 51) and “social a priori” (Cone 40) of an individual also have much to do with the inability to remain neutral in any social or mental scenario. The “ultimate concern” is exactly what it sounds like – it is that which concerns any individual ultimately (51); it is that which is most important to an individual; it could be family, loyalty, work, money, etcetera. Given the ultimacy of the concern, the concern filters down into every aspect, idea and interpretation of an individual’s life. It could be said that the Early Church’s ultimate concern was to expand and to establish unity and a clearly outlined doctrine. Therefore, every decision it made was centered upon that ultimate concern; its perception of other ideas, theologies, interpretations and hairesis, and its judgment of those diverse theological perceptions were arguably measured against, and eventually disregarded because they did not fit with the Church’s ultimate concern for unity.

Similar to an individual or institution’s “ultimate concern,” the “social a priori” is the life lens through which that individual or institution views the world.

The social a priori is created by a mixture of ultimate concern, life experiences, and identity. Through the a priori, an interpretation is made particular and unique.

Because the ultimate concern and the social a prior shape the outlook, the life perspective and “the box” from which an individual and/or institution think and understands, these two elements dictate what is accepted and what is denied by controlling the biases and particularized interpretations of that individual or institution. When such a theory is used to describe the way in which the Early Church constructed and organized the Bible and the communities it created, a ray of hope is revealed as a renewed understanding for the Early Church’s categorization of orthodoxia and hairesis is realized. Heresy, particularly within Christianity, might not be as “bad” as it has been contemporarily interpreted to be; the negativity that is associated with it might rather be the result of the normalization of the biases held by the Early Church, which found heresy’s diversity to be problematic and contrary to its agenda of established unity.

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Considering that within every interpretation and world understanding there lives a biased, particularized belief, if such a belief is forced upon others or used to judge the alternative or “heretical,” exclusion is born. In Exclusion and Embrace (1996), biblical scholar, Miroslav Volf, provides a tip for “enriching” one’s particularized way of thinking as well as “correcting” one’s perhaps exclusive view of diverse interpretations: “Enlarging one’s thinking” allows one to achieve “double vision” (213). Enlarging one’s thinking occurs by “letting the voices and perspectives of others especially those with who we may be in conflict, resonate within ourselves, by allowing them to help us see them, as well as ourselves, from their perspective, and if needed, readjust our perspectives as we take into account their perspectives” (Volf 213). In addition, double vision implies “reversing perspectives [which] may lead us not only to learn something from the other, but also to look afresh at our own traditions and rediscover their neglected or even forgotten resources” (Volf 213). By enlarging one’s thinking and allowing the self to look at and consider the views, opinions and beliefs of others, rather than creating an exclusive barrier between those of different thinking, a door to diversity is opened, creating a channel through which dialogue, interaction and reasonable discourse can occur between the “orthodoxy” and those whose beliefs were previously hairesis.

This investigation does not wish to criticize maintain Christianity, but rather it attempts to remind the mainstream of the important role heresy has played in the biblical past and then, by extension, to imply that heresy might also be quite important to the present. The desired consequence of such a reminder is the following: that the religious mainstream, including but not limited to Christianity, will consider and dialogue with those who hold oppositional, “heretical” views as it remains humble of its own interpretative understanding and as it attempts always to adapt in way that allows it to sustain and to better understand and exemplify the Judeo-Christian core principles of love, compassion and righteousness.

By extension and through implication, the ultimate questions that this investigation hopes to surface in the mind of the reader are these: 1) Does the blind and dogmatic following of the orthodox, mainstream Christian belief exemplified by John 14:6 - “Jesus answered, ‘I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.’” – lead to the automatic disregard, condemnation and/or self-righteous pity of all those who value alternative ideologies and/or heresies? And 2) Does such a disregard for those beliefs considered “heresy” juxtapose the core Judeo-Christian principles of love, compassion and righteousness?

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Works Cited

Cone, James H. God of the Oppressed. Rev. Ed. New York: Orbis Books, 1997.

Hanson, Paul D. The People Called: The Growth of Community in the Bible. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2001.

McGrath, Alister. Heresy: A History of Defending the Truth. New York: HarperOne, 2009.

The New Jerusalem Bible: Reader’s Edition. Wansbrough: Doubleday, 1990.

Tillich, Paul. Systematic Theology. Vol. 1. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1973.

Volf, Miroslav. Exclusion and Embrace: A Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness, and Reconciliation. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1996.

Works Consulted

Benjamin, Don C. and Victor H. Matthews. Old Testament Parallels: Laws and Stories From the Ancient Near East. New Jersey: Paulist Press, 2006.

Borg, Marcus J. Jesus in Contemporary Scholarship. Harrisburg: Trinity Press International, 1994.

Brueggemann, Walter. The Prophetic Imagination. 2nd Ed. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2001.

Bultmann, Rudolf. Form Criticism: A New Method of New Testament Research.

Trans. Frederick C. Grant. New York: Willett, Clark & Company, 1934.

Bultmann, Rudolf. Jesus Christ and Mythology. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1958.

Cone, James H. A Black Theology of Liberation. New York: Orbis Books, 1990.

Daly, Mary. Beyond God the Father: Toward a Philosophy of Women’s Liberation.

Boston: Beacon Press, 1985.

Dodd, C.H. The Parables of the Kingdom. 3rd ed. London: Nisbet & Co. Ltd., 193.

Haight, Roger. Jesus Symbol of God. New York: Orbis Books, 1999.

Hanson, K.C. and Oakman, D.E. Palestine in the Time of Jesus: Social Structures and

Social Conflicts. 2nd ed. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1998.

Hecht, Jennifer M. Doubt a history: The Great Doubters and Their Legacy of Innovation from Socrates and Jesus to Thomas Jefferson and Emily Dickinson. New York: HarperSanFrancisco, 2003.

Herzog, William R. Parables as Subversive Speech: Jesus as Pedagogue of the Oppressed. Louisville: John Knox Press, 1994.

Herzog II, William R. Prophet and Teacher: An Introduction to the Historical Jesus.

Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2005.

Jeremias, Joachim. The Parables of Jesus. 6th ed. New York: SCM Press Ltd., 1963.

“Karl Marx quotation On religion as the opium of the people.” Age-of-the-sage.org: Transmitting the Wisdoms of the Ages. 2011. Google. <http://www.age-of-thesage.org/quotations/marx_opium_people.html>.

Kloppenborg, John S. The Shape of Q: Signal Essays on the Sayings Gospel. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1994.

Navarro Claire. “The Allegorical and Social-Historical Understanding of the Parables of Jesus: How Should the Parables be Understood?” Essy. Denison U. 2010.

Navarro, Claire. “Alternative Hermeneutics as Hypotheses.” Essy. Denison U, 2011.

Navarro, Claire. “Malachian Clues to Historical and Theological Evolution.” Essy.

Denison U, 2010.

Malley, Brian. How the Bible Works: An Anthropological Study of Evangelical Biblicism. Oxford: AltaMira Press, 2004.

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McFague, Sallie. Models of God: Theology for an Ecological, Nuclear Age. Philadelphia: Fortress press, 1987.

Meeks, M. Douglas. God the Economist: The Doctrine of God and Political Economy.

Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1989.

Meeks, Wayne A. The First Urban Christians: The Social World Of the Apostle Paul.

2nd Ed. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983.

Moltmann, Jürgen. Theology of Hope: On the Ground and the Implications of Christian Eschatology. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1967.

Perrin, Norman. Jesus and the Language of the Kingdom: Symbol and Metaphor in New Testament Interpretation. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1976.

Raphael, Mellissa. The Female Face of God in Auschwitz: A Jewish feminist Theology of the Holocaust. New York: Routledge, 2003.

“Socrates Quotes.” Good Reads. 2011. Google. <http://www.goodreads.com/author/ quotes/275648.Socrates>.

Schottroff, Luise. The Parables of Jesus. Trans. Linda M. Maloney. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2006.

Taylor, Mark Lewis. The Executed God: The Way of the Cross in Lockdown America.

Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2001.

Tweed, Thomas A. Crossing and Dwelling: A Theory of Religion. Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2006.

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Peter Berger on the Rise and Fall of the Theory of Secularization

Peter Berger on the Rise and Fall of the Theory of Secularization Dylan Reaves Though an interest in modernity may be greater in the overall scheme of his work, discussions of secularization are the earliest consistent theme in the writing of sociologist and theologian Peter Berger. From his very first book, he shows a great deal of interest in the causes of secularization, its effects, and possible ways to react to it – even reverse it. However, unlike his stances on many other issues, such as modernity and politics, his perspective on secularization has changed radically over time. Early in his career, Berger, like most sociologists in the 1960’s, believed that secularization was an inevitable byproduct of modernization and that religion was slowly fading out of society. As time went on, he and his academic peers began to realize that not only was this not the case, but nearly the opposite was occurring. Religion was (and still is) experiencing resurgences in various forms all over the world. Thus, his discussion on secularization goes from one of concern with the loss of religion to the task of explaining why his earlier predictions did not occur.

The History of Secularization Berger contends that an explanation of the history and origins of secularization is crucial to understanding any argument about it. Originally, “secularization” simply referred to the removal of land from religious authority. Of course, this canon definition is not necessarily a complete view of the implications of the word today, as it has taken on radically different and emotionally charged connotations for different groups of people. For example, for Christians, secularization is sometimes equitable with de-Christianization, heresy, “paganization”, and other negative terms, while for modern atheist and agnostic groups, secularization is often associated with progress, freedom from religion, and liberation of mind.

Berger himself defines secularization as “the process by which sectors of society and culture are removed from the domination of religious institutions and symbols” (Berger 1967, 107). Thus, all forms are encompassed, whether that be the original meaning involving the loss of land, the more modern cultural shift away from “sacred” control, or the resulting shift in consciousness that comes from this societal change.

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As a specialist in the sociology of knowledge, Berger seeks to identify the building blocks, so to speak, of any major societal thought process. One of the most important ways to do this is to understand the “primary carriers” of any change in social consciousness. Primary carriers are the institutions and practices that are directly responsible for affecting and altering the way people think. Berger maintains that those nearest to, most affected by, and most involved in industrial society are the ones most affected by secularization. Thus, industrialism itself is the primary carrier of secularization. This is a result of numerous factors, including the fact that highly industrialized societals typically have more explanations for natural phenomena, or as Berger refers to it, “the pervasive influence of science” (Berger 1967, 110). It is this connection that is partially responsible for Berger’s initial linking of the process of modernization with that of secularization, for industrialism and technological advancement are primary carriers of both.

In what might be a surprising argument, Berger states that some of the roots of secularization lie in Christianity; specifically, in Protestantism. In fact, he asserts that there have been secularizing notions coming from Christianity since its earliest days, even back into its origins in Judaism. Most recently, this was epitomized in the drastic changes brought about by Martin Luther in 1517, during the Protestant Reformation. Essentially, Protestantism removed all of the more ethereal or “magical” aspects of Catholicism, whittling the faith down to a more basic level.

According to this new form of Christian thought, miracles no longer occurred with the same frequency, or had the same significance as they once had. Mass, with its deep meanings and weekly miracle of transubstantiation (the conversion of bread and wine to the actual body and blood of Christ), was done away with entirely.

All communication with the souls of the dead, or any significance of the saints beyond historical interest, was eliminated. Protestants did not believe the world was constantly being affected by divine forces; instead, God had a more laissez-faire approach, though certainly not to the extent of Deism. The sacred and the profane were pulled further from one another, existing in two entirely separate and rarely, if ever, connected realities. Many of these beliefs were long held to be essential to belief in God, or Christianity. When people began to lose the miraculous and transcendent aspects of religion, it became easier and easier to pull away from the religion as a whole – in other words, to become secularized. For Protestants, there was only one manner of communication with the divine, and only one fragile thread connecting an individual with God. When this line of communication fell into doubt, the entire foundation of that individual’s beliefs was destroyed.

Going further back into the historical roots of Christianity, even Judaism was 12

Peter Berger on the Rise and Fall of the Theory of Secularization

extremely secularizing when compared to the faiths of the other cultures that surrounded the early Jews. For other prominent societies around the Israelites, such as the Mesopotamians and Egyptians, the sacred was constantly interacting with our world. Every major event, every human action, every position of power, was as a direct result of the interference of the gods, or their divine will. The world and its people existed in connection with, and under the blanket of, the world of their divinities. This is another important consideration – there were numerous gods and goddesses, all with different personalities and domains of power.

