from the sad ironies department

You may remember the ECUSA Priest / Moslem, Dr. Ann Holmes Redding, who was the talk of the town a couple of weeks ago.  Well, she's been inhibited by her ECUSA Bishop, Geralyn Wolf of Rhode Island.  That means she's forbidden from functioning as an ECUSA priest for the time being.

Dr. Redding stated that "The church is going to have to divorce me if it comes to that.  I'm not going to go willingly."  That seems like a typically contemporary Episcopalian response.  "I refuse to accept that my actions have consequences!  I must be allowed to do whatever I want!  My actions must be affirmed, no matter what!"

The final irony is that while Dr. Redding is forbidden to teach, preach, or function at any ECUSA parish or institution, she has accepted an invitation to teach at the Roman Catholic Seattle University.  What strange days these are.

kids and money

Watch this little series of interviews about teenagers and money in Los Angeles. Its from the NY Times. Our culture is messed up.

I think Lauren Greenfield (the director) is onto something. Check out her other projects here -- they all look pretty shrewed.

People (most recently Peter Kreeft) get onto me about liking Postmodern stuff. But Lauren Greenfield's work just goes to show how Christians can partner up with with Postmodern types. (I don't know Ms. Greenfield, but it wouldn't surprise me if she were an incredibly hip, Yale educated, ironical feminist.) But she clearly understands that there is something wrong about our culture -- something that is destructive of kids, and girls in particular (check out "Thin" at Ms. Greenfield's website). Christians are well positioned to see this; what's amazing is how few self-described Christians actually do.

Well done, Ms. Greenfield. Christians: learn from her.

a sign of the times

I looked at the most recent issue of the Living Church today. Under the title, where it had said "An independent weekly serving Episcopalians..." it now says "An independent weekly serving catholic Anglicans..."

Fascinating. I don't dislike it. But I kinda wish it said "...serving Anglican catholics..." Then they could be a subsidiary of this blog. But seriously: it makes more sense for the noun to be "catholic" and the adjective to be "Anglican". Anglicanism is accidental. Catholicism is essential.

But let's not quibble. Well done, Living Church.

the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom

Here's a "wisdom quiz" that I found on the NY Times website. Supposedly it assesses how wise you are. My score: 3.5, which is "relatively moderate wisdom."

A better measure of wisdom is offered by T. S. Eliot in his poem "East Coker," one of the Four Quartets, written after his conversion to Christianity. This is a line I turn over frequently in my mind:

"The only wisdom we can hope to acquire is the wisdom of humility. Humility is endless."

"*** save the queen"

I have just returned from seeing "The Queen," which has been, as I understand, been nominated for several Aacademy Awards. Since there has been such a dearth of worthwhile movies of late, I hope this gets something. Helen Mirren, no doubt, deserves the Best Actress trophy for her portrayal of Elizabeth II R. Overall, I'm pleased that the movie was so nuanced: much more than they tend to be in these days of cheap emotions and shrill polemics.

The film raised some interesting associations in my mind while I was watching with the ideas of René Girard, my intellectuel du jour. To understand this parallel, one must remember that the movie is set against the events that unfolded in the wake of Diana Spencer's death following a car accident in a Paris tunnel. The death of the "people's princess," as PM Blair (regrettably) called her at the time, brought out the populace in droves who put on a tremendous, spontaneous display of communal grief. HRH, duly noting that Diana was no long a member of the royal family, and even as a member, a particularly difficult one, restrained from taking action, preferring to let the Spencer family handle the affair. In the movie, this is portrayed as essentially a political mistake, since it she failed to recognize and capitalize on the "mood" of her subjects, the monarchy lost face and was diminished in the hearts and minds of the British. Be that as it may, I believe that more importantly it effectively illustrates and even substantiates the arguments of Girard as to the development and continued operation of culture.

