Deathfest and Existentialism
I have just returned from my alma mater where I attended the latest iteration of “Deathfest.” There were, I was told, over 140 people in attendance all playing a single game of Dungeons and Dragons. The name “Deathfest” refers to the fact that of 140 odd characters, very few of them survive to the end of the game (last night only one). However prizes are also given out for myriad other acts of bravery, cowardice, brilliant decisions, and tremendous follies. This year’s festival also featured a beer garden with a delicious home-brewed stout and a corporate sponsor. One of Hampshire’s more venerable professors even attended with his wife. I am told they both died well. I am very proud of all the planners who have not only sustained this tradition, but taken it to heights that were unimaginable when I was an undergraduate.
This year I got to play a 250 year old religious studies scholar. I got to shout things like ‘I HAVE BECOME DEATH, DESTROYER OF WORLDS!” and “LET MY PEOPLE GO!” At one point, I even damaged an enemy, inflicting 3 points of damage. For my efforts, I was awarded a really spiffy hat and a sensation the next morning as if I had kitty litter in my throat. There is still an award known as the “Benjamin Scott-Hopkins Award for Creative Morality.” I was there in 1999 when Benjamin Scott-Hopkins aka “Funny Hat Ben” earned this award––however, the story had been lost and several organizers had begun to wonder what incredibly heinous act Ben must have committed. In January I ran into a current Deathfest organizer who asked me to retell the story. Deathfest has changed so much, I found that it took a great deal of context to explain what Ben had done and why it was so shocking. Thankfully, the story was retold last night with remarkable clarity.
The Benjamin Scott-Hopkins Award for Creative Morality has been described as “the douche-bag award” but this is not accurate. In fact, I recall one year in which a player won it for literally creating a set of morals––his character woke up in a priest’s habit and suffering from total amnesia, so he proceeded to arbitrarily write a divine law code during the course of the adventure and compiled a list of all of the character’s sins. In meditating on the case of Ben Scott-Hopkins, I realized that his act transformed Deathfest into what it is today––a collective act of existentialist myth production.
Let me back up.
Although the tradition of Deathfest goes back almost two decades, it had completely died out when I arrived at Hampshire College in the fall of 1998. In those days it was known as “The October Ravenloft Tournament.” Hamphire’s literature on student groups referenced the October Ravenloft Tournament and I was excited to play. But there was no tournament to be had. In those days, there were practically no gamers at Hampshire and no gamer culture. No G2. No middle-room. Excalibur––the ancient student club for gaming––existed in name only. They had not been given any funding and the lead signer was a rather depressed goth fellow. For that whole year Excalibur had only one function––they got together to watch the X-Files in Adelle Simmons Hall. It was a sad state of affairs.
I have a vague sense of what happened to the gamer culture before I arrived but it is mostly a guess––older Hampshire alum might be able to fill in the gaps. From what I could tell the previous crop had been a dark, angsty bunch. They wore a lot of black trench-coats and listened to the Sisters of Mercy. There was a copse of trees where the Eric Carlyle museum now stands where several of them had threatened to hang themselves. I heard one story from a non-gamer who tried to sneak into the gamer lounge to use their television: When she opened the door a knife flew her way and lodged itself in the door frame. When she began to complain, they cut her off:
“Of course someone is going to throw a knife at you if you come in here without knocking. What the hell were you thinking?”
The downfall of this group seems to have been a healthy dose of angst and paranoia. I also suspect that incest was a factor. Although the situation has improved exponentially, gamer populations have traditionally suffered from a lack of females. This disparity, coupled with teenage hormones often creates Camelot-like scenarios of betrayal. It’s one reason why I never dated other gamers.
So the other gamer-inclined first years and I put up with this for a whole year. Fall of 1999 brought in a fresh crop of gamers so we said, “Fuck it. We can do the October Ravenloft Tournament ourselves.” Now bear in mind, we had never seen the October Ravenloft Tournament and we didn’t know what it was supposed to look like. It seems silly in hindsight, but I was worried that the few remaining old-timers would show up and say, “You did this wrong. Now we’re all going to throw knives at you.”
We also had some serious inertia to overcome. For one, we had to get Excalibur’s funding restored. We also had to reserve classrooms to run the games in, purchase refreshments, put up posters on five different college campuses, and of course, design the tournament and create characters. While I was doing all of this I had this peanut gallery of older students––not gamers mind you––telling me that I had already fucked up. “They used to put up posters in September—not October. You’re not going to get any people.” (These were the same people who informed me that Hampshire Halloween sucked, and that only a first year who had never seen a proper Halloween would find the present adequate. They advised me not to have a good time, lest I display my ignorance and embarrass myself.)
I also remember one year some students who were not participating in Deathfest showed up, began collecting door-wedges from Franklin Patterson Hall, and tried to jam classroom doors closed trapping players inside. I confronted these people and made them leave. Security had specifically told me, “no running amok” but I really did want to beat the hell out of them. I cannot imagine something like that happening at Deathfest today. Inertia.
We knew we had to construct a three to four hour experience out of three words: October. Ravenloft. Tournament.
OCTOBER
Well, we were pretty sure we got that one right.
RAVENLOFT
“Ravenloft” is a Dungeons and Dragons campaign setting emphasizing “Gothic horror:” vampires, werewolves, gypsy curses, that sort of thing. So we assumed this had be horrific and macabre. That was fine, all of the DMs we lined up were good at that. We used the archetypal Ravenloft plot: A powerful vampire had awoken and unleashed an army of the undead that nearly destroyed a small village. One group was a party of slayers that had been tracking the vampire for some time and managed to infiltrate his castle. (This was Ben Scott-Hopkin’s group.) Another group had set out from the village to launch a direct assault. My group was a lynch mob: they had discovered that certain villagers had aided the vampire’s plans and were out for revenge. Curses are common in Ravenloft, and it turned out that everyone who had betrayed their village now had palms that were permanently wet with blood––making the lynch mob’s job pretty easy. The survivors of the three groups convened at the end for a final battle with the vampire. (Somewhere there is an audio-recording of one of these groups that was being used for a Div III project on psychology and role-playing.)