The Judeo-Christian God, on the other hand, is a solitary and omnipotent being. Unlike the gods of their oppressors, the god of Israel did not exist inside the Israelite’s cosmos, and was instead outside of it. He had not been created along with the world; he created it, and was timeless, having no beginning set by any kind of creation. This god was not connected to the Israelites by any territorial or “natural” law; instead, they were bonded by a pact, a covenant, and were only bonded through this historical agreement and resulting obedience. Finally, this new god was entirely unaffected by human meddling – no amount of magic or ritual could do anything to this omnipotent master. Man’s history became extremely important, replacing the mythology of other societies with accounts of great people – King David, the prophets, and Esther, for example. All of these factors were extremely secularizing, as God is removed from mankind to an extent hitherto unknown in other religions. Everything was rationalized, and the early religious leaders made sure to purge the faith of many “magical” understandings that had previously been standard in religions across the globe. Thus, from its creation in exceptionally rational Judaism, to its removal from the retrogress of Catholicism into mysticism as a result of the Protestant Reformation, Christianity has had a great deal to do with secularization in the cultures it influences.

Secularization and the Modern Church Though Christianity certainly has many of the roots of secularization, there are numerous factors in the modern world contributing to its spread. Most directly responsible for this is pluralism, the growing acceptance of having large numbers of religions co-existing. This has to do with the Bergerian concept of “legitimations.” Legitimations are the objectified “knowledge” that explains, and most significantly, justifies the social order – in other words, the explanations of why things are the way they are. Historically, religion itself is the most legitimating force for any given society. As such, a society with only one religion requires very few legitimations and is extremely powerful. However, as more religions are introduced, 13

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it becomes increasingly difficult to resist anomic interference, for the legitimations of any one religion seem increasingly weak. Additionally, religion can no longer rely on the government in a pluralistic society, for all religions are treated equally in some manner (whether that be equally oppressed or equally supported). As religion begins to take on a form more palatable to the everyday citizen of a pluralistic society, it becomes increasingly individualistic in order to not interfere with the other affairs of this individual. Thus, secularization is furthered in this divide between private religion and public secularism. Again, there is connection here with the process of modernity, for secularization is aided by the public/private division that Berger previously cited as a byproduct of modernization.

Berger was very concerned in his early writing with the effect that this would have on the church – arguably, his theological standpoints have been influenced by this concern ever since he first expressed this fear. He argued that religious institutions are aware that the modern world is changing their strength, and as a result, are changing the ways in which they interact with society. Bureaucratic practices are becoming both more common and more necessary in the churches.

As they bureaucratize, the different faiths, as well as different sub divisions in each faith, become increasingly cooperative. The ecumenical movement, characterized as an attempt by the different denominations to come together and consolidate some beliefs in order to not be so divided, of the early and mid-20th century is a perfect example of this occurrence. When the different denominations begin to cooperate in this way, there is naturally some degree of homogenization. Essentially, the faith world itself turns into a marketplace. Religion becomes a commodity, one that gradually changes to fit the demand of the buyer. Indeed, the religious bureaucracies can and do begin to form cartels, getting together to metaphorically “set prices” on their religious goods and to further collaborate on what to give the people.

Ultimately, all these shifting mentalities within the church caused what is commonly referred to as the “crisis of theology.” Countless views have surfaced and been countered within theology, creating a great deal of disparity and debate within the church itself. The liberalism of some is countered by the orthodoxy of others, only to be challenged again by a radically secularized version of theology itself, with the drastic “death of God” movement. Berger did not say definitively what the outcome of this would be. However, it does seem that Berger, in the end, believed that the destination of modern society was going to end in the general secularization of the world.

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Desecularization This, however, was not to be his final view. As time passed, Berger began to realize that, despite his own predictions and the predictions of the academic community at large, the world has not been completely secularized. To the contrary, he ultimately argues that the world is as religious as ever, and in fact, in some cases, is more so now than it was before. This directly disproves the so-called secularization theory of the 1950’s and 60’s, as outlined above, which suggested that it was an unavoidable fact of modernization that the world would become more and more secular. To some extent, he believes that the theory was partially right, for modernization has had some overall secularizing effects. But importantly, modernization has also led to numerous counter-secularizing efforts. Additionally, he notes that “secularization on the societal level is not necessarily linked to secularization on the level of individual consciousness” (Berger 1999, 3).

Reactions to secularization from religion necessarily came in one of two forms: rejection, or adaptation. Rejecting the secularized worldview requires implementing one of two strategies. First is the strategy of religious revolution, wherein a religious institution attempts to take over an entire society and mandate the counter-secularization for everyone. This, however, is rarely if ever successful, the closest that exists today being near-theocracies such as the mullahs of Iran. The second and more realistically viable strategy is the creation of religious subcultures, sectarian groups that try to distance themselves from the influence of society at large. Interestingly, this shows that secularization theory was also proved wrong in regard to the way the adaptive strategies would be implemented. A strict believer in secularization theory would have argued that the success of religious institutions would depend on the degree to which they had adapted to secularity.

To the contrary, in the modern world, religious institutions have tended to succeed based on the degree to which they do not adapt to a secular mindset.

In terms of global scale, conservative and orthodox traditionalist movements are on the rise more than any other religious mindset. This can certainly be seen in the rise in Evangelicalism in American Protestant faith, but moreover, similar trends in faith can be found in Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and nearly all other major world religions. All could be called “fundamentalist,” and though Berger dislikes the term for its pejorative connotation, he does note that they can all be unified under certain shared characteristics: “great religious passion, a defiance of what others have defined as the Zeitgeist, and a return to traditional sources of religious authority” (Berger 1999, 6). Additionally, all can be understood as a reaction against the forces of secularity. He suspects that this is as a result of moder15

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nity itself, for modernity brings with it uncertainty through pluralization and other forces; as such, a movement, such as religion, that claims certainty is incredibly appealing.

In order to understand this further, Berger attempts a brief examination of the two religious upsurges he views as “most dynamic” today – the Islamic and Evangelical. The Islamic revival is notably a revival of extremely religious commitments. It is very strong even in highly modern and urban areas of the East, to the surprise of what would be the traditional intellectual assumption. It is not even a fully uniform revival, for some areas, such as Indonesia, have Islamic movements that are outspokenly pro-democracy and pluralism. Overall, however, Berger would argue that Islam has been severely challenged by facing up to facets of the modern world. The Evangelic upsurge is also taking place in a massive geographic scope, and interestingly, has taken on a powerfully indigenous growth pattern.

This underlines one key difference between the Islamic and Evangelical movements, for the former is occurring in already Muslim dominated countries, while the latter is growing enormously in areas of the world previously unfamiliar with the Christian faith.

There are, of course, exceptions to any rule, and Berger does acknowledge that there are two cases that do not directly fit the desecularization thesis. The first is Europe, specifically Western Europe, which has become increasingly secular as the years go by. It has been suggested, however, that this is not pure secularization so much as a shift in the institutional location of religion, for while there have been dramatic drops in such factors as church attendance, levels of faith-adherents are debatably stable. The matter is still up for discussion.

The other exception, which has been subtly hinted at already, is in the Western intellectual community, which remains as a whole quite secular – an important realization, considering it is often the intellectuals who have a great deal of control over society as a whole. Berger semi-humorously states “that the American intelligentsia has been ‘Europeanized,’ in its attitude to religion as in other matters” (Berger, Davie and Fokas 2008, 18).

Beyond this wide scope idea of the status of desecularization in the world, Berger is interested in many more questions for consideration on the matter. “First, what are the origins of the worldwide resurgence of religion?” (Berger 1999, 12).

Berger has proposed two possible answers; one suggesting that it is a quest for certainty in the fact of the uncertainty brought about by modernity, and the other that it is a rebellion against the secularism of the elite minority. Berger, however, posits an intriguing third option for consideration, suggesting that because religion has 16

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always been around and has always been a driving force in society, what is more in need of explanation is the (possibly brief) appearance of the absence of religion.

After wondering about its roots, a second questions merits attention, “what is likely the future course of this religious resurgence?” (Berger 1999, 14) Though hesitant to make any concrete predictions, Berger does make the rather bold statement of belief that the 21st century will be just as religious as ever before. Some sociologists have contended that this spike in religious movements has been a final reaction signalling the beginning of the secular era, but Berger finds this doubtful. He does, however, make it clear that the prediction about religion as a whole remaining successful in the future does not apply equally to all movements.

For instance, he suspects that militant Islam will essentially be forced to die down.

Third, and finally, the question becomes comparative: “Do the resurgent religions differ in their critique of the secular order?” (Berger 1999, 15) Put simply, of course they do! The Dalai Lama and the Pope will naturally have differing views on the matter based on their own faith tradition. Despite this, it does seem that in the end, what adherents of almost every faith can all agree upon is that a culture that tries to exist without any sort of transcendent viewpoint is a shallow one.

Finally, there are four major areas that Berger argues in which the resurgence of religion and the overcoming of secularism could have interesting affects. First is international politics. It has been suggested that the wars of the future will be predominantly ideological ones, and religion could certainly be an important factor in that. Though the Cold War is over, Berger hints at the fact that he does not believe this invalidates this theory, and that something akin to the Cold War could very well happen again. It is, however, significant to note the differences between legitimately religiously inspired political movements versus those that use religion to legitimate politics based on non-religious interests. Second, and integrally related, is the issue of war and peace, an issue upon which religion can and often is divided between the two sides. Berger acknowledges that religion can be used both to support and legitimate warfare and to counter it, advocating instead for pacifism and peace. He does not clearly fall on either side when discussing what the future role of religion on this matter will be. Third is a matter that sociologists have understood as integrally related ever since Max Weber’s famous work on Protestantism and capitalism; religion and economic development. The modernization of various countries in the third world, combined with the unique state of interconnectivity found in the modern world, has created an environment for these developing countries which has never before been seen. Religious resurgence or counter secularization could be either a bane or blessing for this process, and 17

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without a historical example to judge by, it is nearly impossible to decide which.

Fourth and finally are the matters of human rights and social justice, where matters are often complicated as important national decisions are made on a clearly religious influence.

Conclusion Berger’s discussion of secularization has a deep importance on countless levels. Both religious and non-religious individuals can benefit from understanding this incredibly important, and rapidly changing, dynamic of our society. Those who do have faith would do well to understand the role that religion itself had in secularization, as well as to understand what causes it – if the goal is to try to stop it. On the other hand, those who want a secularized world have much to gain from understanding the process of desecularization, if for no other reason than to try to change the minds of the masses on a more fundamental level.

Of course, one does not have to take anything Berger says on the matter with a reaction of fear or dogmatism. It is entirely possible to read on the matter with nothing more than an interest in understanding a major component of the functioning of the modern world. But to do this seems irresponsible, and against Berger’s intention. He frequently suggests that the role of anyone attempting a sociological understanding of society is to try to make sure that society is accurately understood so that those who want change can make it. As elucidated above, the process of secularization and desecularization is not self-contained and will not only affect the religious community. To the contrary, it will have far reaching effects in global policy issues and shape the way humans interact with one another on every societal level. Thus, even if one chooses not to argue for the virtues of one side or the other, in the end, every person should have an understanding of how these factors could affect their own lives, and the lives of the rest of the world.

Bibliography

Berger, Brigitte, Peter Berger and Hansfried Kellner. 1973. The Homeless Mind. New York: Random House.

Berger, Peter L. 1961a. The Precarious Vision; a sociologist looks at social fictions and Christian faith.. Garden City: Doubleday.

Berger, Peter L. 1961b. The Noise of Solemn Assemblies. Garden City: Doubleday.

Berger, Peter L. 1963. An Invitation to Sociology: A Humanistic Perspective. Garden City: Doubleday.

Berger, Peter L. and Thomas Luckmann. 1966. The Social Construction of Reality.

Garden City: Doubleday.

Berger, Peter L. 1967. The Sacred Canopy. Garden City: Doubleday.

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Berger, Peter L. 1969. A Rumor of Angels. Garden City: Doubleday.

Berger, Peter L. 1974. Pyramids of Sacrifice. New York: Basic Books.

Berger, Peter L. 1977. Facing Up to Modernity. New York: Basic Books.

Berger, Peter L. 1979. The Heretical Imperative. Garden City: Doubleday.

Berger, Peter L. 1994. Questions of Faith â&#x20AC;&#x201C; A Skeptical Affirmation of Christianity.

Malden: Blackwell Publishing.

Berger, Peter L. 1997. Redeeming Laughter: The Comic Dimension of Human Experience. New York: Walter De Gruyter.

Berger, Peter L. ed. 1999. The Desecularization of the World. Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmanâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s.

Berger, Peter L., Effie Fokas and Grace Davie. 2008. Religious America, Secular Europe? Burlington: Ashgate.

Berger, Peter L. and Anton Zijderveld. 2009. In Praise of Doubt. New York: Harper Collins.

Berger, Peter L. 2010. ed. Between Relativism and Fundamentalism. Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans.