Girard's main thesis explores the concept of mimetic desire as the origin of human culture. According to him, people are fundamentally mimetic (that is, imitative) creatures. We learn and develop by copying each other. This same propensity for imitation results in conflict and violence when two desire the same thing, the second simply because the first wanted it. The conflict quickly escalates because it is not centered around the contested object at all but on the other person. Then more and more people, following suit, become entangled in the initial conflict. Acts of violence beget imitative reprisals, and soon violence threatens to destroy a fragile community. The violence is stopped, however, by the devolving of blame on one individual by the community, who then receives the punishment for the initiation of violence in order to expiate it from the community. In this manner, order is restored and culture is born through the introduction sacrificial rites. What is important here is that at some point the community unites against a common enemy, a scapegoat whose death will cease the violence which endangers their society. Furthermore, the community is able to exempt itself from any guilt in the spread of violence because it successfully projects its guilt onto the scapegoat. In Girard's scheme, this scapegoat is also the origin of law. Since the scapegoat's power in the community to stop violence which forever looms over them gives this individual special status and a surplus aura and is usually attendant with special privileges in the community, the delay of time between the selection of the scapegoat-victim and the execution of punishment can give the scapegoat the opporunity to consolidate power and privilege into a more permanent position, thus giving rise to kingship. For Girard, a monarch is never more than a paroled victim. Another key moment is that community is united and consolidated by its opposition to an individual who is necessarily excluded from it. As I believe he put it, the community belongs to the victim, but the victim does not belong to the community. In effect, the victim creates the community.

What matter all this? Well, the effects of this idea become far reaching, in personal and public spheres, although that is not what I want to explore here. However, Girard's theory about the formation and operation of culture must first be validated, and I believe that "The Queen," although without at all meaning to do so, does just this. In fact, because it is inadvertent, its proof necessarily takes on more weight than an intentional proof does, since it confirms that this is indeed a natural and inevitable mechanism of human societies. How does it do this? In "The Queen" (and here I am generally assuming it accurately represented the general events as they occurred), an act of violence, in this case the death of Diana Spencer, threatens the community with disintegration by grief, and even a public uprising, which is intimated by Tony Blair. The community, the general mass of Britons, seeking justice, does not lay the blame at the feet of the paparazzi who drove her car into the ground, nor at Diana herself--who perhaps justly reaped the rewards of her wanton and frivolous lifestyle--nor even itself, for its relentless consumption of the tabloids that paid the photographers who hounded her to death, but on the royal family, who failed to see what a "saint" she was. The cards among the flowers left at Buckingham Palace crystalize this, explicitly citing the queen as the author of Diana's demise. While rationally, this is absurd, in the Girardean scheme, the queen must get the blame because she is the monarch and thus the scapegoat. This allows the excess of violence in the community to be cathartically channelled into the victim for the preservation and consolidation of the community, here represented by the resounding applause given to Diana's brother's milquetoast eulogy.

This is all far too sketchy, I am sure to adequately cover the ground, but I hope it whets appetites for closer reading of Girard (who is a Christian, by the way). His thought and writings, I find, are deeply rewarding. As a postscript, though, I think this same parallel can be seen in the public response to our president. Suddenly and swiftly, Bush is being abandoned by everyone. He is losing support because he must. In order to channel our fears concerning the state of the world, Bush is being blamed for not only Iraq, but the environment and every other global crisis. By villifying him--and given the tone of bumperstickers I see these days, even murdering him--people are able to exempt themselves from their own role in the perpetuation of violence in the world. In less than two years, Bush will no longer be in office, and will no longer affect the problems which he inherited from his predecessors. And lo, the problems will not vanish in his passing.

As a post-post script, the asterisks in the title refer to the (accidental) bleeping of the word "God" from the version of "The Queen" shown on commercial airlines. Nevertheless, God save the Queen.

children of men and a reflection on current affairs

I went to see Children of Men last night. It reminded me a good deal of Apocalypse Now: A cynic on a weird redemptive journey through apocalyptic weirdness and violence. Unlike Manolha Dargis of the NY Times, I'm not naive (or unobservant) enough to think that there is no ideology behind the movie. It does sort of masquerade as mere reporting. But as with V for Vendetta (which I found intensely irritating in this respect), the clear implication of the movie is that the policies of the governments of America and Britain (today) are on a path leading civilization to the brink. This is implied mainly by the ubiquitous stylistic and thematic elements of Children of Men that were taken directly from the news media's coverage of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