The last thing we wanted this to be was silly. We had appropriated a tradition from a bunch of angsty goths without permission and we were going to make this scary and fucking brutal. For example, one of the villagers targeted by my players was the town butcher. The butcher had created zombies using whatever was lying around his shop—so the party had to fight the animated corpses of their friends and loved ones mounted which were now mounted with hog heads.
OK so here’s where it gets interesting––if you have never attended Deathfest, you might think this would make for a gruesome encounter. You might even think I’m a sick person for coming up with it. But if you HAVE attended Deathfest, the last paragraph probably bored you. It’s a little like watching The Exorcist. In 1972 every theater that showed that film experienced people vomiting and fainting. But if you were born after 1980, you may not find it scary at all.
I also included an encounter where the party met an old widow with bloody palms. She explained that she had given the vampire information under the condition that her grandchildren be allowed to escape. She begged mercy. There were no consequences to this encounter––it didn’t matter whether the players decided to slaughter the helpless old lady or not. It was simply meant to add some anguish to their mission. (Again, if you have ever attended Deathfest, you know exactly what the party decided to do.)
When we designed characters, we did give out a lot of seemingly useless items. Most of my characters were armed with pitchforks and torches. There was also a character with a hook for a hand and another who wielded a sack full of doorknobs (This was a Simpson’s reference.) Many characters had seemingly random equipment like bags of marbles, flasks of lamp oil, kegs of beer, and so on. We didn’t really see this as silly, we saw it as being sadistic. The worse thing we did in that game was give someone a “potion of placebo.” He finally drank it and asked his DM what happened. Instead of saying, “Nothing,” he said, “You’re not sure. But you definitely have a cooling sensation in your throat. Maybe it will kick in next round.” This was really only funny to us, not the players. However, the bizarre character/bizarre equipment motif is now standard. Last night may have been the first Deathfest ever in which there was not a single conventional weapon: I saw phasers, mutation rays, human tesla coils, a Klingon batliff, etc. But not a single long sword or battle-axe. I predict a future Deathfest will have an entire group equipped only with a roll of duct-tape. It’s the only logical conclusion of this trend.
TOURNAMENT
OK, this was key. “Tournament” connotes competition, sport. When I was about thirteen I went to a gaming tournament at Texas A&M. (Military guys love Dungeons and Dragons.) The tournament meant different teams had the same characters and were going through the same adventure––if your team made it through the adventure in the quickest time you won a cash prize. There, if you screwed around and caused your team to lose, you might actually get beat up. I sort of assumed anything with the word “tournament” in it must work the same way. It was Ben Scott Hopkins who saved us from this thinking.
Here is the story to best of my recollection, but bear in mind I wasn’t actually there: I was one door down pretending to be an old widow begging for her life. Ben Scott-Hopkins was the party’s only priest and as such could both repel the undead and heal injured party members. These abilities were absolutely essential for the party’s success. However, Ben soon made it clear he had no intention of healing anyone. Round after round, when asked what his character was doing, Ben would declare, “I get drunk!” Eventually, Ben opened a door in the vampire’s castle.
The DM intoned: “On the otherside of the door is some sort of zombie. It stands over six feet tall and must have been a powerful man in life. It’s right hand has been modified and fitted with wicked scythe-like claws. Worst of all, is the flicker in the creature’s dead eyes that suggests both intelligence and an unspeakable malice.”
Ben responded: “Oh NO! I grab the nearest party member and shove him towards the monster!”
Dice were rolled and the party’s priest managed to save his own skin by overpowering a fellow adventurer and shoving him in with the zombie. But Ben wasn’t done. In addition to significant quantities of alcohol, he had also managed to acquire a hammer and some stakes––which he used to wedge the door closed sealing both zombie and victim inside. Once this was done, Ben turned to his astonished party, wiped his brow, and declared:
“Whew! That was close!”
There were only two prizes for the October Ravenloft Tournament. One was basically a Barbie head on a stick with pieces of duct-tape hanging off of it. I think that went to the survivor. The other was some generic plastic action figure which was sort of the precursor to “The Total Bad-Ass Award.” However, Erin Snyder decided to create the Benjamin Scott-Hopkins Award for Creative Morality. I can’t remember if there was an actual prize that year, but there definitely was the following year. That was the last October Ravenloft Tournament at Hampshire. The next Fall, Erin Snyder had the idea to call it “Deathfest.”
DEATHFEST
Now when we scheduled the first Deathfest in the fall of 2000, public safety called Erin Snyder and left a message on his answering machine, “Hi. I need to speak to you about. . . . Death. . . Fest? Call me back.” Incidentally, much of the first Deathfest was recorded as part of a Div II film called “Stairway to Hell.” Someone really needs to find that thing and digitize it.
All of the players had been summoned to a mad wizard’s castle in Hell. The legacy of Ben Scott-Hopkins was immediately evident. One of my player’s first actions was to begin making out with a statue. He proceeded to make out with that statue for next 30 minutes before trying to catch up with the party and getting devoured by trolls. Backstabbing other players was now the norm. In fact, the player who had been Scott-Hopkin’s victim the previous year now attempted to perform this maneuver on another player in my game. When my players met the boss of my game––an ogre mage––half of them prostrated themselves before it and begged to be its evil servants. The crescendo of this occurred in the second tier when the surviving players squared off against a demon played by Dan Neff. A mage tried to form an alliance with the demon, so the demon ordered him to slaughter other humans. That player used his last offensive spell to kill another player––that spell would have been enough to slay the demon.
So one year after Ben Scott-Hopkin’s threw his comrade in the closet to play seven-minutes in heaven with a ravenous zombie, Deathfest had been emptied of right and wrong, good and evil, winning and losing. The existentialist philosophy is that God is dead and that the universe is both meaningless and absurd. Deathfest ––particularly in its current form––is perhaps the starkest depiction of a reality that is meaningless and absurd. Not only is most of the plot incomprehensible to players and DMs alike, but it is essentially guaranteed that your character will suffer some grisly and meaningless death. Now if everyone can agree that Deathfest occurs in a moral universe where the players are heroes battling against evil, then the existentialist crisis can be averted. Yes, you will probably die but maybe your death can prevent the vampire from destroying another village. That’s what heroes do. Ben Scott-Hopkins was the voice calling out, “God is Dead!” that ushered in the existentialist crisis. This was not a battle between and good and evil, it was simply a battle. And the poor bastards conscripted to fight that battle may as well act however the wish.