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The Baha’i Faith in America, 1893-1900: A Diffusion of the American Religious Zeitgeist Joshua Rager The story of American religion has predominantly and historically been a Protestant Christian story. Every religious faith new to the United States has had to contend with this fact and the argument has been made that to some extent, all religions are eventually protestantized while taking their course in America. The question which often arises then in studying foreign religious imports, like the ones so seemingly exotic as the Baha’i Faith, is how unique is this certain faith to the American religious landscape? To say whether or not the Baha’i Faith has experienced such a livelihood to be considered protestantized is not my goal here, but I propose that the Baha’i Faith has essentially been or at least was Americanized from its earliest outset. For in a similar manner, the story of the American Baha’i community has historically been an American story about Americans taking to a new faith. The assumptions here are twofold: first, the early Baha’is were largely all American and second, the community was permeable to the American spirit of the times around it. What investigation into the early community has shown is that from 1893 to 1900, the American Baha’is’ background, identity, and sense of what was religiously and currently American often left the Baha’i experience in the United States susceptible to a diffusion of the religious zeitgeist.

Perhaps one of the biggest challenges to this thesis is that the American leader and first Baha’i teacher of the early community in the States was Syrian and not American. But a look into his education, life, and teachings uncovers that this failed businessman was American in essence and embodied several American religious ideals at the time of his prominence amongst the Baha’i community. The situation of Syria at the time of Kheiralla’s upbringing was largely influenced by competition between French Catholic and American Protestant missionaries for Syrian souls, which resulted in Western-styled schools. Kheiralla was one of few fortunate enough to gain admission into the private, college preparatory schools.

Matriculating into the newly founded Protestant College after his secondary education, Kheiralla was exposed to the liberal arts and also the obligatory prayer services held twice a day as well as Bible study every Sunday afternoon. As a boarding student, he became fluent in English, was largely separated from a Middle Eastern culture and learned from American educators whose lessons were “based ‘strictly’ on ‘Protestant and Evangelical principles,’ which meant a strong emphasis 20

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on the Bible and its rational consistency with science.”1 The goal of the Protestant College was to cultivate an intelligentsia “who would be inclined toward Protestantism.”2 These were formative and impactful years for Kheiralla. Despite his lack of inclination toward Protestantism, the foundation of biblical literacy and rational thinking Kheiralla gained would build the frame of his logic in interpreting literature thereafter.

This approach, largely a Western, Christian construction, was a methodology atypical in the Middle East and in fact, although Kheiralla’s education was one of the best offered in Syria, the Western degree he obtained was unfit for the trades and jobs which comprised the Syrian economy of the 1870s. Seeing that the bulk of Kheiralla’s training was misaligned with a traditional Syrian sense of apprenticeship and education—so much so his degree was seemingly just a piece of pretentious paper in his home nation—the plausibility that Kheiralla was Western or Occidental in the very essence of these words (which speak to a varying style in philosophy and approach) seems conceivable. As a person reliant on and concerned with his own operation evidenced by his self-centered pursuit of magic and business endeavors and without a translation of Baha’u’llah’s works in a language Kheiralla could read (although was literate in English, French, and Arabic), Kheiralla took to his Bible and used “reason and ‘common sense’ in weighing Baha’u’llah’s claim to fulfill the promises of the Bible. In this regard, he again was following his western evangelical education, which stressed what has been called ‘common sense philosophy’—a belief that everyone is capable of reading the Bible and independently determining its truth.”3 What separated Kheiralla, having been raised and educated as a Christian, from the other Middle Eastern Christians was his own sense of autonomy in interpreting texts; most Middle Eastern Christians sought out their religious institutions for scriptural guidance. The findings Kheiralla reached through his own research and investigation were that Baha’u’llah was in fact the fulfillment of several biblical prophecies and the air of boastfulness and pride Kheiralla took in these conclusions would be enough to carry him to the Occident and teach them to an entire nation. Adjusting to the life and culture in America for Kheiralla would seem to be more of a harkening-back reversion or, better, a continuation of the Western ideologies instilled in him during his school years and life in the Western boom of 1870s Egypt.

Kheiralla, having professed his acceptance of Baha’u’llah’s claim in a letter to the prophet himself, made his way to America in December of 1892. In America, Robert H. Stockman, The Baha’i Faith in America Origins: 1892-1900, Volume 1 (Wilmette: Baha’i Publishing Trust, 1985), 14.

Ibid., 14 3 Ibid., 20.

1 2

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failure in business prompted Kheiralla to start offering the services of his supernatural abilities through what he believed were powers of healing. Eager to teach anyone he made acquaintance with about the Baha’i Faith, Kheiralla would make mention to those he was attempting to heal about Baha’u’llah and the findings he had personally made. Robert Stockman remarks, “Healing philosophies attracted people who often were searching for alternatives to traditional religion and such people provided a network through which word on the Baha’i Faith spread to receptive ears.”4 By 1894, Kheiralla’s Baha’i teachings gained four followers in William F. Jones, Marian Miller, Edward Dennis, and Thornton Chase. In 1895 Kheiralla began conducting thirteen-part classes on spiritual topics such as the nature of the mind, the needs of the soul, and neurology, of which the Baha’i Faith found its way in. The presentation of the Faith, Baha’u’llah, and Abdul-Baha was made in the last three lessons from a prophetic Christian perspective that claimed Baha’u’llah was actually God and Abdul-Baha the return of Jesus Christ. Kherialla used the books of Revelations, Isaiah, Ezekiel, and possibly Daniel to fit his understanding of the two figures into the roles he ascribed to him. Still without print copies of Baha’u’llah’s writings, Kheiralla consulted writings from the evangelical biblical commentary of time and also the Cambridge professor E.G. Browne, who spent time with Baha’u’llah and the Persian Baha’is in the 1870s and 80s.

The teachings and lessons that Kheiralla gave to his pupils and let fall on any eager American ear were often doctrinally askew and occasionally in complete opposition with many of Baha’u’llah’s traditions. Some of things Kheiralla is known to have taught and stressed is the idea of reincarnation as well as ascribe the power of miracles to Baha’u’llah. His belief in reincarnation is likely due to the influence of his earliest theosophical pupils but nonetheless found a way into his lessons and the early Baha’i community. He saw the Bible as fallible because of human tampering yet available for symbolic interpretation. He also stoutly denied Darwin’s theory of evolution. Robert Stockman finds such an opinion of evolution “ironic when one considers his considerable emphasis on the Baha’i doctrine of progressive revelation—which is essentially a doctrine of human religious evolution.”5 Despite his continuity with the Faith in this aspect, Kheiralla made Judaism the “ancestor of all the world’s great religions” and Christianity the bearings for his discussions thus subordinating Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism.6 Kheiralla’s negative outlook on biblical inerrancy is Baha’i in its regards to a symbolic view of the Christian text, but the same ends do not necessitate the same means. Kheiralla 4 5 6

Ibid., 90.

Ibid., 58.

Ibid., 68.

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saw the Bible as a product of human corruption and tainting while Baha’u’llah claimed no religion that extolled a written text with so much reverence would ever tamper with it. Kheiralla rejected the Christian ideals of original sin and vicarious atonement although many of the early Americans he brought into the Baha’i fold still held onto these tenets. While both postmillennial and premillennial eschatology existed among the members of the early community, Kheiralla is thought to have advocated the premillennial vision which professed the imminent coming of the Kingdom of God and ignored human attempts to usher in the millennium. In fact, Kheiralla prophesied that millennium to occur in 1917. Perhaps Kheiralla’s strongest messages and points of emphasis were made in his proclamations of individual choice, common sense, free will, and progress which largely resonated with the Baha’i stress on God’s gift of rationalization to humans. What gave Kheiralla authority among the early community was the secretive, esoteric nature of his lessons and his giving of the Greatest Name, a rite of sorts that signaled entrance into the Baha’i community, which was a presentation reserved specifically for Kheiralla, as appointed by Kheiralla. Despite these doctrinal inconsistencies, Kheiralla was a Baha’i in the most fundamental way—perhaps the only way that he knew to be—in professing that Baha’u’llah was God’s latest Manifestation and prophet of this age.

Kheiralla perhaps most clearly revealed his American-Western essence by describing Mormonism as “‘a menace and stigma to the civilization of our own country at the present day’”—thus acknowledging a sense that America was in fact his “own country” that he could affirm with his classes as “our” nation. 7 But, he was contemporarily American in more ways than just patriotic elitism. For his time, Kheiralla’s teachings were developmentally American. The 1893 World Parliament of Religions attempt at a cosmopolitan vision in actuality and retrospectively did little to harmonize world faith for “Instead of dialogue, a succession of monologues had occurred.”8 This event held in Chicago and perhaps the first time the Baha’i Faith made public mention on American soil, was an early culmination and that era’s embodiment of the modernist ideal. The reality of the occasion perhaps foreshadows the outcome of the modernist tenets. For them, “‘the nature of religious truth is the same as that of scientific truth. There is but one truth’...

The modernists did not want simply to reduce faith to science. They did want to collapse belief in the face of progress. They did not want to be merely secular, but religious, in decisively though never narrowly Christian ways.”9 However, prob7 8 9

Ibid., 69.

Martin E. Marty, Modern American Religion: The Irony of It All, Volume 1 (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1986), 22.

Ibid., 20. Ibid., 29.

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ably the “two most familiar and urgent parts of the modernist intellectual program had to do with adaption to evolutionary theory in science and with acceptance of biblical criticism in history.”10 The most notable and ostracized supporter of the latter was Charles A. Briggs, professor at Union Theological Seminary who held the view that higher criticism was in fact good for the Bible and its readers by “making the Bible plausible as a document of faith” despite proposed theories about the true authors of books contained in the Old and New Testaments.11 After Briggs’s “best known heresy trial” in New York City where he vehemently chose reason over inerrancy, continued malevolent discourse against Briggs and his Presbyterian church resulted in the professor’s dismissal from the denomination. After his excommunication, Briggs held company with Ibrahim Kheiralla who had just come from Syria with a mission to bring the Baha’i Faith to the United States. Kheiralla might have professed to Briggs that Baha’u’llah was God—the fulfillment of Isaiahic prophecy and that he had a son, Abdul-Baha, who was Jesus Christ. He might have spoke in a language he thought would resound with Briggs in mentioning the tenets of progressive revelation and that the Bible should be open to scientific rationality. But whatever Kheiralla might have said to Charles A. Briggs, it did little to sway him into the Faith and become his first American convert. The New York native maintained loyalty to Christianity and a belief in the divinity of Christ. Despite the absence of conversion or, for that matter, even real contemplation from Briggs, what this seemingly casual meeting represented was probably the first intersection of the Baha’i Faith with the American religious zeitgeist in its most physical, face-to-face sense. This event would not be the last sort of contact for the span of the American Baha’i history nor would it be for this era.

While it is not shown anywhere that Kheiralla would later meet Josiah Strong or John Dewey, the ideological crossings of the American zeitgeist with the Baha’i Faith can be shown by the makeup of its membership and even further in the teachings and actions of its primary American teacher. To pigeonhole Kheiralla in respect to one of the labels of this American religious era would be trivial and narrow in scope, for Kheiralla’s many outlooks and teachings pulled from the varieties of the religious community. To discuss those various labels and what parts of them correlate to Kheiralla and the Early Baha’i community I think would however not be a trifling pursuit and instead show the continuum on which American Baha’is lay and how one should regard these yet-to-be-seen consistencies, taking note of where these contributions find their source. Using a classification of the modernist program from Marty’s Irony of It All as one supportive and open to the more liberal 10 11

Ibid., 32.

Ibid., 38.

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ideals of the time in respect to progressive revelation, science and evolution, and higher biblical criticism, the quest for scientific-religious reconciliation was not a sector of thought left only for the Christian progressives of the late-nineteenth, early-twentieth centuries. The Baha’i Faith’s statement on this topic has always been, “Science protected religion from becoming superstition; religion protected science from becoming a barren materialism.” 12 This emphasizes the unity of science with religion where hard, scientific evidence will trump any preconceived, religious notions of the natural and astronomical worlds and religious evidence fills in the gaps of unexplained, unconfirmed scientific phenomenon. In this same vein, Kheiralla claimed his teachings to be based on scientific and rational proofs when he stated, “every point of our teaching must be proven, step by step, by all the laws of science.”13 How scientific his claims were are largely a relative matter in the sense that a twenty first-century perspective on any science of the late nineteenth century would scoff at many of the so-called “scientific” proposals of the time but perhaps the single fact of his claim and ability to craftily deduce conclusions is all to draw a comparison. This comparison warrants consideration because as a conversation between Richard Dawkins and Jerry Falwell might suggest, there still isn’t much unity between some devout churchgoers and lab rats—the attempt at seeking a single truth for which both science and religion fit was a defining feature of the modernist program and a point of emphasis for Kheiralla. Therein lay the comparison. The difference is that modernists only dealt with science and sought reconciliation whereas Kheiralla, in his ego, while seeking, claimed to have found it.

