Davison's Doodle

Modernity and Religion
— Martin E. Marty | April 11, 2011

Beyond religion-in-the-news stories about Japan, Libya, Washington, and other crisis points, “religion in public life” continues to be a topic which deserves notice. This week in a conversation two sociologists who are turning attention to religious phenomena asked a provocative question: “What would you make the focus of your research and writing if you were we, knowing our interests as you do.”

My answer was vague and sprawling, but clear in my own mind, as I’d long been pondering this question along with other puzzlers. I offer it free of charge also to others who engage in sighting the roles of religions in public life: Why do religious communities which for a long time strenuously resisted the new, the modern, the contemporary, now most successfully adapt their expressions and employ or even exploit the manifestations of “the modern” which they once opposed?

The immediate prompt for my question was a paragraph in a review by the awesomely learned historian Diarmaid MacCulloch, who was reviewing five books dealing with the 400-year history of the “King James Bible” in the London Review of Books. “Ironically, among many conservative evangelicals in the US, the KJB has lost its hegemony over the last half-century, as a welter of new translations has appeared reflecting the diverging agendas of an American evangelical Protestantism which was once given a certain unity by the cadences of 1611.” He quotes author Paul Gutjahr, “who tours us round Bibles rewritten for ‘busy moms’, ‘extreme teens’, or any special interest groups looking for spiritual guidance to suit itself, without the fatigue of having to listen to any of the Bible’s multitude of alternative voices.” MacCulloch relishes “the prospect of some day opening a Celebrate Recovery Bible. . .”

Many instances parallel to the KJV about-face come to mind. What is a better symbol of the modern than mass media of communications? In every religion, from non-Christian to Protestant, the fundamentalists outpace moderates or liberals in their embrace of media: radio, then television, and now the internet are virtually theirs. Two generations ago, the beat of rock was music of the devil to these anti-modernists, though earlier a few riffs of jazz in the sanctuaries of liberals got them dismissed as blasphemers. Today those liberals cherish pipe organs and cantatas, while Christian rock—with the same old once-sinful beat—beats out many secular rock expressions. “The love of money is the root of all evil!” was the biblical quote thundered in conservative churches. Today it is the putatively “conservative” wing of Christianity that forgets old restraints and promotes “enterprise,” the “market,” and all the rest as part of God’s plan.

Is it “wrong” or “bad” for Christian anti-modernists now to turn into accommodating “moderns?” They can cite the apostle Paul, who would be “all things to all people.” They do carry on their mission more efficiently and prosperously than do the “moderates” who are cautious about many such accommodations. Some think through the meaning of their radical adaptations; others simply coast. That and how and why they so blithely and even enthusiastically made 180-degree turns should keep more than two sociologists of religion busy. And those who changed might be a bit cautious, recalling philosopher Ernest Gellner’s word that there is nothing more dated than the modernism of the previous generation. At least let’s grant the point that we are better off than when the King James Version fans burned mildly revised versions as “Stalin’s Bibles.”

References

Paul C. Gutjahr, “From monarchy to democracy: the dethroning of the King James Bible in the United States,” The King James Bible after Four Hundred Years: Literary, Linguistic, and Cultural Influences. Edited by Hannibal Hamlin and Norman Jones (Cambridge University Press, 2010).

Diarmaid MacCulloch, “How Good is it?” London Review of Books, February 3, 2011.

Fasting for the Poor
— Martin E. Marty

“Why We’re Fasting” is the title of columnist Mark Bittman’s essay in Wednesday’s New York Times, the “we” being himself and David Beckmann, here described as a “reverend,” and “this year’s World Food Prize laureate.” The pastor heads “Bread for the World.” Yes, why fast? Readers can do their own sighting and hearing of all the media-reported clashes over the national budget, now in final crunch time. That scan will reveal the obvious: that lost in the necessary political and economic debates blighted by the side-tracking but focal partisan and sub-partisan disputes on the issue is one set of people. Biblical scholars in this “Judeo-” and “Christian” nation call them “God’s people.” They are the poor, disabled, disadvantaged, undersheltered and, yes, hungry, about whom some of the budget debates were supposed to have been waged.

Bittman and Beckmann discuss Isaiah 58, essential reading for believers and bystanders alike at such a time and place as this. G. K. Chesterton famously observed that one can look at something 999 times and then, on the thousandth sighting, see something revelatory, as if for the first time. We are asked to do such looking now. To bid each other to do so will sound embarrassingly pious, and yet. . . .

As Bittman tells it, he is fasting, or was, last Monday, when thousands of others also fasted to draw notice to those Congressional budget proposals (H.R. 1) which would “quite literally cause more people to starve to death, go to bed hungry or live more miserably than they are doing now.” Adds Bittman: “And: The bill would increase defense spending.”

Bittman confessed to some skepticism about whether things work out the way Isaiah 58, reporting on God’s revelatory word, suggests. That chapter also reflected God’s being bored by all of Israel’s fussing about how strenuous the people were about holy fasting. The prophet—in my own loose translation—says, for God: “You think you are going to impress me by fasting, but all you do is get hungry and thus get angry and then beat up on each other. Is that the fast you think I want?”

Also in elaborated but consistent paraphrase for the Bible-believers among us: “You can stamp ‘In God We Trust’ on all your money, fight for particular prayers in public gatherings and schools, sing ‘God Bless America’ and all,” but if the people would not feed the hungry, free the imprisoned, and take care of those in need, their fasting, they learned, was beside the point, if not futile and wrong. The ancient prophet said this more elegantly and with an authority that columnists cannot command, but his words should outrank other texts which are cherished by biblical literalists and their secular cousins during legislative and electoral conflicts. Beckmann: “. . . deficit reduction isn’t as important as keeping people from starving: ‘We shouldn’t be reducing our meager efforts for poor people in order to reduce the deficit. They didn’t get us into this, and starving them isn’t going to get us out of it.”

Bittman does not expect God to intervene, but he still hears the moral punch of the biblical language. Disagree with Bittman and Beckmann if they offend, one can suggest, but for the biblically-minded folk, proving that the two are wrong is hard to do. I hope both fasters savor their post-fasting food but stay on the cause. Those obsessed with budget-cutting will certainly stay on theirs. Note: Isaiah 58 speaks wonderfully, not grimly, about the promise of what could follow moral action in the face of human need.

References
Mark Bittman, “Why We’re Fasting,” New York Times, March 29, 2011.
David Beckmann, “God, Hear Our Prayer,” Bread for the World, March 28, 2011.