For Existentialists like Sartre, the only meaning in the world is the meaning that we give it. Perhaps the real winner of Deathfest is the one who makes out with the most statues? This year’s Deathfest was especially existentialist because the winner received the ability to remake the world in their own image––literally, the world has no meaning except what the winner of Deathfest gives it. Interestingly, when the winner declared that in his world everyone else is dead, he received a standing ovation from the audience. I could not help but think of the scene in Heathers where the entire school has unknowingly signed a mass suicide note.
Now if you’ve somehow found your way to this blog, you probably think that Deathfest is a dark and fucked up event. You might even think that Hampshire is a dark and fucked up place. That’s what’s so ironic––the people who play Deathfest are nice people. The current organizers seem far more cheerful and pro-social than my cohort was, and my cohort was more cheerful and pro-social than the knife-chuckers that proceeded us. So what is the appeal of Deathfest? What were those 140 people there for? I have also noticed Deathfest taking on an increasingly dream-like aspect. For many years almost all antagonists came from the D&D Monster Manual. By contrast, players at this Deathfest battled against Transformers, A Giant Kool-Aid Man, Chuck Norris, and the boss––a giant mutated cat brain. A player hit the cat brain with a mutation beam, changing it into a giant dog brain. I realized that there was still a sort of logic to Deathfest, but it no longer the mathematical logic on which Dungeons and Dragons was based. No, this resembles the logic of myths and dreams or what anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss called “the savage mind.” This is what leads me to my theory of Deathfest’s appeal.
Levi-Strauss believed that myths expressed ideas that could not be expressed through words. Perhaps Deathfest gains popularity every year because it reflects the increasingly absurdity of the world outside of the game. We all toil away hoping for careers and success while the global economy crumbles all around us. It’s as absurd as. . . well it’s absurd as being murdered by a giant Kool-Aid Man. Deathfest imitates life and life imitates deathfest.
Your puny prison cannot hold mighty Thor!
Today I found this. It’s funny how many of the first ammendment cases surrounding religious liberties occur in prison. In Div School I actually got mail from prisoners who had found Jesus and were reading every Bible they could get their hands on. Personally, I’d rather share a cell with someone who had found Odin than found Jesus. I’m really curious about this case involving a vampire. If anyone finds anything else on these cases, please forward them.
Spiritual Warfare
A good friend recently e-mailed me this. Note to all my other friends: yes, articles about people battling witches need to be sent to me. I am, after all, “the wandering anthropologist of the occult.”) I think this group is absolutely fascinating. In fact, an excellent dissertation could be written on them by someone like me. If I’m ever in DC, I definitely want to attend a service.
One an aesthetic level, I find this type of service is very moving. The early Christian church was engaged in a supernatural battle against evil. Mainline Protestants have emasculated Christianity to the point where only talking lions and hobbits get to battle spiritual evil. In fact, one reason I’m proud of the Catholic Church is their position on the supernatural: “Yes, these things happen. They just don’t happen to you. Here is the number of a good psychiatrist.”
And midnight shadow-boxing sessions in the church? I have already stated that if I were to start my own church, boxing would be an essential element of the spiritual training. Good religious experiences like good pedagogical experiences should incorporate the kinesthetic. Bodhidharma and the Shaolin monks knew that.
The theology beneath the service is more troubled. I found it very telling that the founders are Congolese. Death and The Invisible Powers by Simon Bockie describes just how prevalent the tradition of witches and sorcerers is in the indigenous religions of the region. Traditionally, some people are just born with powers. All such being are dangerous, but they part of the world and you also need to have a few in your village as protection. The idea of witches as servants of the devil who are wholly antagonistic to the community is a Christian idea.
Bockie also explains that most Congolese Christians practice an amalgam of Christianity and indigenous beliefs. However, the Spiritual Warfare church seems to have some highly unusual elements—namely the idea that Africa, and indeed, Africans are cursed because their ancestors were not Christian.
I ponder how the church leaders arrived at such a conclusion. It is easy to imagine how someone who has not studied colonialism and neo-colonialism might see Africa as cursed. As Sarah Silverman said, “It’s like they took everything bad and put it on one continent!” Spiritual Warfare has clearly turned to religion for an explanation to this problem, but unlike most colonized people, they seem to place all of the blame on themselves and none on the colonizers.
Now, I am better acquainted with the invisible powers than with critical theory, but this seems to me like perfect manifestation of Foucauldian power. You have a whole church of Congolese immigrants who have bought into the imperialist narrative that they are pagan children of the devil. And why do they buy it? Because it empowers them! They now have an explanation of all their misfortune and a way to combat it. I can’t imagine going to a midnight service four nights a week. This level of dedication shows just how bad this community’s problems must be. As Professor Olupona states, their religion is utilitarian.
Finally, with some guilt, I cannot help but speculate if the shadow-boxing will spill over into actual violence. Bockie states that Congolese witches are not abstract forces—they are your neighbors. What would happen if this church found out that a Santero or Palermo lived next door? Would they pray for them or kill them?
Death–9/16/07
There have been no new additions to the blog in almost a month. I’ve been spread quite thin lately between being a teacher, being a student, applying to doctoral programs, taking the GRE, submitting research proposals, beating people with sticks, and trying to be the social butterfly with the most beautiful wings.
Of course all of these worldly pursuits will matter very little in about 50-70 years. Which brings me to the magic word of the day: death. (OK boys and girls, whenever anyone says “Death,” scream real loud!)
I first came across the following article about Hindu funerals:
http://www.journalnow.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=WSJ/MGArticle/WSJ_BasicArticle&c=MGArticle&cid=1173352669476
It shouldn’t be surprising that funeral rituals are the ones most resistant to change. However, it is easy to forget this in America where there is license to invent our own rituals as we see fit—especially funerals. Look at the tasteless display that was Anna Nicole Smith’s funeral: a pink sequined coffin and an admissions fee. Americans can also have their ashes shot out of a cannon like Hunter S Thompson, shot into orbit, or even crushed into a diamond.