Kheiralla’s focus on the Bible is best evidenced with its use in his formulation of Baha’u’llah’s and Abdul-Baha’s stations and also with his schooling that forcibly familiarized young Ibrahim with the scripture. His view in the way its words and images should be interpreted have already been discussed and so to call that perspective, in the way that it challenges a former view and calls into question the infallibility of the book, in line with higher criticism seems to be a fair assertion. Kheiralla is known to have consulted Richard Heber Newton’s The Right and Wrong Uses of the Bible for his hermeneutical lessons because of its stance on the unreliability of the historical record in the Bible. While Kheiralla’s central tenet of logic for his conclusion on the fallibility of the Bible was the corruption of the text, he also claimed the book to be incomplete because of references in the Old Testament books to literary works no longer available.14 Kheiralla’s understandings of Genesis and the Garden of Eden were much like John Cunningham Geike’s and Peter Smith, An Introduction to the Baha’i Faith (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 115.

Stockman, The Baha’i Faith in America, 50.

14 Ibid., 55.

12 13

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George Smith’s, whom he had read, through his observation of the Babylonian mythical parallels in the Genesis account and the unknown location of the actual Garden of Eden.15 These additional parts to his argument on biblical criticism seems to be more in line with the sorts of reasoning other incredulous scholars of the time would have used as it was largely influenced by them. Perhaps the best evidence of Kheiralla’s criticism was his rejection of Original Sin and Vicarious Atonement—their negation he based on his findings that Jesus nor his disciples understood his mission as a mission of redemption and that Adam and Eve left paradise on their own accord with free will being the central message. Against his outlook on the Bible, Kheiralla still made it his main source, perhaps going with what he knew and how he framed his understandings of Baha’u’llah and Abdul-Baha. It would not be unlikely in the times for a person to utilize the text for purposes not pertaining solely and focally on Christianity, for many Americans “considered the Bible to be at the basis of the national consensus juris, the normal for civil law and the cultural ethos.”16 And like “most of the modernists [who], evidently drawing on their Sunday School memories as well as their faith and natural reverence more than on a disciplined tackling of problems, remained attached to Jesus,” Kheiralla thought “the most important Prophet...was Jesus Christ, ‘our Great Master’,’ the ‘central figure of history and humanity,’ the ‘highest exponent of our race,’ ‘the highest among all the creatures of the great universe.’”17 Kheiralla’s notion of God’s presence is yet another detail of his teachings that seem to resonate with the modernist program. Kheiralla would often conjure up an image-inducing metaphor in his lessons to present his view of God as an “‘identity, an individual, a person’”18: Let us suppose that the whole universe...[is] gathered in one room; or consider that the room is the universe and contains everything in existence, and that the room and everything in it is of crystal or glass; and let us suppose that God, the Almighty, is a flame located in any certain spot in that room; we will see that although the flame is an identity, limited to itself, yet it fills the whole room with its light...Thus the Personality of God, the Almighty—like the flame—is filling the whole universe with His powers...19 By giving God a “Personality,” Kheiralla attempts to humanize God—in a way that brings him closer to humans and everything that exists. The very idea of a room metaphor gets at this idea of bridging notions of human stations and God’s Ibid., 71.

Marty, Modern American Religion, 37.

Ibid., 30. Stockman, The Baha’i Faith in America,67.

18 Stockman, The Baha’i Faith in America, 54.

19 Ibid., 53.

15 16 17

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station through confining both to walls, despite their transparency. And if the physical closeness of the objects and the flame—seemingly creation and God—fails to get the point across, by the flame lighting every crystal object implies an idea that God can be found in all existences and is thus not in some disconnected area of seclusion blocked off from the universe he created but instead shining within and through every day, acting as we act, changing as we change. In light of this, “key to the modernist doctrines of God was the notion of immanence, the idea that God was active in the midst of the world. God was not transcendently aloof, static, and capricious.”20 Perhaps there is no better to bring the idea of an active God working among us than to give him a personality and identity as Kheiralla did.

The Baha’i doctrine of progressive revelation was, on its own and without much manipulation from Kheiralla, modernist in the way it agreed with the contemporary championing of universalism and their attempt at progress. The Baha’i tenet through its recognition that at the root of all great world religions are key essential truths is universalist in that regard, and the socioeconomic advancement that the Faith has historically promoted in such areas as gender equality was the sort of progress modernists at the same time were calling for. This Baha’i aspect was one of the few that Kheiralla is known to have believed and taught that actually rightly registered with the Baha’i headquarters in Haifa. Many modernists believed that “progressive revelation...was the basis of scripture” and Kheiralla stood with them in this way once again.21 The difference in this comparison is though that this teaching is not unique to Kheiralla and instead a central belief of all Baha’i—no matter if they’re Iranian, Russian, or American. With the idea of progressive revelation and also the unity of science and religion, we have true Baha’i beliefs that fit with the modernist programs of the late-nineteenth and earlytwentieth centuries. On the other hand, Kheiralla’s focus on the Bible is largely a testament to his Protestant education and not Baha’i focused. The critical focus he took to the book was fashioned in a way that was modeled on scholars of the time and despite the Faith’s proclamation that the Bible at its current state is fallible, this was likely something that Kheiralla was largely unaware of. Kheiralla’s whole notion of God’s presence and being is almost diametrically opposed to the essence of God that Baha’is’ hold. Baha’u’llah saw God as a super transcendent entity—neither human or ever at a station of attainment, an essence unfathomable for the cerebral capabilities of man and woman. Much like his focus and approach on the Bible, Kheiralla’s perception of God was more aligned with the modernist model than the Baha’i’s.

20 21

Marty, Modern American Religion, 30.

Ibid., 39.

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While Kheiralla held characteristics of modernists, in other ways he was directly opposed to that program and could be seen as countermodernist. While America was experiencing these new notions of religion which took a sharp look at the Bible and a soft stance on other traditions, “this was also an era in which virtually every enduring and vital American religious conservatism was born.”22 What the later-to-be-named “fundamentalists” did was revolt against the modernist movements in a backlash that sought to preserve old-religion ideals. The countermodernists, in this mindset, essentially “combined premillenialism and inerrancy as creedal linchpins or new definers of boundaries.”23 Opposed to the Darwinian concept of evolution, seeing religious truth and scientific truth as one was a difficult stance for the countermodernists to swallow—they would much rather purge it up and point out every particle of fallacy in the pile. Kheiralla would have found his niche with these preservationists in the way he rejected evolution and while his argument for this stance is unknown, his Evangelical Protestant schooling would seem to be the greatest reason for his fervent denial. While the hot debate of evolution in the American public wouldn’t occur until the 1920s, it was a focal point for most American religions in the late nineteenth century as the question of science and religion was a central listing on the religious agenda for both modernists and those refuting them. Although not all countermodernists can be considered premillenialist in their eschatological vision, the concept that millennium was near, imminent and would occur at the deterioration of human society was beginning to gain popularity amongst Bible-believing inerrantist Americans following personas such as Dwight Moody and C.I. Scofield. The eschatological vision that Kheiralla taught to his early Baha’i students was also one that “definitely advocated a premillenial view in that he spoke of ‘signs and events which, when the kingdom of God shall come, are to occur, as specified in detail through the whole book of the Revelation.’”24 While Kheiralla most likely didn’t see that reign of a thousand years to be ruled by Jesus Christ, the idea of uncontrollable catastrophe followed by the reigning of God’s kingdom is neither uniquely Kheiralla’s concept nor is it found in Baha’i doctrine. The Baha’i Faith doesn’t acknowledge eschatology in the very sense of the world that recognizes an end of the times. The future vision they hold is one that views a lasting world, a new world order where national borders are erased, race is no longer identifiable, peace is pandemic, and yet cultural and historical identity and significance are maintained. In regards to Kheiralla’s characteristics as countermodernist, it is seen that these comparisons are not Baha’i Ibid., 139.

Ibid., 237.

24 Stockman, The Baha’i Faith in America, 57.

22 23

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but instead Kheiralla—a product of his schooling and a diffusion of the American religious zeitgeist. It appears that some of the central tenets of the Baha’i Faith such as the unity of science and religion and progressive revelation, of which Kheiralla actually knew, were likely key attractors to religious Americans (as most were) trying to deal with the emerging school of modernity. The other aspects like a focus on the Bible, supremacy of Christ, Christianity, and Judaism, rejection of evolution, and the concept of God’s immanence and personality are those that are not found in any Baha’i writings but are instead unique to the early American Baha’i experience. Thus it can be proposed that a couple of Baha’i doctrines opened the door to the experimental religiosity but the stances it took on such subjects concerning issues within the modernist and countermodernist programs were largely due to the American zeitgeist.

Having now seen Kheiralla in the various lights of the American times, the next natural question would seem to be in what possible way did he attract believers through his across-the-board lessons and variegated, seemingly contradictory opinions? While it may superficially appear that Kheiralla might be some type of magic obsessed, crazed charlatan, he was in fact a charismatic figure whose exotic Syrian appearance might have given him the air of a Middle Eastern sage.

His esoteric teaching style in combination with the rationality and validity of his arguments made him a smooth, comprehensible talker. His messages, rhetoric, and their presentations were made in a way that attracted Americans. Considering that Kheiralla pulled the content of his lessons from two opposed opinions—progressive modernists and traditional countermodernists—it is not surprisingly that the early American Baha’i community contained two types of members. William Garlington classifies the two groups: a conservative side that gravitated towards his teachings of prophetic themes and biblical prophecy; and the other a liberal side that were enticed by “spiritual aspects of his message or the claims of its scientific and rational foundation.”25 What likely reconciled the two polarities was Kheiralla’s charisma but more importantly, a “dissatisfaction with traditional religion... [and] the fact that ‘the church’ no longer provided for their spiritual needs.”26 And yet, despite this separation, “evangelical ideas were in the bones of most American Baha’is, for they had been raised in a fervently Protestant culture...the irony that Kheiralla’s lessons on the Baha’i Faith, which stressed the Bible and the Return of Christ, called the Baha’is back to the heritage they had rejected.”27 This irony is something akin to the experience of the moderns, not to be confused with the William Garlington, The Baha’i Faith in America (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2008), 81.

Ibid., 81.

27 Ibid., 103.

25 26

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modernists, found in America’s seminaries, universities, and academies from 1893 to 1919. What seemed to define this group of scholars was a self-emancipation from their childhood roots and a seeking of a new religious home through a denial of the past—the irony that Martin Marty saw with this group is that in an attempt to create or be something new, the moderns carried over with them the pasts they tried to leave behind and seemed to end up with conclusions more dismal and unhappy than they had obviously hoped. While the early American Baha’i community wasn’t a horde of doctors of theology, nor do I hold any position to call the American Baha’is discontented with their outcomes, the idea of rejecting an adolescent experience of religion was something other Americans were doing. An instilled idea of spiritual individualism and autonomy to seek out ideologies that fit better with preference and personality is seemingly an American ideal reserved not only for the privileged academics but all Americans not bound by a sense of familial religious obligation or tradition—including those that found seats in Kheiralla’s lecture room. What one must remember is that “the evangelical roots of most American Baha’is were strong—in fact, they were often stronger than those of the average American.”28 Various and key aspects of Kheiralla’s teachings, some of which have been shown to be a result of his schooling and the American religious zeitgeist, were then appealing and satisfying to the disaffected for their Christendom and American discourse. Kheiralla, in his own genius, understood who he was preaching to when he “used the more Christian-sounding terms individuality and personality” in an attempt to make his central concepts more “comprehensible to his North American audience.”29 Certain teachings which fundamentally aren’t a part of the Baha’i scope found a way into his lessons such as his approach to salvation which, although a minimal part of his liturgies, “pictured salvation as predestined and instantaneous, which was the evangelical-protestant view [held by] his audiences.”30 Understanding the impact of Kheiralla’s aforementioned teaching which poised “Judaism [as] the ancestor of all the world’s great religions,” it can be seen that he had essentially “neatly tied them together in a way that satisfied Christians who were disturbed by the implications of comparative religion.”31 His messages were soothing to those that wanted to maintain certain principles about religion but hold them under a different, perhaps more understanding steeple. On the other hand, Kheiralla’s messages spoke to budding aspects of modernity through his “emphasis on free will and progress, two beliefs of great importance to late Ibid., 103.

Ibid., 53.

Ibid., 57.

31 Ibid., 68.

28 29 30

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nineteenth-century Americans, [and these] must have made his interpretation particularly appealing” to the early American Baha’is.32 Perhaps observing Kheiralla’s lessons in relation to the main thesis of R. Laurence Moore’s Selling God could aid in developing a richer view of the success of Kheiralla’s message, the eclectic group he attracted, and the subsequent tension of the American Baha’is. Moore discerned that because of a strict separation of church and state, “throughout most of American history no one got social or political advantages from being religious...Therefore they [religious institutions] had to give the public what they wanted.”33 Moore thought economically in exploring that “American history could be understood as efforts to manipulate the religious ‘market’ in pursuit of the maximum number of ‘customers.’”34 Perhaps underestimated so far is another hat worn by Ibrahim Kheiralla’s—the hat of a salesman. The American Baha’i community had thirty registered believers in December 1896 and in less than three years, in September of 1899, the American Baha’i population had nearly multiplied fifty times with an estimate at 1,467.35 Given that Kheiralla was the only teacher of the Faith in America until 1898 and also that he was the only one with the reserved authority to present new Baha’is with the Greatest Name until 1900, this colossal increase in numbers is largely a testament to the doctor’s ability to “advertise” and “sell” the Faith. It would seem in this context then that the manipulation of the market which Kheiralla employed was preaching a theology that mixed both modernist and countermodernist tenets in order to bring numbers into the Faith, even though what resulted was a lack of a general consensus on what exactly the Faith was and a heterozygous group that emphasized different things depending on location, vocation, and background.

