FYI for Christian Parents

Last week, a mommy blogger identified only as “Mrs. Hall” enjoyed her proverbial fifteen minutes when her open letter to teenage girls went viral on social media. Some people, mommies mostly, embraced her stand against flippant teenage sexuality. Others rebutted her fiercely. My favorite counter-arguments appeared here and here. (Thanks to Lauren Bonk for finding these gems.)

But the most telling information lives one click away from Mrs. Hall’s jeremiad, on her About page. Kimberly Hall, born in Zimbabwe to missionary parents, followed their footsteps into Christian ministry. She attended a Christian university, and also has ventured into Christian entrepreneurship. This blog continues her apparent efforts to cocoon herself in highly demonstrative conservative Christianity.

After Mrs. Hall’s unintended Internet celebrity, her information deserves unpacking, starting with her education at Wheaton College, possibly America’s most religiously conservative accredited university. Though widely recognized as a sterling academic institution, Wheaton’s brand of evangelical Protestantism attracts criticism. It has dismissed faculty for embracing both human evolution and Roman Catholicism, creating a shockingly narrow field of discourse.

Worse, its track record on sexual issues is dismal. A recent Sojourners article names Wheaton alumni for their lopsided sexual mores. Women are so shamed about sex that they cannot discuss their own bodies openly, while men preponderantly struggle with porn addiction. Though this problem probably began well before college, Wheaton’s sexual conservatism and ideological homogeneity create an environment that only compounds the situation.

Mrs. Hall, who signs her About page “Kim,” tells her teenage audience that they get “no second chances” after posting semi-sultry selfies in their jammies. She brags about censoring her sons’ online social lives so they never have to see their female peers wrapped only in a towel. She does this to protect her boys, “to keep their minds pure, and their thoughts praiseworthy.”

Does she believe one Instagram of a co-ed sticking her boobs out will irrevocably corrupt her otherwise pure boys? Does she consider her sons’ psyches so fragile that they cannot absorb one libidinous swipe from girls testing their nascent sexuality? And does she think, for one minute, that three industrious teenagers haven’t circumvented her online parental controls? I can’t believe she’s that naïve.

Teenage boys think about sex. They think about what it’s like, how to get it, and what they’ll forfeit for it. Suffused with hormones and thoughts they’ve never experienced before, they see sex in newspaper advertising circulars and shopping malls. When a peer tries to look sexy, moms like Mrs. Hall have a choice: they can deny sex exists. Or they can see a classic teachable moment.

Coming of age before the Web, my parents noticed different signs of sexual onset. But when they did, they sat me down with a medical encyclopedia and gave me “the talk.” More than a discussion of sexual mechanics, they also emphasized responsibility. They said I bore sole duty for my thoughts. Those thoughts would come, my parents explained, but I had power to choose whether I ruled my thoughts, or my thoughts ruled me.

Mrs. Hall, though, sees her sons buffeted by impulses they cannot control. This should give her pause for concern, since if they cannot learn to control their libidos now, under their parents’ roof, how will they react as adults when nobody guards the gate? Though she presumably means the opposite, she’s training her sons to consider themselves helpless against life’s influences. To paraphrase Mrs. Hall, they can’t quickly un-learn it.

Her About page identifies Mrs. Hall as “Director of Women’s ministries” at a major Protestant congregation. In her pastoral duties, does Mrs. Hall tell victims of workplace sexual harassment, domestic battery, or rape to cover themselves up? Does she tell adult women to accept blame for how society demeans and objectifies women? If not, how can she say that to teens, who lack experience and maturity in these matters?

Even her format reveals Mrs. Hall’s prejudices. While reprimanding girls for “the red carpet pose, the extra-arched back, and the sultry pout,” she supplements it with cheescake-ish pictures of her sons in swimming trunks. Her unspoken message is that boys’ bodies are value-neutral, while girls’ bodies are objects of lust. (She’s since scrubbed these photos from her blog, but not from the Wayback Machine.)

