October 30, 2007 by djackson.

Kathy Griffin snagged an Emmy on Saturday night, September 8. Her acceptance speech included the following remark: “A lot of people come up here and thank Jesus for this award. I want you to know that no one had less to do with this award than Jesus.” She followed this with a rather graphic and obscene suggestion about an action she recommended the Lord could perform. Then, as she hoisted the statuette aloft she stated her confession of faith, “This award is my god now.”

Griffin’s verbal kidney-punch resulted in predictable calls for an apology from the Catholic League, platitudes about free speech from American Atheists, and a censoring of her remarks by the network. There were standard (and valid) comparisons to what would have happened had the entertainer said “Muhammed” instead of “Jesus” and to public outrage when Don Imus, Mel Gibson, and Michael Richards offended other constituencies.

Personally, I found Ms. Griffin’s remarks shocking. Her crack about Christ didn’t surprise me much, but a couple of other things did. Consider:

Her show won an Emmy? I’ve seen it. Well, I’ve seen the few minutes of it I could stand.

A lot of Hollywood folks thank Jesus for their success? Rosie O’Donnell compared conservative Christians to bomb-tossing crazies in Iraq. The Sarah Silverman show recently depicted the title character having a one-night stand with the Deity.

Perhaps most shocking of all was the theological accuracy and insight she displayed. “No one had less to do with this award than Jesus,” she crowed. As I said, I’ve seen her show and I have to agree. I appreciate her fairness to the Lord on this one. The guy who wrote the Sermon on the Mount wouldn’t want his reputation as a writer - let alone as the Son of God - sullied by association with stuff that wouldn’t play in a junior high bathroom. When you think about it, Ms. Griffin shows more courtesy - and more courage - than all those poetasters who warble lyrics with the standard rhymes about love-and-dove, grace-and-face, and Spirit-near it-hear it-fear it and then say “Jesus gave me this song.” He might well have done so; he couldn’t have any use for that kind of rubbish himself. Still, it wouldn’t be like Our Lord to re-gift all those rhymes that he apparently “gives” to hundreds of people on a regular basis. Be a man, I say, and own up to your actions without hiding behind Jesus.

Again, there was the elevation of the image followed by the Hollywood Creed: “This award is my god now.” Good theology again - “good” in the sense of “accurate,” if not “beneficial.”

See, the entertainment industry is a god, complete with a holy city, priests and temples, images and all the trappings. Theologian William Stringfellow proposed taking the Bible literally (though he was both a lawyer and an Episcopalian!), specifically Paul’s remarks in Ephesians 6.12 about “principalities . . . powers . . .the rulers of the darkness of this world”, and “spiritual wickedness in high places.” He believed the apostle meant that human institutions develop a life, a personality, all their own, and that this development has two results:

The moral principle which governs any institution – a great corporation, a government agency, an ecclesiastical organization, a union, utility, or university – is its own survival.

Before long the pattern itself regulates the functioning of the parts. It’s as if the pattern has a life of its own.

Those who enter orbit around the massive specific gravity of these demonic powers, even if they think they are running the show, eventually succumb to the draw of the mother planet and flame out on re-entry. They become so many burnt offerings in the bonfire holocaust, the non-stop barbeque that stokes the insatiable maw of this carnivorous deity. “Indeed,” Paul warns the Corinthian believers, “there are many gods and many lords” (1 Cor. 8.5). N. T. Wright comments on this verse, “The pagan pantheon cannot be dismissed as metaphysically nonexistent and therefore morally irrelevant. It signals an actual phenomenon within the surrounding culture that must be faced and dealt with, not simply sidestepped.” David Garland comments, “Paul writes in Gal. 4.8 that the Galatians were in bondage to beings that were by nature not gods, but these ‘no gods’ still enslave.”

Ms. Griffin is more right than she knows, or intends. She has indeed entered the service of a god, a very real and demanding one. William James named this power when he confessed in a letter to H. G. Wells that “the exclusive worship of the bitch-god success..is our national disease.”