I find the situation in India incredibly depressing. Obviously, it is not sustainable to cut down 50 million trees a year for funeral pyres. But this is another example of how overpopulation seems to drain all of the meaning out of life. Until even in death, it is possible to feel selfish for damaging the environment.
This is still less depressing than the state of Zoroastrian funerals. The towers of silence have now largely been abandoned because a virus has begun to wipe out the vulture population of South Asia.
As the old traditions die new traditions begin to emerge. Leave it to the Germans to come up with profoundly disturbing things to do with your corpse:
http://www.thegreatpyramid.org/wp/?page_id=7
I find this to be the most chilling funeral arrangement ever. The largest pyramid—indeed the largest structure– the world has ever seen composed of concrete and corpses. It’s horrible. It’s eschatological. It’s like something from a Black Metal album cover: a little German town in the shadow of a gigantic mountain of corpses.
The founders see this as democratic: instead of erecting a monument to house a single individual, this new pyramid will house . . . thousands? (Actually new archaeological evidence shows that poor Egyptians would try to erect small-scale pyramids. Even slaves wanted a tomb of their own.) This idea owes more to capitalism than democracy. Prior to this concept, funeral arrangements were a local business. This could herald an entire international funeral industry. In the future you may be able to decide between the German death pyramid or the Russian necropolis.
I’ve watched an entire documentary of a Tibetan sky burial where a man dismembers his father with a machete and feeds the parts to vultures. Why is that video didn’t disturb me and this idea does?
Throughout human history, death has been a family affair. Your funeral, like weddings, should be about you and the circle of people you have cultivated during your life. This is especially pronounced in America where funeral ceremonies are highly personalized, and our graveyards represent a diversity of styles and cultures. Only soldiers have the option of committing their remains to a corporate body other than the family.
This pyramid sets a precedent to extend the state literally from “cradle to the grave.” Politicians already use the memory of the dead as leverage for propaganda. But with corporate graves, an actual corpse can now become a “technology of power.” Imagine if all of the remains of those who died at 9/11 were interred in such a pyramid. Now imagine Bush standing on top of that pyramid and giving a speech.
Of course, I doubt this would happen in America where death is seen as pornographic. It could easily happen in, say, China where the state is always looking for new forms of propaganda and where the bodies of dead prisoners are already being cannibalized for cosmetics and other resources. Imagine a war where every death on the battlefield made the nation’s corpse pyramid pile higher and higher.
To be manipulated in death is, I think, the ultimate horror. This is the plot of zombie movies especially films like White Zombie and Phantasm where corpses are literally removed from their individual graves to become slaves of a zombie-master. This was also a source of shock-value in the film 300 where the Spartans repeatedly used their enemies’ corpses against them.
What will the future be like? Apparently a treeless, smoke filled world with no vultures, where your body will be interred in some vast and grim monument. I think back to Donnie Darko and the prophetic words of Grandma Death, ‘Every living creature dies alone.” This is as it should be. I would prefer to a shallow grave on the side of the highway—something like Jimmy Hoffa—to being a stone in a giant death pyramid.
I am destructing Christianity–2/11/07
his all started with the one video I posted on youtube.
The video was made to promote a mixed martial-arts club that I ran at Harvard Divinity School. I borrowed a camera for “research” purposes and had only about three hours to shoot everything. Now I have started to get comments on the video.
Having looked at other martial arts videos on youtube, I was expecting comments like, “Tuck your chin! You women make me sick!” and so on. But no. The first negative comment was not attacking my fighting style, it was attacking Harvard Divinity School!
Someone with the handle “Civitatuccillo” wrote:
“Know wonder Harvard Divinity grads do nothing but destruct Christianity”
I wrote Civitatuccillo an e-mail with the subject heading “calling you out.” This has since led to an amusing and enlightening exchange which I have pasted below:
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Civitatuccillo,
What is with this message you left on my movie?
“Know wonder Harvard Divinity grads do nothing but destruct Christianity”
I’m “destructing Christianity?”
The Romans burnt Christians alive and threw them to the lions. The Bolsheviks dynamited churches in Russia. But you think Christianity is being destroyed by people like me? Over-educated, idealistic people who make an average of $20,000 a year? That’s not just insulting me, that’s insulting the strength of Christianity.
Where are you getting your information about Harvard Divinity School? HDS attracts everyone from secular humanists to right-wing Evangelicals. Graduates go on into many fields, often that have nothing to do with Christianity. For example, I teach inner-city students. I use the training I got at Harvard to promote values and to foster democracy. I do not “destruct Christianity.”
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His reply:
Greetings,
You state your a HDS grad and make only $20,000 a year????? Is this a joke? or are you serious? How much debt are you carring? How do you plan to pay it all off? You don’t possible think that some government program or a bank is going to “forgive” your loan because your an idealistic teacher in the poor inner city school?
Your video has nothing to do with Christianity, just as much of the Harvard D curriculum .
To be a Christian is to have Jesus as the sole light of your soul by evidence of the Baptism of the Holy Ghost.
Salvation is not found in your video or in Islam, christian Science, wicca, satanism, Judaism, Hinduism, Zeus, polygimy, or any other false teaching.
I hope you don’t spread to much apostasy to your inner city kids. This is why so many parents around the nation are pulling their kid out of public schools and home school them, send them to Christian schools that are rapidly opening up or enrollling them in online private schools.
Pray for the Holy Ghost to lead you to the Light. Time is short, as Jesus states ” you fool, this night , your life will be required of you”… Peace in Jesus
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And my reply:
> Greetings,
> You state your a HDS grad and make only $20,000 a year????? Is this a joke? or are you serious? How much debt are you carring? How do you plan to pay it all off? You don’t possible think that some government program or a bank is going to “forgive” your loan because your an idealistic teacher in the poor inner city school?
