Category: Guest Column
the Latest Sightings . . .
The Kingdom of Heaven and the IRS
— Martin E. Marty
3/25/12A Gentile (as in Russell P. Gentile) is the most recent, perhaps most earnest, certainly the boldest claimant, on the government and religion news front in the winter just past. While others have protested along the line of “separation of church and state” when government is interpreted as having crossed that line, Gentile goes further. The Florida businessman pleaded that he should not be punished (as he will be punished) for not having paid owed taxes which he argues that he does not owe. While the public is familiar with Catholic bishops being critical on the issue of having to pay taxes, even indirectly, or even “indirectly indirectly” when a government policy apparently conflicts with conscientious and doctrinal issues, Gentile will not pay taxes for anything. We are familiar with Baptists and others who hold the line on “separation,” Gentile poses a transcendent issue.
In short, he says he is not subject to human laws but is an American national who “resided in the Kingdom of Heaven.” He has been “as polite and patient” as he could be, but threatens to sue if the Feds come after him. (Thy have come.) He would not report his income, and faces substantial federal prison time and fines. He broke numbers of laws and set out to obstruct justice. The legal cases continue, and outcomes are uncertain as we write. Why waste readers’ time on a case that can be described as comical and trivial?
The problem is that the Kingdom of Heaven is invoked in other cases as well. James Madison’s words argue “that it may not be easy, in every possible case, to trace the line of separation between the rights of religion and the civil authority with such distinctness as to avoid collisions and doubt on unessential points.” And most colliders say that they deal with essential points. These days we are told that Catholic and Evangelical authorities are the chief critics of the civil authority. Does Mr. Gentile’s apparently bizarre claim cast light on the others? We have to prove he is conscientious and sincere, though he is a bad calculator if he thinks that he can hold on to all his money as a member in the Kingdom of God. The last we heard from a relevant source, the New Testament, it claims all that one has and is.
Back to reality: we are in tangles over what is “essential,” what is “authority,” and who has the power to tie up government, gain media time, and affect policy. Are Catholic and Evangelical leaders the only ones who have a moral right to raise these issues? Do they succeed because they have the money, the power, and the clout to advance their claims? Every year, every day, thousands of Americans, equally conscientious as they are, do not get their way when government policies conflict with their consciences. Jehovah’s Witnesses go to jail and other “sects” make legal cases and irritate the courts as they refuse to follow mandates to have their children vaccinated, etc. Those who oppose fluoridation of water are inconvenienced. Pacifists know that we know that they suffer for conscience’s sake whenever they pay federal taxes, and will get no more than sympathy from those of us who share their conviction but do not probe to its depths. Or who do not make a legal case of being members of the Kingdom of Heaven.
Conclusion: we citizens need patience, dialogue, study, and argument of more reasoned, thoughtful, and sympathetic character than we often see and hear and show. Otherwise Mr. Gentile and his kind will be the ones who make the best case.
References
J. D. Gallop, “Melbourne Man Faces Prison after Making Deal with IRS,” Florida Today, March 20, 2012.
—. “IRS Intervention Not Divine for Melbourne Man,” Florida Today, March 21, 2012.
James Madison is quoted from a letter to the Rev. Jasper Adams, in John F. Wilson (ed.), Church and State in American History (Boston D C Heath, 1965), pp. 77-78.
Sightings Today
Believing, Belonging, and Laughing in Little Mosque on the Prairie
— Lauren E. Osborne | 3/15/2012The Canadian sitcom Little Mosque on the Prairie is running its sixth and final season. The show first aired on the CBC (Canada’s national broadcasting network) in 2007, drawing record numbers of viewers for a domestically produced show. The setting is the fictional prairie town of Mercy, Saskatchewan, home to a Muslim community made up of individuals of diverse backgrounds, who represent archetypes one might find in any number of North American Muslim communities (although the sheer variety of backgrounds in one small town is surprising). The local mosque rents its space within the town’s Anglican church. Muslims worship and live alongside their non-Muslim Canadian neighbors. Conflicts and misunderstandings arise but are promptly resolved, all in the spirit of lighthearted comedy.
The show makes a two-tiered argument. First, it depicts Muslims as people, and a diverse group of people at that, living their lives—going to work, interacting with neighbors, friends, and families. In this respect, Little Mosque is the first North American show of its kind. Secondly, it focuses on humorous situations involving a group of people that television media typically depicts as a threat, or at least as outsiders. The general basis for this humor is not new, in that it recalls African American sitcoms from the 1980s, most notably The Cosby Show, arguably one of the first of this kind.
Of course, the premise of The Cosby Show is drawn on ethnic lines, with the main characters and vast majority of the cast being African American. Muslims, on the other hand, are not an ethnically defined group; rather, the characterizations on Little Mosque demonstrate that they are a religiously defined community, diverse in any number of ways. Characters on Little Mosque are native-born Canadians and immigrants, of a wide range of racial backgrounds and degrees of religious observance.
The relatability of Little Mosque to Canadian Muslims and other (presumed) outsiders operates along the lines of being an outsider looking in, laughing at oneself and the situation of being an outsider. But it comes at the expense of the depiction of its characters experiencing and struggling with religious belief and doubt.
Humorous situations that are particular to Muslims in North America do arise; for example, “Swimming Upstream,” an episode from the first season wherein Mercy’s Muslim women find that the women’s swimming instructor at the local pool is a gay man, then organize to find a female instructor to replace him. While it deals with an issue that is humorous but with potential for serious inquiry (can a gay man see a hijab-wearing Muslim woman without her hijab?), it skirts the fact that this problem arises from actual religious belief, which is ostensibly the defining premise of the show. This topic could be the site of a complex conflict that may not be resolvable within a 30 minute timeslot.
Similarly, The Cosby Show has been criticized for not addressing the issue of race. Although it was a sitcom, it did occasionally deal with serious issues (drug use in “Theo and the Joint” and “Close to Home,” and teenage pregnancy) but none of these concerned race specifically. One executive producer of the show has been quoted as saying, “Bill depicted the Huxtables as an American family that happened to be black, rather than as an African-American family.” This depiction defied the racist stereotypes of African Americans that had previously dominated popular television, so in this respect the show dealt with race fundamentally yet implicitly.
Both The Cosby Show and Little Mosque make statements about difference and belonging in North America—The Cosby Show about race, and Little Mosque about religion. In Little Mosque, however, religious differences provide the premise for many comedic situations. This is slightly different from The Cosby Show’s treatment of race, which thoroughly avoids that issue that is at its core (that the all-American family can just happen to be black). The treatment of religion in Little Mosque, however, leaves the viewer wondering about the place of religious belief in the show, and in comedy more generally. In an interview with Katie Couric, star Zaib Shaikh describes the show as a “gentle” comedy: it is not sarcastic, never dark nor biting. Given that the storylines in Little Mosque do not address the topic of religious belief, despite the fact that religion is ostensibly at the root of the series, we might ask if this relationship is due to some kind of conflict between belief and the lighthearted variety of comedy of the North American sitcom. Can such a comedic television show depict or do justice to belief, or does the topic naturally resist comedy?
References
Tim Arango, “Before Obama, There Was Bill Cosby,” The New York Times, November 7, 2008.
Zaib Shaikh, Interview by Katie Couric, CBS News, January 19, 2011.
Lauren E. Osborne is a PhD student in Islamic Studies at the University of Chicago Divinity School.