What the religious public wanted in the late nineteenth century was a variety of things—there were new, emerging views of tradition and also traditional, backlash views of tradition—and what Kheiralla and the early American Baha’i community did was satisfy those different tastes. They essentially offered a menu that listed the foreign delicacies of German-based religious thought for lunch and a down home cooked meal of Protestant evangelicalism with roll for dinner. When one observes the continuity between Kheiralla’s community and Laurence Moore’s thesis, what we are left with is another characteristic of American religious trends finding its own hold and truth in the Faith’s history and development. One must keep in mind that to call this community a Baha’i community is debatable in the sense that they were doctrinally misinformed. While they recognized Baha’u’llah as the prophet Ibid., 72.

Patrick Allitt, Preface to Religion in America Since 1945: A History (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003), xiv.

Ibid., xiv.

35 Stockman, The Baha’i Faith in America, 104, 163.

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of this dispensation and his son, Abdul-Baha, as the covenant and personality of a true Baha’i life, the American Baha’is allowed Kheiralla to boast a high degree of authority that only a few figures, outside of the Baha’u’llah bloodline, would ever exercise.

While the Baha’i-ness of the community is questionable, one thing indisputable about that community is their Western-ness with American slants. To look at the largest Baha’i communities of the late nineteenth century in respect to their general backgrounds, we will see the pervading trend of native-born Americans receiving the Great Name and when immigrant participants popup, we will see that they come from either Protestant backgrounds or are already found to be an active part of the American religious zeitgeist. The most prominent Baha’i communities at the time of Kherialla’s reign were Chicago, New York City, Kenosha, Wisconsin, Racine, Wisconsin, and Cincinnati.36 Chicago, the first and largest Baha’i community, up until 1897 was predominantly American-born evangelical Protestants, but with Kheiralla’s appointment of another teacher in the Canadian-born Paul Dealy in 1898, the Baha’i Faith experienced its first significant population (13) of foreign-born citizenry.37 The majority of this small minority were German immigrants—a nationality which would be noteworthy only if these Baha’is were indeed German. The new outlooks on biblical criticism and the book’s consistency, or often lack thereof, with scientific evidence that were shaking some fundamental beliefs of American Christians were not American in origin but rather a product of German thought, seminaries, and research. Thus what was happening with scripture in America and also its regards to science was a debate essentially worn out in Germany by the time it peaked in the States. The aforementioned Charles Briggs whose trial helped catalyzed public knowledge and investigation into the intellectual validity of the Bible actually learned and developed most of his theories and notions while studying abroad in the epicenter of scientific biblical scholarship, Berlin. So to say these German-Americans weren’t contemporarily American in regards to the goings-on of American religious life would be an inaccurate assertion. They were, more likely, ahead of their Baha’i and American generation in the tenets of modernity which late-nineteenth-century Americans were wrestling with. Furthermore, they were attracted to the Baha’i Faith for the same reasons that attracted the early American Protestants. Dealy’s approach to teaching the Faith was a “fact- and Bible-oriented style” much like Kheiralla’s approach and while the biblical orientation registered 36 Seeing that there isn’t enough information available on the early Cincinnati Baha’i community to create a solid profile, the communities of Chicago, New York, and the Wisconsin cities will formulate who the early Baha’is were.

37 Ibid., 94.

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with the German Baha’is Protestantism, perhaps it was the emphasis on factual information that appealed greatly to the German-American Baha’is who were already accustomed to attempts at intersecting reason and religion.38 The New York Baha’i community, led by former Chicagoan Arthur Pillsbury Dodge and expanded with a Kheiralla-appointed teacher Howard McNutt, was composed almost entirely of upper-class, American born and bred citizens. Despite having backgrounds in more liberal traditions, the New York Baha’is were still predominantly former Protestants and aside from one Jewish convert, Christian.39 Understanding that this particular, white dominated community didn’t see any documented immigrants is very interesting given that immigration to America, especially New York where they all landed, at the turn of the century saw its greatest influx of European-born peoples to this point.

The Wisconsin towns of Kenosha and Racine are the true immigrant anomalies in this discussion but lack of permanence speak to their rarity. Vocationally, the Baha’is of Racine and Kenosha were mostly blue-collar, lower-class citizens.

Nearly half of the Kenosha Baha’is were born in either the Scandinavian countries of Sweden, Norway, and Denmark or Germany but almost all were of some sort of conservative Protestant background.40 Given how low income the Kenosha community was and the various trades they filled, it would seem unlikely that the Kenoshaon-German Baha’is had an experience quite like their Chicago-German counterpart, Charles Ioas—the sept-lingual University of Munich alumnus.41 The Racine community had an even greater percentage of foreign-born Baha’is but again like their Kenoshaoan neighbors, they were almost all from conservative Protestant backgrounds. And while these communities were filled with immigrants, a Kenosha event in 1899 showed that these foreign-born, Christian Baha’i believers were willing to defend their faith in a Bible-based, Protestant way. The Vatralsky Affair of 1899 was the result of a growing weariness of the Baptist, Methodist, and Congregational masses in Kenosha with the expanding Baha’i community and their hiring of the Harvard-educated Stoyan Vatralsky to lead a polemic against the so-called “Truth-Knowers.” The first attack came in an article in the Kenosha local newspaper where Vatralsky was quoted as calling the Baha’is “by far the most dangerous cult that has yet made its appearance on this continent.”42 In response, one letter to the editor from a local Baha’i stated “we are teaching God’s truth and teaching it from the Bible” and went on to call Islam the “most Ibid., 94.

Ibid., 126-127.

Ibid., 113-114.

41 Ibid., 63.

42 William P. Collins, “Kenosha, 1893-1912: History of an Early Baha’i Community in the United States,” in Studies in Babi & Baha’i History Volume 1, ed. Moojan Momen (Los Angeles: Kalimat Press, 1982), 232.

38 39 40

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corrupt of all religions” in order to ease the Protestant fear of “Mohammedanism” which Vatralsky was playing on in his accusations.43 A series of challenges, apologies for and attacks against the Baha’is would frequent the Kenosha Kicker often until the public grew tired of the event when Vatralsky held another lecture. Given the arena of where the debate was mostly waged, it seems the Baha’is of Kenosha and the other prominent Baha’is that came to their rescue dealt with their accusers in a uniquely American way—through a media and press where their voices could ideally remain unsuppressed and their opinions heard. They understood that their best defense wasn’t to arm up and meet Vatralsky at his motel with torches and pitchforks but instead through an exercising of their American rights—an amenity that the non-native Baha’is might have found profoundly unique in the nineteenth-century world scene. Another noteworthy aspect of the Baha’is claim to be religiously valid and not as Vatralsky would pose was an argument that they were Bible-based and thus Christian in that sense. It would seem like the Baha’is were attempting to humanize or Protestantize themselves to the average American reader, most of whom probably had never heard of the Baha’is, Baha’u’llah, or Kheiralla, through professing themselves fundamentally grounded in the Bible.

They wanted to level themselves with the paper-reading Americans by saying in a way, hey, we’re just like you.

This event, which William Garlington calls the “first in what over the years would become a series of conservative Christian verbal attacks on the American Baha’i community,” was occurring at an early period of a new American era in religious pluralism.44 In the first year of Kheiralla’s American stay, the United States played host to the World’s Parliament of Religions in 1893, and despite the failed sense that surrounded the exhibition, historian William R. Hutchison sees the meeting of the world’s faiths (where the Baha’i Faith actually made mention) as the beginning of a shift in “the definition of pluralism from one that called for mere toleration to one that called for genuine inclusion.”45 The assumption here is that an earlier era of pluralism, a term best “understood as the acceptance and encouragement of diversity,” Hutchison tracks from the 1830s to the 1890s can be described as pluralism as toleration—that being social or legal toleration or even a “little more than an absence of persecution.”46 The American religious scene through this period had been dominated by Anglo-Saxon Protestants and being tolerated by this hegemony of sorts typically meant assimilation, but the turn of Ibid., 233. Stockman, The Baha’i Faith in America, 115.

Garlington, The Baha’i Faith in America, 83.

45 William R. Hutchison, Religious Pluralism in America: The Contentious History of a Founding Ideal (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003), 117.

46 Ibid, 1, 6.

43 44

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the nineteenth to the twentieth century brought about a new understanding of pluralism as a doctrine of inclusion in a religious climate where new and often divergent movements were popping up and staying root in the American scene.

The inclusion ideology however was rarely met in allowing or giving those foreign, non-native movements equal or proportional right in sharing the cultural authority.

The Vatralsky Affair seems to be that sort of misstep out of the religious ideal of the time which Hutchison refers to and the threat to the dominance that strongly rooted Christians felt was being made by the likes of Buddhism and other religions was even permeating to the small Baha’i Faith. In this way, the American religious zeitgeist was not so much a part of the Baha’i program as it was attacking it. But the Faith was also playing a role in that zeitgeist by being one of the many religious movements to sprout up and cement itself in the religious setting of turn-of-thecentury America.

The irony of all this evidence is that this Persian-based religion with seemingly exotic tenets that herald the oneness of humanity and recognize Abraham, Jesus, Zoroaster, Buddha, and Mohammed as the continuing line of God’s revelation on Earth as revealed by an imprisoned Iranian named Baha’u’llah has an American experience that doesn’t seem as exotic as its entry in any encyclopedia or the accent above the a in its name might suggest. What we must remember is that these seemingly un-Baha’i moments are American moments because that community was, largely, American. In a grander scope, what do these stories of the American religious zeitgeist found in the American Baha’i Faith mean? I think several propositions could find their arguments in this piece. One is that the American culture and also its religious culture have strong influence on the religious happenings between its borders, especially when those happenings are occurring in the early years of a new religion. Before its appearance in America, the Baha’i Faith had only thirty years of existence as an organized movement and so important issues in doctrine and practice were still being fleshed out in Akka when the first American Baha’i was converted. What must also be mentioned is that the Americans didn’t receive an English version of the Kitab-i-Iqans until 1994, and so, these former Protestants who had long been exposed to the idea of sola scriptura had no definitive English-Baha’i texts to decipher in private. So, what was known about the Baha’i Faith came from those who had, of course through translators, contact with Abdul Baha and the gaps were then often filled in with the contemporary Christian thinking found in the American religious zeitgeist. There is here then a good reason for what may actually be called a diffusion of the American religious zeitgeist—a void and the moving in of something to fill it.

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Another point which can be made is that change is inevitable for any religion finding its way into the American religious scene—not to say religions don’t change in different countries but the American atmosphere is much different with no recognized national religion. Even faiths rooted in strong tradition such as Judaism have seen American-slanted reform on cemented ways of religious practice.

There is no urge here to suggest that the Baha’i Faith has lost its identity and blended into the American religious backdrop—the present community is thriving and unique just as it was when it made its way to the United States. But one reviewing our nation’s religious history must be conscious of its sprawl and recognize its influence and infiltration into some of even the youngest, most exotic, and smallest religions.

Bibliography

Allitt, Patrick. 2003. Preface to Religion in America Since 1945: A History, xi-xv. New York: Columbia University Press, 2003.

Collins, William P. “Kenosha, 1893-1912: History of an Earl Baha’i Community in the United States.” In Studies in Babi and Baha’i History, Volume 1, edited by Moojan Momen, 225-254. Los Angeles: Kalimat Press, 1982.

Garlington, William. The Baha’i Faith in America. Westport, Conn: Praeger Publishers, 2010.

Hutchison, William R. Religious Pluralism in America: The Contentious History of a Founding Ideal. New Haven, Conn: Yale University Press, 2003.

Marty, Martin E. Modern American Religion: The Irony of It All 1893-1919, Volume 1. Chicago, Ill: The University of Chicago Press, 1986.

Smith, Peter. An Introduction to the Baha’i Faith. New York, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008.

Stockman, Robert H. The Bahá’í faith in America Origins, 1892 – 1900. Wilmette, Ill: Bahá’í Publ. Trust, 1985.

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Making Room for Two in One

Making Room for Two in One: The Conflictive Relationship between American and Catholic Identities in American Literature Kimberly Anne Humphrey People have long pondered the question of coexisting or vying identities. In America, many were particularly concerned about the intersection of civic and religious identity due to the importance of the distinction between church and state. Many believed it would be impossible for religious people to assert their religious identity to its fullest and remain fully American. Individuals are defined by their identities; can someone fully claim more than one identity? Are we able to give ourselves over to more than one set of standards? This debate is particularly poignant when discussing American identity and Catholic identity because of the long struggle over loyalty that has marked the history of Catholicism in America.