That is the deity to whom Ms. Griffin delcares herself bound. It sometimes pays off in money and power, but like any savvy Las Vegas casino or New York insurance corporation, keeps the odds carefully stacked in favor of the house. This god has a religion in which all the usual features come standard. Devotees fast with two fingers jammed down their throats and end up as emaciated as the most masochistic saint could desire. They don’t kiss the rings of popes, but pucker up to the backsides of producers. Like the priestess-prostitutes of Ashera they sacrifice their sexuality on the altar of serial monogamy and end up with an emotional celibacy that has all of the loneliness and none of the exaltation of the real thing. They tattoo their flesh with the brands of their religion like a sort of lesser stigmata. Their temples are theaters, their hymns are sitcom theme songs, their Shekinah is the strobing glare of papparazzi flash-bulbs, and their sacraments are red wine and white powder. They lie on recovery room gurneys after painful plastic surgery and hear their lord proclaim, “This is your body which is broken for me.” Ask Brittney Spears what kind of retirement plan this religion has for those who can no longer serve. Ask if its Heaven and Hell aren’t basically the same place experienced at different points in one’s pilgrimage.

Don’t write Kathy Griffin any nasty letters. And don’t worry about her haymaker sideswipe at our faith. If we survived the Roman persecutions and - harder still - the Roman toleration, we can handle the sneer of popular culture; might even do us considerable good. Pray for Ms. Griffin. She’s sold herself into the service of a demanding demon. Like a child perched in the saddle of a stampeding stallion, she thinks she’s in control. That award is her god now, and a god, by definition, is something with more power than its acolyte. That award is her god; may God help her.

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October 23, 2007 by djackson.

The funeral was pure Windsor Park: the cellist was slightly deaf, the crowd was fairly small, the body was absent and the Spirit was present.

Mr. Yeagle had died. When I joined Windsor Park Baptist Church about a year ago I just assumed that the dignified, elderly man on the back row each Sunday was part of the old guard - took him for one of those staunch old members carved from the same oak as the pews they occupy and with memories that date back to the congregation’s genesis. But no, Mr. Yeagle was a recent recruit, reclaimed by a dying wife’s wish and a pastor’s persistence.

Mrs. Yeagle’s deathbed request was that her husband get back into church, a connection he’d lost in the long years of caring for his beloved invalid. So he creaked into the sanctuary one Sunday morning not knowing a soul in the place, a gaunt spectre who seemed so frail that the rustling of hymnal pages for the opening anthem would whip him into particles of mortality. Our pastor Grover Pinson, himself new to the place, asked about the faithful fellow way in the back and discovered that nobody knew anything about him. Friday afternoon visits ensued. Bertha and Juanita, Windsor’s own version of Lucy and Ethel with a gene splice from Thelma and Louise, accompanied Grover on these weekly quests.

Mr. Yeagle opened up, started staying for the Sunday fellowship lunches. We discovered that he mowed five yards on a regular basis. We found he owned a fund of spiritual wisdom and an almost jaunty witness for Christ. “Do you know him?” he’d ask random strangers, his thumb stabbing skyward in a quick jerk. Beats handing someone a Four Spiritual Laws tract if you ask me.

He took a fall, did time in rehab, recovered. His kidneys failed, hospitalized again, fought back. The last time around my pastor’s eye, practiced in repeated trips with elderly saints, could discern the signs of one who has begun his final slide - not a downward slip over the edge of a precipice, but the graceful dip of a wily base-runner who accelerates the pace as he curvets toward home plate. On a Monday night he beat the tag and slid safe into the arms of his Savior. One of the last things anyone heard him say was, “Jesus, remember me,” and then, with a smile, “Jesus, I know you. You won’t forget me!” Let’s see all of Richard Dawkins’ logic knock that one down.