$20,000 a year is a hyperbole. The point is that Harvard Divinity students are motivated by truth, beauty, and love and not by money. Since you asked, Teach for America and other programs WILL pay off debts for being an idealistic teacher in low-performing schools. However, I am currently having no problem paying off my debts. You’re awfully interested in money, by the way.
> Your video has nothing to do with Christianity, just as much of the Harvard D curriculum .
Of course my video has nothing to do with Christianity. Why on earth did you assume that it did? As for the Harvard Divinity School curriculum, you’re misguided to say the least. Have you looked at the course catalog? I’m guessing someone in your church has told you about Harvard Divinity School and you never bothered to see for yourself. Am I right?
> I hope you don’t spread to much apostasy to your inner city kids. This is why so many parents around the nation are pulling their kid out of public schools and home school them, send them to Christian schools that are rapidly opening up or enrollling them in online private schools.
What apostasy? I honestly have no idea what you are referring to here. Why are parents pulling their kids out of public schools? Because their teachers have Masters Degrees from Harvard? I don’t think that’s what you meant.
I might also add that many Harvard Divinity School graduates ARE teaching in Christian schools. I’ve been offered a few positions in Christian schools myself.
> Pray for the Holy Ghost to lead you to the Light. Time is short, as Jesus states ” you fool, this night , your life will be required of you”… Peace in Jesus
In this is true then it seems we Harvard Divinity Students won’t have to worry about paying our loans afterall! It probably also means we should spend less time on youtube.
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Stay tuned for my ongoing debate with this guy. Clearly he has not read Proverbs 15:1 “a gentle answer turns away wrath.” Also, note my restraint in not mocking his spelling, grammar, or irritating use of punctuation. From his handle, I am guessing that his first language is Spanish.
Most Harvard Divinity students would probably not have responded to a comment like this. But I think that Divinity Students, and especially PRSE like myself, are obligated to confront this sort of thing. We have to be public intellectuals.
I still remember when that neo-Nazi showed up at a Div School party and everyone slunk off rather than debate with him. In the movie “The Last Supper” a marine tells a bunch of liberal grad-students exactly why they will never have an impact on the world: because they are spineless and refuse to fight for anything. (The liberals than proceed to stab him and bury him their tomato garden. Great flick.)
Another time I talked with a guy in Harvard square who was holding a sign that read “John Kerry is unfit to command.” I was very polite and heard him out. The guy was an idiot but was not inherently evil. It turned out he didn’t even like Bush. I think if he had a girlfriend he would definitely not be standing there with that sign. But this liberal proceeded to yell at me because I was “fraternizing with the enemy.”
I often wonder why it is in politics that reason tends to lose out to blind hate. I think the answer may be that reasonable people are not willing to take the time to reason with the unreasonable. We prefer to slink off and call it “maturity.”
Richard Dawkins 1/16/07
Today I began listening to Richard Dawkin’s book, The God Delusion on CD. After reading numerous reviews, watching the Daily Show interview, and the South Park episode I wanted to see what he had to say.
I was surprised by my own reaction to the book. My first thought was: the man is doing the work of Satan. I think it was something about his smooth Oxford voice that made me especially guarded towards his arguments. His tone also immediately made me think of C.S. Lewis’ That Hideous Strength. This is a great novel about a cabal of corporate heads and highly ideological scientists that begins to take over England. Of course it turns out that they are all knowing or unknowing pawns of Satan and that most of their advanced technology actually works because of demonic intervention and not science. (They end up being defeated by Merlin who, in a tip of the hat to Tolkien, identifies himself as “the last scion of Numenor.”)
The arguments made by Dawkins are more or less the same arguments that CS Lewis’ Satanic scientists made in the novel: that religion is irrational, that it causes problems, and that it must be aggresively combated and destroyed. And like Dawkins, these arguments are at first seductive: of course I would like to live in a world without the Taliban, Al-Qaeda, televengalists, and violent pro-lifers. I also wouldn’t mind living in a world where I don’t have to lead my class in “a moment of silence” and I don’t have to read articles about “the war on Christmas.”
I just don’t think that Richard Dawkins has a plan to get us there. More importantly, I think Dawkins knows this and doesn’t care.
Dawkin’s stated desire is the total destruction of religion world-wide, and the ascendency of atheism. He wants to achieve this by inspiring atheists to “come out” (admit they are atheists), begin to organize politically, and to essentially evangelize converting more people to atheism. Dawkins’ observes (I think correctly) that there are millions of people who do not believe in God yet are reluctant to describe themselves as atheists. He hopes that atheism will somehow reach some sort of “critical mass” which will then persuade millions more to “come out” as atheists. (Interestingly, Dawkins is credited with invented the concept of “memes.” I think this is amusing since everyone I’ve ever met who talks about memes is “spiritual but not religious” and would probably totally disagree with Dawkins.) Here then are my criticisms of Dawkin’s plan, bearing in mind that I have only made it through the first chapter and outline of his book:
1) Dawkins is totally off-base comparing the plight of the American atheist with that of homosexuals fifty years ago. I have never heard of hate-crimes committed against atheists. Granted, an atheist politician is unlikely to get elected–but this is not at all the same thing. A gay candidate does not intrinsically imply that heterosexual voters are deluded and wrong. An atheist candidate is making public their belief that religious voters are deluded.
2) Being an atheist is not a “high and noble thing” as Dawkins claims. If you need evidence of this, look at my earlier blog entitled “atheists.” Dawkins claims that atheism shows “an independent mind.” But paradoxically, if atheism becomes more acceptable it will cease to be any sort of statement about one’s mind. Already, the majority of atheists seems to be basing their convictions on blind deference to science without having considered the alternative. Furthermore, the type of evangelizing atheist Dawkins seeks to create, is obnoxious and probably motivated by some sort of self-gratification rather than truth. Is not cultural sensitivity and respect for others beliefs as valuable as an independent mind?
3) Dawkins argues that those who have been raised with a religion are “victims” of indoctrination as children are incapable of deciding where they stand on religion. I think there are some forms of religious indoctrination that do border on child abuse. (See my blog on “Jesus Camp.”) However, attempting to raise a child in some sort of “religiously neutral state” is a paradox. The adolescent cannot truly “choose” atheism unless they have had significant exposure to religion. There are a lot of seriously heavy questions here that go straight to the core of what it means to have a democratic society. Several books have been written on this subject and none of them are by professors of evolutionary psychology.