The authors examined in this project testify to this issue’s continued relevance and significance.

In Edwin O’Connor’s novel The Edge of Sadness Hugh Kennedy is a priest and recovering alcoholic. His commitment to his vocation is strong but he struggles with its demands and trails. His reacquaintance with his childhood friends, the Carmody family, only serves to highlight his struggles. One of the first difficulties that Hugh is encountering in his rather rundown parish is that the face of Catholicism in the United States is changing. Hugh grew up in time when American Catholics were European and even that group was divided further by parish—Irish Catholics, German Catholic, and Polish Catholics rarely interacted. However, Catholics in America now had changing and merging ethnic backgrounds. Hugh’s own parish was drastically different from the strictly Irish Catholic parish in which he grew up: The section of the city is dying, and so is Old St. Paul’s. In a sense, it is hardly a parish at all anymore, but a kind of spiritual waterhole: a halting place for transients in despair. Still, we have our permanent families, those who live and stay here: Syrians, Greeks, some Italians, a few Chinese, the advanced guard of Puerto Ricans—a racial spectrum whose pastor I am. Here the pastor cuts quite a different figure than he does in the old, compact, all-Irish parishes…They accept me as their priest, but after that they keep their distance—and I must admit (and this is perhaps my fault, my dereliction) that I keep mine.

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I think with a little longing of the old days, the old ways—because, after all, a man can turn his back on something and still remember it. 1 The individuals that makeup the “Catholic” banner in the United States changed rapidly between the time when Hugh was a young priest and the time when he is pastoring at this needy parish. This is unsurprising, especially when the demographic changes that the nation as a whole went through are considered.

Hugh struggles as he tries to find out how to be a good priest to a population he does not relate to and struggles to understand. This time, America and Catholicism are changing in the same way and at the same time, and neither identity is prepared for its rapid redefinition. The American and Catholic identities often appear to be in constant conflict, but that is simply untrue. The conflict does occur, but oft times American and Catholic identity run parallel to each other instead of colliding.

Father Hugh continues his pattern of representing the American identity instead of standing in conflict with it in his Norman Rockwell-esque nostalgia for his typically American boyhood neighborhood: “I find that I have a lasting love for this place, which is so obviously just a place, which has no particular beauty or grace, or grandeur of scene, but which is, quite simply, a neighborhood, my neighborhood, a compound of sights and smells and sounds that have furnished all my years.”2 Hugh’s connection with his childhood home manages to highlight both his Catholic and his American identity. His neighborhood is clearly an Irish Catholic one that is steeped in its cultural and religious background. On the other hand, Hugh’s sentimentality about his neighborhood is quintessentially American. The middleclass American neighborhood is representative of the American dream—of the success that springs from the hard work of individuals and the freedoms offered by the United States government. The soft spot that Hugh shows for his hometown is therefore indicative of both his American and Catholic identities.

Father Hugh’s American and Catholic identities are able to rest side by side, but for many American Catholics the reconciliation between the two is not as cut and dry.

Father Urban in J.F. Powers’ Morte d’Urban is an intensely American character and at times that trait seems to supersede his Catholicism. Father Urban is a well-known priest on the retreat circuit despite the fact that his order of St. Clementine is less than prestigious. Most expect that Urban will be going on to bigger and better things in the years to come, but when his superior assigns him to a rundown retreat house in rural Minnesota he accepts the change with as much grace 1 2

Edwin O’Connor, The Edge of Sadness (Chicago: Loyola Classics, 1961), 23-24.

Ibid, 60-61.

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as possible.3 In his new location, it still did not take Urban long before he was once again rubbing elbows with the wealthy in the area. Father Urban develops a rather wide streak of individualism and self-interest over the course of his life, and though his beginnings were far more humble he began to question the relationship between Catholic and American identity early on in his life: If you were a Catholic boy like Harvey Roche, you felt that it was their country, handed down to them by the Pilgrim, George Washington, and others, and that they were taking a risk letting you live in it. It wasn’t that they remembered what tyrants (not all of them Catholics) had done to non-conformists in the past. They did not see themselves as descendants of the poor and oppressed. No, although that might be history, that was not it. What troubled them was the hocus-pocus that went on in Catholic churches. And Harvey Roche, as a boy, didn’t blame them. Wasn’t it all very strange there, in that place, at that time, the fancy vestments, the Latin, the wine? What if Catholics were Protestants and Protestants were Catholics, and they worshiped in such a manner? What would Catholics think?4 In his childhood, Hugh was inundated with the fact that Protestantism was the norm in America and that Catholicism was suspicious. Hugh, even as a young man, seemed to identify more with the American than the Catholic—he can separate himself from his religious tradition to view it from the perspective of the suspicious American. In fact, he seems to find the entire drama to be innately suspicious. His American identity has overwhelmed his Catholic identity. He could not occupy both mindsets at the same time, and so his Catholicism was placed under suspicion.

As Urban gets older and begins rubbing shoulders with powerful non-Catholics his need to assert his own American-ness gets stronger. For instance, when Urban is asked to give a speech at a local country club, he makes every attempt to clarify and diminish some of the more distinct Catholic doctrines, such as the infallibility of the Pope. He jokingly tells the audience that even Catholics in Rome do not have to believe the Pope in his weather predictions.5 A woman in the audience presses him to clarify his meaning: “Oh, the example you give is ridiculous, of course, but isn’t the Holy Father entitled to all the respect we can give him? As Christ’s vicar on earth?” Urban, however, realizing that to affirm the woman’s question would be set him at a distinct disadvantage with the powerful and Protestant men attending, sets the woman down rather harshly: “As a Catho3 4 5

J.F. Powers, Morte d’Urban (New York: Double Day & Company, 1962), 30.

Ibid, 76.

Ibid, 98.

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lic—that is, as one who respects proper authority—I’m afraid I’d be more inclined to trust the weather bureau in such a matter.”6 This instance shows yet again that Father Urban feels that there is a clear divide between what characterizes Catholic identity and American identity and yet again he feels the need to protect his interests by sacrificing Catholicism for Americanism.

Urban desperately tries to hold on to some elements of that Americanism, even if the face of Church hierarchy. This is particularly true as Urban tries to defend the individual in an institution that places the highest emphasis on the individual. For instance, Urban tries to defend an elderly woman for some superstitious eccentricities she has developed in old age against a monsignor who is ready to damn the woman: “What if she is only motivated by old age and fear of the Lord? That’s enough, thank God. It takes all kinds to make the Church.”7 Urban sees the power and the worth of the individual in a very American manner—the individual should not have to sacrifice his/her particularities in order to be a welcomed part of the community. America is the land of the individual and Catholicism asks its believers to place the community above their own needs or desires.

Urban long desired to find a way to live out fully both his Catholic and American identity. However, Urban found himself living in circumstances that repeatedly made him choose to throw in his lot with one or another. Urban, when push came to shove, often settled on the side of his American identity whether it was a matter of retaining his reputation, defending others’ right to their individuality, or realizing that much of Catholicism felt foreign even to him , a priest raised in the tradition.

Walker Percy’s 1971 novel, Love in the Ruins, presents a world that has much abandoned tradition. In fact, the world that Percy depicts is one in which science and technology has begun to reign supreme and spiritual fulfillment and emotional connectivity have been left to rot. The hero, Dr. Tom More (descendant of Saint Thomas More), is an alcoholic and deeply disturbed psychologist. He is also a lapsed Catholic, his faith having been greatly diminished after the death of his daughter. Tom, and everyone else in this bleak vision of America, has become intensely isolated from himself and his community. In an effort to help reduce the isolation, Tom creates the ontological lapsometer which can diagnose any psychiatric issue instantly. Unfortunately, it takes some time before Tom figures out how to take the invention from diagnostic to treatment and in the meantime it falls into the wrong hands. Unfortunately, the lapsometer can also be used to worsen conditions and its use could produce a world full of sociopaths. Tom has to step in before there are cataclysmic consequences.

6 7

Ibid.

Ibid, 148.

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Tom sees this looming catastrophe that threatens the United States to be tied to the rescinding of God’s grace on the country.8 This could be connected to the fact that the members of the population seem to have become irreligious. Even those religions that do remain have lost their sanctity. The Catholic Church, for instance, has split into three: The American Catholic Church, the Dutch Schismatics “who believe in relevance but not God,” and the Roman Catholic remnant.9 All three branches of this once united religion have either lost their spirituality or their spirit. The American Catholic Church, for instance, “emphasizes property rights and the integrity of the niegborhoods…and plays The Star Spangled Banner at the elevation.”10 The remaining Roman Catholics, on the other hand, are “scattered and demoralized” and have only one priest remaining and no church building intact.11 Tom counts himself among the latter as he still believes in the creed of the Roman Catholic Church, but he also knows himself to be a “bad one.”12 He has left behind the beliefs and ceremonies that defined his earlier faith: Some years ago, however, I stopped eating Christ in Communion, stopped going to mass, and have since fallen into a disorderly life. I believe in God and the whole business but I love women best, music and science next, whiskey next, God fourth, and my fellowman hardly at all. Generally, I do as I please. A man, wrote John, who says he believes in God and does not keep his commandments is a liar. If John is right, then I am a liar. Nevertheless, I still believe.13 The Catholics in this book have either so confused their religious and their national identity that the two have completely merged, or their religious and national identities have both been degraded to the point of no longer being fulfilling or relevant. The reader finds both possibilities frightening, particularly with the effective examples that Percy uses to demonstrate the pitfalls of each. For instance, when discussing the American Catholic Church, he mentions the importance of “Property Rights Sunday.”14 Property Rights Sunday is one of the most significant holidays in the year of the American Catholic Church: “A blue banner beside the crucifix shows Christ holding the American home, which has a picket fence, in his two hands.”15 For most, their Catholic and American identities have bonded so much together as to become inseparable and deconstructing both in the process, Walker Percy, Love in the Ruins (New York: Picador, 1971), 4.

Ibid, 5-6.

Ibid.

11 Ibid.

12 Ibid.

13 Ibid.

14 Ibid, 173.

15 Ibid, 181.

8 9

10

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or they have become so polarized and isolated that they no longer serve a function.

By the time the reader meets Tom, he has given up on the idea that religion will serve any real function for him; instead it seems to be a group of complex beliefs that he desires to hold on to without really working to live in accordance with any of them. Tom does reflect, however, on a time when he did continue to participate in the rituals of his religion hoping that they will serve him well. The reader comes to realize that even at that point in his life the fulfillment of that practice was intensely individualistic—intensely American—and unrelated to the improvement of the community: The best of times were after mass on summer evenings when Samantha and I would walk home in the violet dusk, we having received Communion and I rejoicing afterwards, caring nought for my fellow Catholics but only for myself and Samantha and Christ swallowed, remembering what he promised me for eating him, that I would have life in me, and I did, feeling so good that I’d sing and cut the fool all the way home like King David before the Ark.16 Tom’s religious fervor is intensely personal and is based upon his own personal satisfaction, not the improvement of his community or the well-being of others. It is a faith that claims that everyone is responsible for their own salvation as individuals finding God instead of the more traditionally conceived Catholic notion of faith as a communal activity that is fulfilled through engaging in the world.

Tom does not see his religion as one that requires involvement in the world.

In fact, he sees his own faith as one that simply recognizes a God and then goes about its business without being influenced by that fact. A Protestant woman he is involved with, however, exemplifies a religion that backs away from the Godliness of religion and instead emphasis doing right. This presentation leads the reader to believe that the American identity’s focus is on action and beliefs are less important. This can be seen in American culture today—as long as you do not do anything to attract negative attention to yourself, you can do as you please: Ellen, though she is a strict churchgoer and a moral girl, does not believe in God. Rather does she believe in the Golden Rule and in doing right. She doesn’t need God. What does God have to do with being honest, hard-working, chaste, upright, unselfish etcetera. I on the other hand believe in God, the Jews, Christ, the whole business.

Yet I don’t do right. I am a Renaissance pope, an immoral believer.17 16 17

Ibid, 13.

Ibid, 157.

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This inverts traditional distinctions between Catholicism and Protestantism and raises the question of what the Catholic identity really means to most Catholics today. Walker has presented the reader with two extremes in the case of American and Catholic identities. Tom can either merge his American and Catholic identity so completely that they lose all specificity, or he can try desperately to hold on to a religion that has lost its distinctions and power as it struggled to remain. The only way to retain both an American identity and a Catholic identity that have any worth is to find a way into the middle. All of the options given to the characters in Love at the End of the World are caricatures of problems that exist today and the only way to avoid the satire becoming a reality is to find a way to balance national and religious identities. This book indicates that Catholics should allow their Catholicism and their Americanism to inform each other without allowing them to overtake the purpose and standards of the other. Catholics will only be able to find satisfaction in their national and religious identities if there is a balance acknowledged between the two. Both identities also need to have a specific role to fill so that it is easier to distinguish when it is more appropriate to identify with one identity over another.