So we gathered for the funeral. The family had cremated the body so no coffin graced the altar. The cellist, whose lawn Mr. Yeagle had mowed since she was a girl, spun out two Bach sonatas like an arthritic angel restored to youth. Our pastor’s wife printed a beautiful program which sported a photo of Mr. Yeagle hoisting his little dog Brownie on his shoulder and smiling like a man holding a winning lottery ticket. One of our theology students remembered Mr. Yeagle advising him, “If the devil has you under his thumb, if you wiggle around by praising God you can get away.” The MARTY Team (the name combines the titles of the two sisters of Bethany in a reminder that Christ has flanked the imaginary Maginot Line between contemplation and service) threw a reception that achieved elegant comfort, a rare combination.

And a small church on an obscure corner of a minor city remembered an old man whose name was less than a cipher to the cable news shows and the lurid tabloids. Not a celebrity, Mr. Yeagle was celebrated by those who made sure the last year or so of his life mattered because they insisted that he touch them. In a day when reality television teaches that it is better to have a lot of people watch you do nothing than to do something unseen, we can say of Mr. Yeagle what George Eliot says of her heroine Dorothea Casaubon, “Her finely touched spirit had still its fine issues, though they were not widely visible. Her full nature, like that river of which Cyrus broke the strength, spent itself in channels which had no great name on the earth. But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.”

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October 17, 2007 by djackson.

“SHOP FOR A CAUSE”

The slogan headlined a half-page ad in the New York Times and informed readers that they could purchase with a higher purpose at Macy’s department store on Saturday, October 13. The copy went on to pimp for Caribbean cooking demonstrations, an arcade featuring games of skill such as “Shoot Hoops” and “Quarterback Challenge,” and a book signing by Caroline Kennedy. All of this to the cool backbeat of a live jazz band set against the counterpoint of a concert pianist banging away on a specially donated Steinway.

They omitted one detail: the cause.

A quick trip to Macy’s website uncovered the information that it all had to do with the Corporation for Conservation of Wildlife. It sported a picture of a turtle and everything. But again, nothing to link a weekend retail orgy with an increased population of spotted snail-darters. Presumably a portion of the profit from each purchase goes to buy bags of ice for a deserving polar bear or something, but no one ever makes the connection.

Is this shopping for a cause, or shopping just because? It seems Macy’s has provided not so much a reason to buy as an excuse. I can’t genuinely think that anyone who queued up for the free tarot card reading (complimentary with any $75 purchase of Impulse fashion products) really fretted about endangered sea slugs. “Oh, I really don’t need another necktie, but I’m worried sick about global warming . . . and it comes with a free video game token.”

Seems the economy has become the shark that swims continually in order to survive, or the worm Ouroboros that eats its own tail. We shop so we won’t drop. Unprecedented efficiency in production has outstripped need and left us only greed to motivate endless sacrifices on the economic altar. The newspaper also reports that retailers have begun black-op’ing Christmas. Holiday sales look a bit dicey, what with the subprime meltdown and Chinese toy scandal, so big box stores must move the start of the season from sometime before Thanksgiving to well before Halloween. Figuring that this might weary even stuff-stuffed Americans, the clever ad men have started playing up the toys and free shipping while playing down the “C” word. Ephesians 1.4 assures us that Jesus’ birth was ordained from eternity past. Now it seems that the related shopping season may start just a few days later.

I want to offer a modest proposal for the people of God: Advent. This ancient (and unmarketable) Christian season marks the month before the coming of Christ at Bethlehem. You don’t sing Christmas carols during Advent because it isn’t Christmas yet. You sing songs of yearning because we need the Savior and don’t yet have him. You don’t get presents during Advent because the magi (whose chests of gold, frankincense and myrrh have become hip-flasks for bootlegging the rot-gut of pagan custom to pollute the chalice of our Christian worldview) don’t even arrive until twelve days after December 25. What you do is gather and remember a world where God had not come to walk among us and die for us. Marva Dawn, in her wonderful book A Royal “Waste” of Time, describes it this way:

“It is hard enough to help congregants realize that to be a Christian means that one is different from the world. The world plays Christmas music primarily to get us to buy things. The church reserves Christmas music for the twelve days of Christmas in order to retain (against societal pressures) the highlighting of Christmas as the festival for which we’ve been waiting. The purpose of Advent is to help people long for the coming Messiah.”