4) Dawkins plan will only succeed in polarizing people. American Christians already feel that they are under attack and this has been a tremendous source of power for them, politically. If they actually were under that type of attack Dawkins is proposing, their resolve would be that much worse. So what if a serious “atheist’s coalition” formed in New York or Boston. It wouldn’t affect national politics. Remember, Republicans thrive on polarization. Karl Rove’s entire political strategy is to polarize the country and then half of America is forced to vote for you.
5) If Dawkins plan did work, it would probably be monstrous. Dawkins atheist society has already been attempted: by Hitler, Stalin, and Mao. The Bolsheviks systematically blew up churches. If the majority of Americans truly believed that a minority was deluded–Dawkins seriously describes religion as a mental illness–do you think there would be justice? Would this be at all conducive to democracy? History suggests not.
6) Finally, the debate over a world without religion still seems mired in this notion of “good religion and bad religion.” I constantly hear politicians trying to identify “the bad Islam” that has been hijacked. Dawkins position seems to be it is worth getting rid of the good religion to be rid of the bad. But religion is not good or bad, it simply is. The idea that the whole of religious experience can be controlled like a disease or an ad campaign is a misunderstanding of what religion actually is. In fact, scholars of religion admit that we do not know what exactly religion is. Maybe when Dawkins figures that out, he can rethink his “world without religion.”
The Holidays are Stupid–12/16/06
Every educated person knows that Christmas is a pagan holiday and always has been. The ancient Jews didn’t record birthdays and drunken make-out sessions under Mistletoe have nothing to do with events in the Middle East.
“The Holidays” have become similar to the aboriginal orgies that Durkheim describes as the first impulse towards religion. There is drunkenness and debauchery (i.e. a typical office Christmas party) and social norms are violated (i.e. it is the only time of the year when you are encouraged to give to charity and spend time with relatives you don’t like.) The result of all of this is what Durkheim calls “a collective effervescence” that is the simplest form of religious experience. Watching a Victoria’s secret model in red lingerie with white trim singing “Santa Baby,” I think that the ancient pagans would actually be very pleased with our Christmas festivities.
We Americans should just enjoy our thinly disguised pagan holiday instead of wasting time on absurd political battles. I assume most of my readers have encountered the story about the Rabbi who threatened to sue the Seattle airport if they did not put up an eight-foot Mennorah to go with their Christmas display. The airports concern was that it would have to put up decorations for “every Winter tradition.”
I am annoyed with this Rabbi for two reasons: first he is fueling conservatives in their sick delusion that there is such a thing as a “war on Christmas” or that Christians have anything less than total dominion of this country. Second this is promoting a Coke vs. Pepsi understanding of world religion. “The Holidays” are causing Americans to think of Judaism as “off-brand Christianity.”
Now despite the cynical tone of this blog, I do care about religious pluralism and celebrating different traditions. But I also care about religious literacy. Most Americans seem to believe that every world religion has an arbitrary celebration for the end of December and that this celebration has the same cultural and religious significance as Christmas––thus “The Holidays.” However, this is totally untrue, or at least it used to be.
Let me preface this by saying that Judaism is the religion I least understand. Largely, because of all world religions, you gain the least understanding of Judaism by simply picking up their scriptural canon and reading it. But I do know this: Hannukah is NOT a Jewish high holy day. In fact, it is considered a secular holiday within the Jewish tradition. It’s a lot more like the fourth of July than Christmas. Only in 20th century America has there been an effort to make Hannukah some sort of Jewish version of Christmas. Why bother? In the fifties Jews used to apologize for Judaism by saying, “Our minister is called a rabbi, our church is called a synagogue, etc.” They don’t do that anymore so why are they still saying, “our Christmas is called Hannukah?”
(On a side note, I think that Hannukah is really metal: Judah “the Hammer” Maccabee leading a bloody revolt, smashing the altar of Zeus, and restoring religious freedom to Judah? Ironically, it’s like a plot form a Mel Gibson movie. Way cooler than a stupid manger.)
Paralleling the American Hannukah is Kwanzaa-invented in America in 1966 as a “Pan-African” alternative to Christmas. Now I understand Ron Karenga feeling desiring a black alternative to the dominant society. But this should require an alternative to Christianity, not an alternative to Christmas.
Other religious traditions in America should stop trying to emphasize “their version of Christmas,” contributing to the giant mess of the American Holidays. Instead, they should emphasize their OWN holidays—the important ones, not the ones that happen to be approximately in December. How many Americans even know what Yom Kippur is? Instead of threatening to sue over an eight-foot Menorah, why not demand that local radio stations broadcast a blowing of the shofar to conclude the fast? Then you’re promoting Judaism for what it is instead of as “off-brand Christianity.”
Jesus Camp 9/17/06
Yesterday one of my students asked me what I knew about Jesus Camps. I assumed she meant Christian summer camps, but she insisted this was something different. She described camps where children were being trained to die for Jesus as a Christian parallel to Muslim para-military camps in the Middle East. So this weekend, I went on the internet and found this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y_EKHK1C2IE
(I apologize, I have not yet learned how to load youtube clips directly into my blog.)
I found several websites hosting this trailer for a film called Jesus Camp. On every page, the clip was followed by forum posts from Christians and non-Christians alike describing how disturbing and awful they found the camp.
As a Master of Theological Studies, I have a few insights I would like to offer here:
First, I think it is a waste of time to argue over whether or not these are real Christians. Americans seem to want assurance that extremism can be separated from normal or proper religion. However, by creating this distinction, we are only imposing our own worldview instead of understanding a religion on its own terms. Extremists like the 9/11 hijackers are not hermetically sealed from the peaceful Muslims that are our neighbors. The reality is that these two versions of Islam are equally real and exist on opposite ends of a very long spectrum.
It is the same with this Christian camp in Missouri. Most likely the historical Jesus of Nazareth not approve of teaching children to chant, “This means war!” But the camp is nevertheless an authentic form of religion.
