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   Jewish Dialogue, Christian Monologue? So a rabbi, a pastor, and Christianity Today's David Neff walk into a bar... John D. Spalding on the unfunny outcome. [ Continue reading: ] Free Speech? My Speech. "Free speech," declared conservative writer Phyllis Chessler in observance of "Islamofascism Awareness Week," "belongs also to those of us who are pro-American and pro-Israel, and not only to those who demonize the West." Barnard scholar Elizabeth Castelli, meanwhile, points out... [ Continue reading: ]  Francis Schaeffer's Holy Fools Jeff Sharlet: I've a review of Frank Schaeffer's fascinating new book, Crazy for God: How I Grew Up As One of the Elect, Helped Found the Religious Right and Lived to Take All (or Almost All) of It Back, in... [ Continue reading: ] Letting Jesus and Buddha Dance Together: Eve and the Fire Horse The image of Jesus and the Buddha dancing together in a living room is just one of several images that stick with the viewer of Eve and the Fire Horse, the first feature film by Canadian Julia Kwan. The film expresses all the imagination, all the wild and sometimes zany thoughts, and all the complex social interactions that stand at the heart of religious myths and rituals... [ Continue reading: ] New York Times Declares Religious Right Dead. Again. Jeff Sharlet: With "The Evangelical Crack-Up," New York Times conservative beat reporter David D. Kirkpatrick's nearly 8,000-word cover story in last Sunday's magazine, the paper of record has attempted to cement a new chunk of conventional wisdom: The religious right is dead. Again. [ Continue reading: ]  Evangelicals Want Power, and They Have It Beliefnet's "Blogalogue" on "Evangelicals in Power" continues: Tthe language of sin and evil, anyway, which, depending on how it's used -- as a weapon of dissent -- may be evangelicalism's signal contribution to healthy democracy... [ Continue reading: ]  Upcoming Events Sharlet: This Sunday, October 21, I'll be delivering "The Carl Lecture" at the United Methodist Church in one of my hometowns, Schenectady, New York. I'll be talking about how and why fundamentalism endures at in American politics regardless of who's in power. [ Continue reading: ]  We're All Evangelicals Now Jeff Sharlet: Beliefnet's "Blogalogue" on "Evangelicals in Power" began yesterday. Revealer contributor Patton Dodd, now an editor at Beliefnet, opens it up with a premise and a question. The premise: Evangelicals have indisputably joined America's power elite. The question: "Are powerful evangelicals good news or bad news for America?" The first response comes from Hanna Rosin, author of God's Harvard. According to Hanna, evangelicals are now part of the establishment. As far as she's concerned, that in itself is neither here nor there. "Political disagreements are great," she writes. "Healthy for a democracy, fun for a journalist. But not when those disagreements are loaded with the weight of sin and evil." Read the rest of Hanna's response here. My response, cross-posted from Beliefnet, follows: Since I'm going to disagree with Hanna, I'll start with some good feelings about her new book, God's Harvard, the first real work of narrative nonfiction about Christian fundamentalism and political power. Hanna has gone further than any other writer in exploring this story using the tools of fiction -- character, scene, metaphor -- combined with the rigors of great reportingAnd, of course, the insights of a longtime observer of Christian conservative politics.
Writing about the conservative former home schoolers of Patrick Henry College, Hanna notes that "when they were younger they had the impression that the culture was not worth saving or knowing. Their kitchen, with their mom and their siblings and worship music playing, was like Augustine's City of God, with the fallen men living out there, somewhere far away." Like all kids, these fundamentalists learn that "the world" is not so far away, after all, and so they "train up" for culture war...
[ Continue reading: ]  Movements vs. Media Narratives Sharlet: Laurie Goodstein's NYT Week in Review essay this past Sunday, "For a Trusty Voting Bloc, Faith Shaken," sums up the new media master narrative on Christian conservatives and politics. That's not a dig. The NYT Week in Review exists to forge conventional wisdom out of the oftentimes well-informed opinions of reporters who spend the rest of the week on the beat. Problems arise when those reporters pile their insights atop a pyramid of old cliches. That's what seems to have happened here: Noting that no GOP candidate has won the widespread support of Christian conservatives, Goodstein suggests that Christian conservatives have become for the Republican Party something like black voters are to the Democratic Party -- a necessary base that nonetheless doesn't drive the agenda. Such an argument rests on several media generalizations, useful to daily reporting but not really representative of reality... [ Continue reading: ]  Where's the Treasure? Mississippi gubenatorial candidate John Arthur Eaves ressurrects William Jennings Bryan with his challenge to the state's governor, wealthy former lobbyist Haley Barbour: “'Governor, just come clean, tell us where your treasure is,"” Mr. Eaves intoned in a preachery sing-song at... [ Continue reading: ] Oh Yes, Oh Yes, My Darling! Sharlet: "Oh Yes, Oh Yes, My Darling!: The Great Unsung Song of Lee Hays" -- or, as Oxford American's 9th annual Southern Music issue retitled my essay about the co-writer, with Pete Seeger, of "If I Had a Hammer," "Kisses Sweeter Than Wine," and so many other important American songs, "The People's Singer." The essay was online, then offline, and now it's online again; and here's a link to a correction I posted. This story is music history, but there's more than one ghost of a religion story within it. Hays, a socialist, was also a preacher's son who never saw any reason to draw sharp lines between politics and religion, so long as both were liberatory, and, maybe even more importantly, singable. Also online from this issue: Sean Wilentz on the "Mystic Nights" of Bob Dylan's "Blonde on Blonde" sessions; Alex Rawls on the Cowsills, famous long ago for a psychedelic mini-epic that featured back-up singers singing "six, six, six"; and Bill Wasik on how blogging killed the ephemeral indie-rock star. [ Continue reading: ] A Mighty Beard In "Onward Chrisian Scholars," (NYT Magazine, 9/30), Molly Worthen profiles New St. Andrew's College in Moscow, Idaho. It's everything the radical-right college could have asked for, but it's also all that I hoped from the author of The Man on Whom Nothing Was Lost, an admirable intellectual biography of Worthen's Yale mentor, conservative Iran-Contra diplomat Charles Hill. When Worthen's tribute to her teacher, started under his tutelage, was published last year, The Boston Globe opened its review thusly: "if ever a book arrived begging to have its block knocked off, this is surely it." Then the reviewer went on to lavish praise on the book, despite what he saw as its subject's odious politics. "Onward Christian Scholars" shows that such a delicate balance -- essential, I think, to reporting on the religious right -- is Worthen's specialty... [ Continue reading: ] New Revealers Coming Soon A while ago The Revealer advertised for new revealers. We received a wonderful response! And will soon be announcing the new crew. Stay tuned. [ Continue reading: ] The MacDowell Colony Jeff Sharlet: I'm back, again, after a month mostly off the grid in the woods of New Hampshire. I was at The MacDowell Colony, a cluster of cabins for artists of all disciplines (including us nonfiction types). It's the oldest... [ Continue reading: ] |