For priests, whose entire lives are devoted to their religion, it must be more difficult to find a way to leave some distance between their Catholic identity and their other American identity. Priests are often struck in the crossfire when they have to mediate between the cultural context that they and their parishioners live in and the social and theological demands of the church. In Andrew Greeley’s novel, The Cardinal Sins, the liberal parish priest and academic, Father Kevin Brennan, has to toe the line between advising his people in line with the teachings of the Church while giving them the freedom of individual choice that the United States’ mentality champions. For instance, when a childhood friend and his wife are trying to decide about the appropriateness of using birth control, Father Kevin is placed in a difficult place as his personal opinions and Church teaching disagree. Kevin knows that Ellen has had too many children too quickly and that her health and her marriage depend on her taking a break from pregnancy. Kevin is forced to counsel his advice to her confused husband: “’I’m sure that Ellen wouldn’t want to do anything that she had decided in her conscience sinful,’ I said carefully. ‘She should heed her conscience.’ The parish safe seemed to glare at me for my departure from orthodoxy.”18 Kevin tries desperately to offer Ellen and her husband, Tim, the freedom to follow their individual consciences instead of official Church teaching. Her husband, however, cannot accept this disobedience 18

Andrew Greeley, The Cardinal Sins (New York: Forge Books, 1981), 153.

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and leaves the confessional convinced that Father Kevin told him that to use birth control would be a mortal sin.19 The Catholic identity of Father Kevin, Ellen, and Tim make it difficult for them to make very personal decisions that are far simpler for their Protestant counterparts. Both the American mindset and Protestantism value the experience of the individual and therefore they have considerably more freedom in making such decisions.

This mindset is one that Kevin, Ellen, and Tim could not escape; they grew up in American society and now actively participate in that society as adults. Their Catholic identity, however, has an equally strong grasp and that identity speaks of a universal moral and social standard that allows for less wiggle room for individuals. Priests and lay people both struggle with this dichotomy as they have to make decisions about what mindset they wish to follow. If they are willing to quietly disagree with the Church on some matters and go about their life, do they surrender their entire Catholic identity? Can some pieces of that identity be salvaged while others are carefully discarded? Can American Catholics retain a strong sense of American individualism and a strong sense of Catholic community, or are the two mutually exclusive? Can the individual thrive in the community? For a long time, Protestants claimed that the hierarchical power structure of the Catholic Church prevented Catholics from retaining any unique thoughtsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;essentially, Protestants claimed that Catholics were brainwashed.

Catholics would disagreeâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;there has always been differing opinions in existence within the Catholic Church, and to make a claim on Catholicism is not to assert one undisputed identity. This truth gains even more significance when you consider that no person consists of only one identity. Catholics, like everyone else, claim multiple identities, all which have to interact. At times, the identities inevitable clash or disagree. Sometimes individuals are able to find ways to reconcile these disagreements and sometimes the internal conflict is forced to stand and leaves the individual without a clear answer. Depending on their priorities, Catholics can be forced to reconsider decisions in light of their Americanism, or Americans can be forced to reconsider decisions on light of their Catholicism.

This can severely complicate decision-making and can lead people into a cyclical thought pattern that can never be answered. Who is to say, however, that this is necessarily a negative process? Catholicism and Americanism complicate each other; while this often makes decision making more difficult it also results in a more sophisticated understanding of each side of the argument and an ability to sympathize with a broader spectrum of people. Maybe this means that American 19

Ibid.

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Catholics have to struggle more with their moral and social decisions, but they also have a richer understanding of the issue which can lead to more informed and well balanced actions. These dueling identities can cause complications, but they also lead to a fuller understanding of the world around them and the people that inhabit that world—on both sides of many issues.

Works Cited

Greeley, Andrew. The Cardinal Sins. New York: Forge Books, 1981. Print.

O’Connor, Edwin. The Edge of Sadness. Chicago: Loyola Press, 1961. Print.

Percy, Walker. Love in the Ruins: The Behavior of a Bad Catholic at the Time Near the End Of the World. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1971. Print.

Powers, J.F. Morte d’Urban. New York: New York Book Review Classics, 1962. Print.

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We Swim, We are not Swallowed 1

Taylor Klassman An infectious hesitation towards organized religion is a constant dialogue in the queer community. This wavering is grounded in the bitter battle between separatism and assimilation of homosexuals and allies into the religious realm.

A battle that forms the question of whether to integrate into the established (corrupted) community, change the community from within, or create and maintain a comfortable space that is separate for queers. In our human quest for meaning and acceptance, it can be easy to get lost in the socially constructed reality that closets God into the confines of an intolerant realm of religious straightism.

In the dialogue between culture and religion, not only can the individual be pulled under the boat, but even God can be drowned. Many individuals are so determined to seek redemption from his or her God-given “sin” of homosexuality that they lose touch with themselves. This specific type of anomy, a detachment from the self, is the most dangerous. The vulnerability that accrues from such selfdoubt and longing for meaning warrants religion to sweep in and provide a plausibility structure for the sufferer to rest upon. Oftentimes, the individual blindly embraces religion, because it is better than eternal nothingness. Even worse, some may be tempted to begin counseling or enter an ex-gay ministry like Exodus International that focuses on, “Mobilizing the body of Christ to minister grace and truth to a world impacted by homosexuality”2. When antagonism is the name of the game, how do we reconcile an intolerant society with a benevolent spirituality that was supposedly founded on justice and love?

History of Sexuality as a History of Social Relations A Queer Theology is a set of ideas based around the notion that identities are not fixed and do not entirely determine who we are. With this idea, the emphasis shifts away from specific acts and identities to the myriad ways in which gender and sexualities organize and diversify society. Perceptions of sexuality change with time, just like we do; therefore, our theology needs to adjust accordingly.

Why does this pose such a threat to the Church? If we exalted a new theology, or a revised theology that resembled queer theology, the Church would lose some members, but it would gain a lot as well. Robert Goss says that a queer theology can only come from our own organic experiences, our struggles and sexual con1 2

Nett Hart, Lesbian Desire as Social Action (Albany, NY, 1990), 300.

Exodus International, http://www.Exodusinternational.org.

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text. We have been living with a theology that does not embody the community’s ideals as a whole, but rather shapes the community to the preferences and expectations of a specific group. 3 Even in welcoming and affirming congregations there is only a partial inclusion. By welcoming translesbigays back to the Christian community, we also deny their erotic lives by not blessing their unions and not ordaining them. You can be as benevolent and welcoming as June Cleaver, but homosexuals are not entrusted with the fundamental rights of faith.

The Origin of Sex The author Reinaldo Arenas of Cuba theorizes, “Sexual energy generally overcomes all prejudice, repression, and punishment. That force, the force of nature, dominates.”4 Unfortunately, we are taught by the doctrine of the Church to fear sex, loathe our bodies, and deny our erotic fantasies. Our bodies translate our biological impulses that necessitate sex and life, so why does the church deny them? It seems contradictory that an institution so headstrong about the natural order would impede this natural process. Nevertheless, the Church has sustained a silenced sex and uses abstinence as a method of control and maintaining order in which believers (mostly parents) find solace. If we ignore sex and condemn it before we even have the chance to develop our understanding of it, then of course the only way we will view sex is under a microscope of judgment and evasion.

Why not use the Bible and Jesus’ teaching of inclusivity to our advantage? I think our species is advanced enough to take Jesus out of the direct line of sexual fire.

For example, before the introduction of Christianity, Tahitian women were uninhibited in their sexuality, 5 but now they cross their legs, zip their mouths, and preach abstinence out of fear of God’s wrath. The compromise is how to get to the sexualized body without violating the borders that have offered protection.

The Church has attempted such a compromise by forging “incoherent accommodations between ascetic imperatives of denying sex and allowing erotic desire for procreation within marriage.”6 Unfortunately, these accommodations, as skewed as they may be, do not apply to the homosexual community. Religious doctrine decided, “in all its most dangerous and exciting incarnations, sex is coded as queer.”7 3 4 5 6 7

Robert Goss, Queering Christ (Eugene, OR: Resource Publications, 2002).

Cindy Patton & Benigho Sanchez-Eppler, Queer Diasporas (Duke University Press, 2000), 169.

Pepper Schwartz & Virginia Rutter, The Gender of Sexuality (CA: Pine Forge Press, 1998.

Robert Shore-Goss, Gay and Lesbian Theologies (New York: New York University Press, 2010), 192.

Gargi Bhattacharyya, Sexuality and Society (New York: Routledge, 2002), 94.

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The Biblical Argument, By Way of Religious Amnesia Could it be that religious oppression is actually insignificant? It only exists as a reflection of a general social attitude. Bible passages are only authoritative because we allow them to be. The meaning of the Bible has been altered and in some sense scripted to fit its context. We suspect evil in the infrastructure of religion, yet we take any opportunity we can to use it to legitimate our fears or our beliefs.

Can we even see ourselves reflected in biblical narratives without modern identity templates (gay, straight, woman, etc.? However, the religious community only allows for a change in interpretation of the text that benefits their interest. In the light of this notion, we must learn to engage the text as an equal, not an authority.

We must ensure that a human construction of God’s word will not govern our life in its entirety. When we forget that humans have taken the word of the Bible into their own hands, we can more easily rationalize our actions by way of biblical justification. Sometimes these actions perpetuate hate and violence, but the agents behind them site passage after passage that reinforces these actions. Whether the marginalized group is women, blacks, immigrants, or in our context, homosexuals, the oppressors will always find an argument between the lines of the Bible.

Cultural Divide Asian Cultures In Asian cultures, such as Vietnam, homosexuality is mocked, not outlawed.

Like so many cultures, the fear of gender-bending is at the forefront of the anti-gay movement. A woman must always be obedient to a man (father, then husband, then eldest son), so when a lesbian does not rely on a man’s authority, she is condemned. The discussion of sex is much less stigmatized in Asian cultures, which explains why the issue of homosexuality is not about sex, but rather factors of masculinity and femininity. In fact, in Japan older men have sex with young males called “flower boys.” This action is motivated by lust alone and is considered to be non-threatening because the boys cannot be emasculated since they have not yet reached manhood. Furthermore, this action is empowering for the men and therefore upholds their necessity to remain the figure of power and masculinity.

Asian women carry on uninhibited conversations about sex amongst themselves, but never in the presence of men. Interestingly, men are less inclined to talk about sex, but when they do it is often shallow and induced by alcohol.8 Eunuchs, castrated men, in South Asia are regarded as sacred. In fact, if you want your prayers to be heard, you are to pray to or with them to assure your words Mei-Ling Hsu, Wen-Chi Lin & Tsui-Sung Wu, Representations of ‘Us’ and ‘Others’ in the AIDS New Discourse: A Taiwanese Experience (New York: Routledge, 2004).

8

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will reach God. What can be made of this culture’s profound spiritual respect for ‘emasculated’ men? Why do religions tend to trust these men when they supposedly value strict, traditional gender roles? The question leads back to sex. Since these men have been desexualized, they are no longer seen as a threat.

Homosexuality in the Qur’an Much of the Middle Eastern population follows the Islamic religious doctrine of the Qur’an. The stance on homosexuality is quite similar to the understanding with that of the Bible in the Christian community. The people who are condemned as homosexuals are called quam Lut, or “People of Lot;” taken from the story of Sodom and Gomorrah from the Bible. Most of the scripture that is used to condemn homosexuality is condemned sexuality in gender. Shari’a—Islamic law—is most concerned with public behavior of sexuality, whether it be between two men, a woman and a man, a boy and a man, etc… The only direct condemnation of homosexuals seen in the Qur’an has been interpreted from the sentiment: “Drive them out of your city: these are indeed men who want to be clean and pure!” (Qur’an 7:80-82) Islamic culture shares many of the same views of homosexuality that have already been discussed. First of all, the attraction of grown men to male youth is absolutely normal, because it does not pose a threat of emasculating the male in power. Another idea is that men often experiment with other men, because men and women are kept segregated so vehemently. They have sex with other men to simply fulfill biological “needs.” Lesbians can only be punished if four witnesses prove that she has committed a crime, and then she is allowed to either repent or be punished, because there is no issue of emasculation. The overarching theme of homosexuality in Islam returns to the notion of gender-bending and the upholding of male dominance in the gender hierarchy. As long as that is not threatened, homosexuality is just as often ignored as it is punished.9 Buddhism Homosexuality in Buddhist culture is just another form of desire and humanly wants that is condemned under Buddhist law. In Buddhist society, all forms of sexuality are indicted, because it is tied to desire and Buddhists stress the need to obliterate wants altogether. Another fear is that two men or two women loving each other is a “civilizing” process, because it departs from the natural order. Buddhists fear the implications that civilization will impart on the Buddhist individuals path to Buddha.