Secondly, there is a very good reason for Americans to be disturbed by this form of Christianity. In a very concrete way, groups like this Jesus Camp seek to undermine everything that this country stands for. America is a democracy and this form of Christianity is fundamentally opposed to democratic values—just as Muslim extremism (a new word is invented for this concept every day) is opposed to democratic values.
The idea of a democracy is that different types of people with varying ideas find a way to compromise and coexist in peace. Religious extremists have a totally opposite agenda where there is no room for alternate perspectives or compromise. One of the men interviewed in the trailer was open about this when he boasted that Christians have taken over the over the White House and the Congress.
The paradox of a democracy is that we must find ways to accommodate perspectives that are antithetical to a democracy. To ban groups like the Jesus Camp would also damage democracy.
Third, even through this form of Christianity is a threat to democracy, I am not especially worried about the Jesus Camp. Although I cannot imagine why an American Christian would want to emulate or compete with Muslim camps in Palestine teaching para-military tactics to children, I am confident that they will fail in this endeavor.
The Right has always had an amazing ability to pretend that they are the underdogs even when they have near total hegemony. This would seem to be a form of what George Orwell calls “the power of double-think.” For the Christian Right, they have managed to convince themselves that Christianity in America is under attack–even when Christian hegemony makes itself more apparent every day.
But this double-think will not be enough to get the kind of sacrifice they are talking about from this generation. Palestinians are able to convince children to become suicide bombers because Palestine truly and objectively is an oppressed country. Palestinian children have seen their homes bulldozed and their loved-ones killed. The children at Jesus Camp may feel oppressed but at the end of the day they go home to affluent and safe suburban neighborhoods.
Furthermore, Muslim jihadists are being fueled by support from their culture and community that American Christians will never have. Arab poetry from before the time of Muhammad describes warriors willing to die for their tribe. I can’t think of any American heroes who are praised for dying in battle. The closest analogy would be the fire-fighters of 911 and they were trying to save lives, not exterminate them. If a child from the Jesus Camp grew up to die for the values of the camp, only a handful of people would be pleased. Most Americans and probably their own parents would view it as a terrible tragedy with nothing heroic about it. Just as the Middle-East is not a very fertile ground for democracy, America is not a very fertile ground for violent martyrdom.
The camp’s concept of focusing on children is also flawed. Children change and adopt new values constantly. Groups that use child soldiers intend to sacrifice those soldiers before they reach adult-hood. How many Americans have the same religious ideology that they had as children? The little girl who is weeping for Jesus one day could be a Wiccan or third-wave feminist the next. I know. I work with young people. I saw my most religious student turn into a self-described atheist overnight. A week before she had been writing poetry about how the government would never take her God from her. Go figure.
The time to recruit extremists is in the late teens. Osama bin Laden wasnt especially interested in Islam until his late teens. The same is true for countless other jihadists.
A second reason I am not worried about the Jesus Camp is that they are greatly exaggerating their own numbers and influence. Yes, Christians are a majority in this country. But how many Christians are willing to send their kids to Jesus Camp? How many Christians are even pro-life? The statistics about how many millions of Christians there are in America include people like me.
Groups like the Jesus Camp are engaged in exactly the same endeavor as Osama bin Laden. Most Muslims could care less about Bin Laden or his agenda. Bin Laden is constantly trying to tilt the spectrum of Islam towards his end. At the same time, he tries to convince Americans that he speaks for the entire Middle-East. In the same way, the folks at the Jesus Camp are trying to convince us that they speak for all Christians. Yet so far, all of the reviews of the trailer I have read from Christians express concern or disgust. This tactic only works if those outside the religion are gullible enough to believe it.
Christians don’t frighten me when they don war-paint and swear allegience to the Christian flag. They frighten me when they go to law school. The big threat to democracy from Christian extremists are colleges training students in debate and lobbying. This is a deliberate attempt to have as exclusive a group as possible have as much political control as possible. That is antithetical to a democracy and must be stopped if the values of this country are to survive.
So what can we do? The answer to religious fascism isn’t secular fascism, its common sense. As a teacher, I truly believe that the place to fight extremism is not in the battlefield or the courts or the internet forums–its in the schools. This entire issue is one born out of ignorance. We need to have religious literacy in schools and we need to have some serious training in critical thinking. We are raising an entire generation to read and regurgitate and then we wonder why they act like little automatons that can’t think for themselves.
Robert Orsi is a bad-ass 9/4/06
Forward: I have not updated this blog in a while. That’s mainly because I’ve been a lot busier and a lot happier. I am working my ass off coming up with 15 hours of lesson plans every week and trying to adjust to a new school where I have 75 students and have to push all my belongings around on a cart through two city blocks of hallways crowed with black teenagers.
Also, I have friends in Atlanta. In Indianapolis, I would spend most Friday nights sulking in the corner of the Abbey coffee-shop writing in my blog. Now I actually interact with other people most Friday nights. So there will not be a weekly blog again for at least another month. I’m sure both my readers are very disappointed.
Now, what I actually wanted to talk about: For Christmas this year, my parents gave me a copy of Between Heaven and Earth by Robert Orsi. The book is only 200 pages but I wasn’t able to finish it until today. Eight months. In fairness, I’ve been very, very busy.
I was only able to take one class with Robert Orsi while I was at Harvard but I really enjoyed the opportunity to work with him. The course was a lecture and most professors I had for lecture wouldn’t even recognize my face. I had several conversations with Robert Orsi even after the course had ended.
But it wasn’t until reading his book that I realized what a bad-ass he is. If you’ve read some of my earlier blogs such as “Fuck Academia” you’ll notice I’ve become rather jaded towards the academy. Robert Orsi has paid his dues and now is bringing hammer blow criticism to the academic study of religion. It’s just awesome.
One of the first criticisms he brings up is the taboo about bringing your own religious beliefs into the work of a religious scholar. It’s never stated, but of course he’s right: scholars are traditionally supposed to be subjective by pretending they are beings totally incapable of religious experience.