For example, in Children of Men, the cynical protagonist (Theo played by Clive Owen) is caught in the crossfire between a misguided government and a misguided resistance. We are left to guess at the particulars of what drives the resistance, apart from their vague and vaguely benevolent concern for immigrant rights (in the movie, immigrants are distractingly referred to as "fugees"). Moreover, the resistance is a make-believe group called "The Fishes." By contrast, the implied continuity of the government with its real world counterparts is more than evident in constant references to "The Department of Homeland Security" (this time in Britain), whose thugs dress like American soldiers and parade around with vicious German Shepherds, rounding up immigrants, beating them indiscriminately, and dressing them à la Abu Ghraib torture victims (complete with sacks over their heads, etc.). Further continuity with reality is implied by little touches like anti Iraq war memorabilia in the home of one of the movies unambiguously good guys: an old hippy played well by Michael Caine.

Technically - and overall - the movie was impressive. Certainly much better that 90% of today's cinematic schlock. One action sequence in particular, which has Clive Owen running through an urban battlefield while bullets and rockets zing around him, is very impressive indeed - it felt real, and really violent, without being especially gory. And the actual theme of the movie (overlying its Bush-critical subtext) is taken straight from the pages of our culture's Christian mythos: a child is miraculously born in disadvantaged circumstances, and brings with it to the world the hope of peace, righteousness, joy, etc. And you can't help liking a protagonist (Clive Owen) who's only motivation is to protect a helpless mother and child. Who doesn't like helpless mothers and children?

Okay, so what's my problem? Its not that I am a big fan of the Iraq War or of some particular set of immigrants or immigration policies. What I do dislike, however, is ham-fisted criticism of any of the above, though it be implied. The challenges facing contemporary society (particularly the challenge of Islam - what is called in public "radical" Islam) are multifaceted and incredibly deep and complex. Does this mean the Bush Administration is engaging them wisely? Not necessarily. But I don't see a cultural or political consensus on a viable alternative. I see myriad potential alternatives (e.g. more troops in Iraq, fewer troops in Iraq, no troops in Iraq, etc.), the viability of any of which are to my mind far from demonstrable. And over and over again I see in the media reductionistic accounts of the conflicting ideologies which, in their grossest form, usually go something like this: the American government wanted to steal oil, so they invaded Iraq; this has provoked radical Muslims to rage against the West.

Piffle. The media occasionally reports with indignation that many in the American Government don't know the difference between Sunnis and Shiites. I don't doubt this, and its a horrifying fact. But who in the media knows the difference? You can't begin to understand the West's conflict with Islam until you understand something about Islam. And no one seems to. It looks to me like Alfonso Cuarón (the director of Children of Men) is buying into the notion, pervasive in Western culture, that prophecy consists of one part recognition that there is, in fact, a conflict going on, and one part inculpation of our side's leaders for their role in it. Again: piffle. Mordacious criticism, to my mind, is made credible only in being accompanied by a constructive alternative to the object of criticism.

But in the meantime, notwithstanding its subtextual punditry and minor flaws, Cuarón has made an interesting, compelling, and visually very impressive movie. Go see it.

more incoherence in the media

Here is this from Slate Magazine. But what did I expect (from Slate)? The incredible thing is the fundamentalistic citation by liberals of such things as the Council of Nicaea as some kind of sacrosanct bedrock of church polity. Bob Williams is quoted thus: "One bishop is not supposed to intrude upon another's jurisdiction. This has been true since the Council of Nicaea." Yes, well, practicing homosexuals are not supposed to be consecrated bishops; this has been true since the Council of Nicaea.

Astrid Storm's (the author's) overall point seems to be that the orthodox are a (Nigerian!) fly in the ointment of her mannered religiosity. How difficult that must be. But I'm confident the orthodox aren't intending to disturb the staid and pointless church-going of the Rev'd Storm and her party. With David Booth Beers's and +++++KJS's leave, most of us would love to slip quietly out the back.

Hat tip: Garland.