9

Qur’an

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The only text that has any real doctrinal value in Buddhism is the “Vinaya,” which is essentially the rulebook for Buddhists. It says that homosexual acts threaten the monastic community by blurring sexual difference. Furthermore, individuals could “play” with sexual boundaries by engaging homosexual sex as long as they remain starkly male. This fear of gender-bending is again the most distinct issue with homosexuality in the eastern hemisphere.

Following the trend of gender roles, Buddhist culture focuses on the active and passive (masculine versus feminine) roles of sexual partners and not biological gender. By engaging in sex, we create two victims: the consumer and the consumed, both of these individuals are condemned. For instance, a “Chigo” is a young male lover who is a student of his spiritual teacher. This relationship is more romantic and admired than sex with a woman --which is ridiculed and seen as spiritually purposeless—because there is spiritual motives behind their lustful release. 10 Separatism Helps Ease the Alienation from Ourselves In a state of oppression, the marginalized find unity in exclusion. In anomy from the ruling order, do we find community? Or is it the other way around: in denying ourselves (becoming alienated) do we find unity with the dominant consciousness? Homosexuals can hide in the shroud of the sacred in order to escape social shame. What is a better way to avoid persecution and rejection than to disappear in an institution theoretically based beyond this world? Within this frame, we subject ourselves to the oppressive notion that the out-group (homosexuals) needs concessions rather than the in-group (heterosexuals) needs correction in their close-minded views. The constant debate about “queer people’s demands for inclusion have created an unprecedented, often contentious dialogue about who we are and where we belong,”11 because you cannot force yourself into membership someplace where you have no place. Therefore, must a Zion (a land of no people for a people with no land) be exalted for gays to have any place at all to call home?

The truth about a “Queer Nation” is that “any cultural product we point to must belong to others too- the power of being everywhere means that there is no safe haven of community.”12 If we create a gay or lesbian “culture” it cannot truly be ours, because it would most likely follow in the footsteps of imperialist creation. Furthermore, we would create a community based solely on who we 10 11 12

Jose Ignacio Cabezon, Buddhism, Sexuality, and Gender (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992).

David Shneer and Caryn Aviv, Heeding Isaiah’s Call (New York: New York University Press; 2006), 265.

Gargi Bhattacharyya, Sexuality and Society (New York: Routledge; 2002), 29.

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sleep with; so, “how do we decide when people’s shared activities are sufficiently similar to constitute a common culture?”13 If we clump ourselves under this umbrella of who gets us off, then “the homosexual subject can now claim an identity without an essence,” because who we are is less than skin deep.14 If we continue to assert the most crucial part of our identity as our sexuality, how can we enter a social community -- especially any religious community -that has historically viewed such affirmations as taboo? Should we focus on breaking these traditional taboos or on finding ways in which we can more easily penetrate social boundaries through recognizing our similarities to the existing order?

Even if we reinvent or renegotiate this blueprint of the community, it will always be a construction. Furthermore, how can we expect society to accept us when we define ourselves in exclusion to that dominant order? Is the gay community’s fear of and aversion to religion also a communally produced norm, something passed down from a historically shared experience?

Living a Life of Fantasy The overwhelming advice that the homosexual community is greeted with when trying to reconcile with the Church is that we must choose not to act on our desires. The truth is we can choose to live as who we are through our actions; however, we cannot choose to be gay or not. So, what is the problem with following the Church’s advice? Is it not an assurance of affirmation, even ego exaltation, to keep one‘s self within the comfort of homogeny? The reality is that “everyone becomes straight by default, full membership of this elite grouping can require certain badges of affiliation,”15 so maybe we can just go with the flow. If we do not rock the boat by acting in defiance of our predetermined roles, then we are assured a place in the dominant order. However, Jesus said, “Your faith has made you whole” NOT, “Your faith has made you like everybody else.” It can be so easy to lose the sense of who we are, because acceptance can be so attractive. Glaser makes a profound distinction between uniformity unity; you are still queer even if you do not look or act like it.16 When our society relies so heavily on stereotypes of both homosexuals and heterosexuals, “The press can call gays ‘invisible’ only by ignoring that this invisibility is visibility as straight”17 when the lines that distinguish these stereotypical lives are blurred.

13 14 15 16 17

Ann Ferguson, Is There a Lesbian Culture? (New York: State University of New York Press, 1990), 66.

David Halperin, Saint Foucault: Towards a Gay Hagiography (Oxford University Press; 1995).

Gargi Bhattacharyya, Sexuality and Society (New York: Routledge; 2002), 25.

Chris Glaser, Gay Christians Should Accept Their Homosexuality (San Diego: Greenhaven Press; 1993).

Laurie Essig, Queer in Russia (London: Duke University Press; 1999), 106.

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Suffering: Our spiritual lives are infected by ideals of sacrifice and suffering in order to be deserving of God’s love. Does that mean we are expected to sacrifice our autonomy by denying our homosexuality? The current state of affairs for many homosexuals is to suffer under skin that is not our own, to suffer from hatred and injustice because of our sexuality or other shallow social implications. Is this the essence of suffering that Jesus Christ intended as he bled on the cross for us?

The implication of suffering is that it will be followed by some measure of healing. This ease from pain may be a “cure” out of homosexuality. Those who pursue this type of healing believe that “sexual otherness was a temporary fall from heterosexual grace, not a permanent marker of a stable and abiding self;”18 therefore, the injuries that accrue from the fall can be bandaged and remedied.

However, there is stark differentiation between being nursed back to health and being forced to swallow the metaphorical pill of heterosexuality. The healing that ensues from accepting who we are without hesitation is the healing that will lead to reconciliation with God. Ex-Gay Ministries: To implement this notion of conversion from the homosexual lifestyle to the “normal” heterosexual lifestyle, a business of ex-gay ministries and counseling has arisen. Some conversion techniques include: behavior therapy, masturbation punishment, brain surgery, and emetic persuasion (vomit-inducing meds).19 The fact is that in1990, the American Psychological Association stated that scientific evidence shows that reparative therapy does not work and that it can do more harm than good. Furthermore, in 2001, The US Surgeon General’s Call to Action to Promote Sexual Health and Responsible Sexual Behavior asserted that homosexuality is not “a reversible lifestyle choice.”

Despite the truths of these arguments against conversion methods there are still dozens of organizations that promote and practice these methods. American Family Association, Christian Families with Faith for Lesbians and Gays, Family Research Institute, Focus on the Family, Jews Offering New Alternative to Homosexuality, and the Traditional Values Coalition are a few on the list.

The result of these programs is repression, not evolution. We can submerge our desires so deep that there is no motive for any sexual intimacy. So individuals walk out of these institutions with an overarching sense of denial. Focus on the Family produced a documentary that highlights these “success” stories of the 18 19

Ibid, 57 George Weinberg, Society and the Healthy Homosexual (Garden City, NY: Anchor Press; 1973).

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rejuvenating results of ex-gay therapy, like Exodus International’s program. The documentary opens with the narrative of Melissa Fryrear, an ex-lesbian who was saved by God. Fryrear cracks joke after joke about the trials and tribulations of being a straight girl, from the heels to the makeup, it is a tedious job. It is ironic and unfortunate that her understanding of the heterosexual world revolves around the stereotypical life of a woman. She seems too distracted by heated eyelash curlers to notice that she is in fact a lesbian.

Mike Haley, a well-known author in the ex-gay business, takes the stage and begins his narrative about his homosexuality induced by issues with his father.

Since he was a child, this was not who he was and his father did not want to accept him because of it. Haley believes that the cause of his homosexuality was his God-given desire to be accepted by his father was not met. Mike now considers himself lucky that a very persistent ex-gay counselor essentially stalked him until he conceded to begin a program. After a few months he was “cured” and soon enough was ignoring his same-sex attractions so that he can start a new life with his wife. Mike never admitted to a full conversion, he simply admitted that he was no longer content living outside of the sexual norm and being condemned by his family. Haley believes that programs like Exodus are the churches “best kept secret,” but maybe they have been kept a secret for a reason.20 Love the Sinner, Hate the Sin For a moment, let us suppose that the Christian right is correct in believing that homosexuality is a sin for which we must repent. They operate under the premise that one chooses into sin just as one can choose out of sin. After all, the truth about sin is that “One cannot live in the kingdom of God and the kingdom of the world simultaneously... One cannot be dwelling in the light of God and also be in darkness. He cannot be in the service of Christ and simultaneously in the service of sin.”21 All of these sentiments make perfect sense; the issue is what the Church requires of us to reach salvation.

We must deny who we are and who we love in order to enter God’s kingdom.

The essence of sin is the transgression of virtue; however, the essence of virtues is that “virtues are the guides, not the jailers of our nature.”22 Furthermore, even when the homosexual sinner repents, salvation is not achieved. Reconciliation is dependent on the penitent--the judge or accuser-- not the confessor. The journey that we are tracing right now is of a homosexual who feels he or she has something 20 21 22

Ibid W.E. Shepard, Wrested Scriptures Made Plain, http://www.Eternalsecurity.us; 2008.

James P. Hanigan, Homosexuality: The Test Case for Christian Sexual Ethics (New Jersey: Paulist Press; 1988), 114.

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to repent for, he or she is hungry for forgiveness. The bible tells us, “He who is full loathes honey, but to the hungry even what is bitter tastes sweet” (Proverbs 27:7).

This contrived salvation may taste sweet to those who are starving for righteousness, but beware of the bee that makes honey sweet.

“The love that dare not speak its name” Vulnerability has risen from the depths of fear and yearning for a transcendent being to comfort us. When we enter the religious realm, we become enculturated into the rituals and ideologies of that congregation. Unfortunately the same silence that burdens the gay community is the silence that shelters it from backlash and animosity from a dominant voice that inherently disagrees with the homosexual lifestyle. Audre Lorde conveys a stark truth: “We have been socialized to respect fear more than our own needs for language and definition, and while we wait in silence for that final luxury of fearlessness, the weight of that silence will choke us.”23 So the question is not whether the gay community needs to reclaim religion, but whether or not religion and homosexuality can be merged in a new, organic relationship that defies the barriers of our social stigmas.

In a state of cognitive dissonance, we can resolve our conflict by changing our moral schemas to fit the implications of society, or by changing our actions to fit the anomy that will come with our moral integrity. True resolution is when a homosexual fully emerges from the closet as gay. “A homosexual person is gay when he regards himself as happily gifted with whatever capacity he has to see people as romantically beautiful… to be gay is to be free of the need for ongoing self-inquisition.”24 To be gay is to no longer look in the mirror and see the reflection of our sexualities. Rather it is to see the stars in our eyes and the love pulsing through our veins; it is to see a love that does not discriminate, even against God. Works Cited

Gargi Bhattacharyya, Sexuality and Society (New York: Routledge, 2002).

Jose Ignacio Cabezon, Buddhism, Sexuality, and Gender (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992).

Laurie Essig, Queer in Russia (London: Duke University Press; 1999).

Exodus International, http://www.Exodusinternational.org.

Ann Ferguson, Is There a Lesbian Culture? (New York: State University of New York Press, 1990).

Chris Glaser, Gay Christians Should Accept Their Homosexuality (San Diego: Greenhaven Press; 1993).

Robert Goss, Queering Christ (Eugene, OR: Resource Publications, 2002).

23 24

Audre Lorde in David Shneer and Caryn Aviv, Heeding Isaiah’s Call (New York: New York University Press; 2006), 7 George Weinberg, Society and the Healthy Homosexual (Garden City, NY: Anchor Press; 1973), 70.

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David Halperin, Saint Foucault: Towards a Gay Hagiography (Oxford University Press; 1995).

James P. Hanigan, Homosexuality: The Test Case for Christian Sexual Ethics (New Jersey: Paulist Press; 1988).

Nett Hart, Lesbian Desire as Social Action (Albany, NY, 1990).

Mei-Ling Hsu, Wen-Chi Lin & Tsui-Sung Wu, Representations of ‘Us’ and ‘Others’ in the AIDS New Discourse: A Taiwanese Experience (New York: Routledge, 2004).

Audre Lorde in David Shneer and Caryn Aviv, Heeding Isaiah’s Call (New York: New York University Press; 2006).

Cindy Patton & Benigho Sanchez-Eppler, Queer Diasporas (Duke University Press, 2000).

Pepper Schwartz & Virginia Rutter, The Gender of Sexuality (CA: Pine Forge Press, 1998).

W.E. Shepard, Wrested Scriptures Made Plain, http://www.Eternalsecurity.us; 2008.

David Shneer and Caryn Aviv, Heeding Isaiah’s Call (New York: New York University Press; 2006).

Robert Shore-Goss, Gay and Lesbian Theologies (New York: New York University Press, 2010).

George Weinberg, Society and the Healthy Homosexual (Garden City, NY: Anchor Press; 1973).

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The Denison Journal of Religion

Vol. XI: No. 1