This is ridiculous. Why do people become scholars of religion in the first place? If they really weren’t concerned with experiencing religion, they would be in a different field. Robert Orsi breaks character and admits that he was raised Italian Catholic but that his personal experience of Catholicism has been shaped by modernity and academia to the point where many Italian Catholics would call it a loss of faith. With that in mind, he asks how he can go about studying Catholicism in America. This not only makes logical sense, it makes the rest of the academy look stupid.
Robert Orsi also talks a lot about Presence–the idea that entities such as the saints or the Holy Spirit are literally and almost physically present. The academy seems to assume you can study a religious tradition while patronizingly disavowing their belief in presence. And that this makes for a good, objective study.
Orsi wrestles with this problem when he describes his notes on studying Saint Jude (patron saint of hopeless causes) in Chicago. He admits that he cannot really understand the practice of praying to Saint Jude as he has never done it. Furthermore, he is incapable of doing it because of his own religious experience–see how that becomes relevant? What he decided to do was somewhat shocking: in an empty office he verbally recited his desires out loud. He did not direct these desires to anyone because he could not believe there was anyone to hear it. Orsi described this ritual as an analog: the closest he could come to experiencing the cult of St. Jude. He admits this is a poor substitute, but short of the Vulcan Mind Meld, what else can be done?
If a grad student did an analog ritual, the academy would come down on them with a ton of bricks for being subjective and breaking the rules. But Orsi has paid his dues and is beyond punishment. Fucking brilliant!
Finally, Orsi shows how this supposed subjectivity has been used by the academy to construct “Religion” as the religious modality of the Protestant middle class: it is mental rather that physical, deals with abstract essences rather personal entities, and is strictly monotheistic with no room for saints, ancestors, etc. By contrast, anything that cannot be fit into this modality: the religious modalities of Catholics, African-Americans, immigrants, and the lower class is lesser “religion.”
Orsi shows how this suppression was first carried out very deliberately and now is continued by the academic tradition.
Anyone in the academy who attempts to describe these other religious modalities in their own terms: through physical experience, emotional experience, the experience of Presence, etc. is labeled as subjective, journalistic or theological.
I took deep satisfaction from Orsi’s criticism as these terms are exactly the ones that are used to make young academics toe-the-line. When I wrote my thesis at Hampshire I was told that it was too theological. When I submitted some of my work to a journal last year I was told it was journalistic. They thought my article was too journalistic for their journal? Academia is a constant scramble to find something critical to say and the accusation of being journalistic is always within reach.
I’m sure I’ve misread Orsi a little bit here–that tends to happen when it takes you eight months to read a book. But this book really made him one of my personal heroes. Excelsior.
Starts with ‘B’ and rhymes with Libel
Georgia schools are talking about creating two electives in Biblical studies, “History and Literature in the Old Testament Era” and “History and Literature in the New Testament Era.” This comes right on the heels of the intelligent design debate and already this would seem to be setting up a fresh political battle to take place in the schools. I for one, welcome the course.
Even if this course leads to the destruction of America, it is still good news for me. I’m going to be a teacher in Atlanta and I happen to have a Masters Degree from Harvard in issues of religion in public schools. (I also helped start a research program for studying religion in public schools. Google HDS and H-STARS. I invented that acronym, by the way.) It sounds callous, but the more sticky issues of church and state in public schools, the more my services are needed.
Secondly, this isn’t all that controversial. Georgia already offers an elective in comparative religion as do many other states. The only big change is that this course would require the Bible as a primary text. Now I could see that being a cause for concern if it was a required course in world history—but how could you possibly do a course on Biblical studies without using the Bible as a primary text?
Also diffusing the controversy is the fact that a lot of schools will not be offering the course. (This is partly because most inner-city schools offer no electives at all––but this is a matter of social injustice to discuss another day.) However, even suburban schools will not be offering the course because teachers are petrified of being caught in the cross-fire of church and state. I have conducted interviews with people teaching religion in high-schools and I have done survey research for H-STARS. Many teachers are indeed lacking training of basic first amendment issues and should be daunted by the thought of teaching this course. Only fools rush in.
While I was in the Program in Religion and Secondary Education, I heard stories of electives on the history of India being taught without any mention of Hindus and Muslims. Insanity. In my current teaching situation there is a total vacuum when it comes to issues of religion in the schools. I have a reputation as “the religion guy” where I teach. Our students are required to do independent projects and so I get sent all the kids doing something relating to religion. (Half the time, these are teenage girls researching ghosts and exorcism.) Here’s what really intrigues me: someone trained these kids to edit themselves so that when they mean “religion” they say, “culture.” Therefore, I get questions like, “Mr. Joe, I need your help since you do cultural studies . . . My friend doesn’t believe in God, what should I do?”
So what about the handful of students that are taking an elective using their required Bibles? Will this tighten the Evangelical’s grip over the South? I actually predict the opposite. The course was set up to teach students to get the cultural and literary references from the Bible. Many people don’t understand what “The Good Samaritan Law” refers to. You can forget about more obscure references like Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom!
My big beef with the Evangelicals is that so many of them don’t study the Bible and have recreated the dependence on the clergy that existed before Luther. If you ever debate a conservative Protestant on why they don’t like gays, you will most likely hear, “That’s what my pastor says and I have to trust my pastor.” or, “The Bible says Adam and Eve and Adam and Steve.” Actual study of the Bible can only weaken this position.
In fact, when I interviewed high-school faculty who were teaching the Bible, they reported Evangelical parents fought tooth and nail to not use a study Bible that included historical and redactionary criticism. It’s more difficult to have blind faith in a book that was written pseudonymously and by multiple authors over hundreds of years. The Christian Coalition may be lobbying for the course now, but when it’s actually implemented, it will either be a wild and vulgar violation of church and state, or the Christian Coalition will forbid their own children from taking the course.
Maybe I’m in an optimistic mood today, but a course like this could finally, FINALLY, shift the political dialogue about Christianity in this country. It seems like a lot of young Americans feel they have to choose between being an atheist or diving headlong into being born again, protesting abortions, lobbying against gay marriage, and so on. If students were trained to think critically about the Bible, maybe it would finally become a source of values and meaning rather than hegemonical yard stick.