I’m not asking much, no moratorium on Christmas shopping or boycott of presents. I don’t want Santa scorched in effigy as the cultural equivalent of another individual who supposedly wears a red suit. Just Advent, just a cattle crossing to keep us from following the herd as it blunders blindly forward to graze in pastures not yet made rich with the grace which grows best when fertilized by soulful longing. Just Advent.

But probably I do ask too much. Wal-Mart uses Christmas to get people to buy stuff. God-Mart uses Christmas to get people to show up. We’d miss a major marketing opportunity if we decided we couldn’t invite people to Jesus unless we first showed them who he is. Time enough for that later, say in the new member’s class. Seems Paul got that whole conformed/transformed thing tangled up in Romans 12.2. We must square the living outlines of the incarnate faith to fit the rigid rubric of secular structure. Metamorphosis may produce butterflies but scheming builds multiplexes and of what earthly use is a butterfly anyway?

Shane Claiborn tells the story of a Christian businessman who took seriously the call to live Christ in everyday life . . . so he ordered a custom-crafted “WWJD” bracelet cast in twenty-four karat gold. Abba Evagrius the desert father, on the other hand, told of a fellow monk who sold his last possession - his Bible - to feed those in need. “I have sold,” he rejoiced, “even the word that commands me to sell all and give to the poor.”

Advent, anyone?

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October 9, 2007 by djackson.

“Thou shalt not blame a female victim of domestic abuse for her plight.”

Any secular analog to the decalogue, though whittled down to a monologue, would retain the preceding commandment. In a society where postmodern mushiness makes absolute arguments against moral absolutes this stand on wife-beating remains sacrosanct. If the woman in question is African-American, the rule applies with extreme prejudice.

But if the African-American woman is also an evangelical Christian, she’s fair game. If she compounds her crimes by preaching sexual purity, all bets - and the gloves - are off.

A few years back Juanita Bynum vaulted to cable evangelist superstar status on the strength of her sermon, “No more sheets.” T. D. Jakes picked up her option and “Sheets” went platinum, selling over a million copies and filling stadiums across the country. Not only did Ms. Bynum urge women - and African-American women in particular - to practice sexual purity and commit to lifelong marriage, she spoke openly of the trials of such a program. “I find it very difficult,” she admitted, “to listen to anybody preach to me about being single when they’ve got a pair of thighs in bed every night. You’re telling me, ‘Hold on, honey, sanctify yourself,’ and you’re going home to biceps and triceps and big old muscles.” Well, I have been working out . . . .

Not long ago, Ms. Bynum married Thomas Weeks III, bishop of a franchise outfit called Global Destiny Church. Not long after that, he beat her up in a hotel parking lot.

It’s a sad story, though not a particularly new one, but what interests me is the reaction in the press. (I almost said “liberal press,” but my English teacher broke me of redundancy a long time ago.) Being on the receiving end of a husband’s fist, according to the New York Times, “has . . . raised questions about the trajectory of Ms. Bynum’s career as a woman who called herself a prophetess.” African-American talk show host Tom Joyner sneered, “If you’re a prophet, didn’t you see this coming?” Shayne Lee, a sociologist of religion at Tulane, goes so far as to speculate that getting pounded by her husband calls Ms. Bynum’s credibility into question.

So let me see if I’ve got this straight: being the victim of domestic abuse destroys a woman’s status. A strong woman, a pioneer for female leadership in a male-dominated field, loses face if a man punches her in the face. Did I miss something?

G. K. Chesterton, recalling his days as a curious young atheist, admits that answers to his questions seemed to change in accordance with the need to ridicule faith. “This,” he says, “began to be alarming. It looked not so much as if Christianity was bad enough to include any vices, but rather as if any stick was good enough to beat Christianity up with.” As Juanita Bynum’s case demonstrates, even a beaten-up woman will do.

I don’t know Ms. Bynum’s work; I’m not a big fan of neo-pentecostalism. What I do know is that men who hit their wives have done something wrong, and that the women who get hit have not. And I know that is true even if they are Christians - which means I know more than America’s liberal elite.

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