I’ve written recently about how denying teen girls their natural development creates the problem it seeks to prevent. Mrs. Hall shops this problem to teen girls everywhere. In her sheltered, sectarian way, Mrs. Hall surely means well. But if she can’t raise her sons to take responsibility for their own libidos, she may live to face problems more severe than girlish sexuality on Facebook. Nobody wants that.

Grace Schulman On Striving for the Ordinary

Grace Schulman, Without a Claim: Poems

I recall reading that most poets’ best work is complete before they turn thirty. Since I write poetry past that age, I don’t want to believe it, William Wordsworth notwithstanding. But Grace Schulman’s latest collection doesn’t still my fears. Pushing eighty, following a storied sixty-year career, Schulman shows great comfort and familiarity with poetic convention. But it resembles the work of somebody eager to be known as a poet.

Don’t mistake me; I can’t call this collection “bad.” It has many redeeming moments. Were this a semester portfolio in an MFA program, I’d give it a B. But in today’s media-saturated culture, we cannot afford time for B-level material. Her thematic focus starts strong, but gets diffuse as the collection progresses, while her language, sometimes confident, often drifts into the sort of comfy finger exercises beloved by students.

Take, for instance, the poems which start this collection. They address Schulman’s Long Island residence, and what it means to “own” (put that in air quotes) land that many peoples have warred over for generations. But while she addresses many important themes, I wait in vain for her to bear down on one. She primarily acknowledges a checklist of sub-themes, as in this from “The Sound”:

Accabonac, Shinnecock, Peconic, Napeague,
the creek, the bay, the stream, the Sound, the sounds

of consonants, hard c’s and k’s. Atlantic,
the ocean’s surge, the click of waves

collapsed on rocks in corrugated waters,
the crowd circling a stranded whale

sent by the god Moshup to beach at Paumanok.
The Montauks left us names. [...]

Indeed, the Montauks left us names, and Schulman seems determined to include them all. While this is perhaps an extreme example, it resembles the sort of listing I remember circling in red pencil in too many workshops. She seems to think naming concepts equals explicating them. And that’s saying nothing about the limp metaphor of “corrugated waters.”

After the first dozen pages, Schulman broadens her theme from “place” to “identity,” which is amorphous but does maintain continuity with her introductory poems. A selection of poems about poets, artists, and artisans gives Schulman the opportunity to stand analytically outside herself. She makes decent use of the opportunity, as in this analysis of a painting, “Woman on the Ceiling”:

Her face shines from the ceiling, ample hair
unbound, the color of wheat in wind,
leaves caught in its stray wisps, her skin paler

than the dark hands of congregants below
reaching to touch the Law on silver scrolls
shouldered and hoisted high from a plaster niche. [...]

You were there all the time, sister of saints
and goddesses, hauled up with shards of a jar,
lost coins, the puzzle of a child’s shoe...

This relatively long poem’s graceful arc spotlights Schulman at her poetic best, starting with “mere” ekphrasis, moving into more active inquiry of what it means to be Jewish in a religiously plural society. Moreover, she does so while remaining mercifully free of sentiment or bombast, those flaccid tools of hip contemporary poets. If only Schulman’s whole collection achieved this high standard.

Alas, as the collection progresses, Schulman spreads herself painfully thin: too much toast, not enough jam. By the end, I can’t find a theme at all, while her verse gets cluttered with talky narration, unfocused imagery, and bleakly impenetrable passages in strictly noun-verb syntax. Individual poems, like “Fool’s Gold” or “The Unbuilder,” stand out from the background. But selections like “Cool Jazz” feel more typical:

Late afternoon, under a salmon sky,
a night heron stalking with charcoal plumage
leaned sideways like a bowling pin off balance

on an island risen for the day
only to sink later with the tide.
I saw Miles Davis lean aslant, a night heron

on Broadway, shoulders hunched, horn pointed down,
until he hoisted brass and played away
sadness of Spain, his sadness, with a tight mute...

This unfortunately resembles this collections entire latter half: a panoply of ordinary images, end-stopped lines, and doctrinaire reliance on a stanza form that doesn’t advance the poem. Does Schulman suddenly fear her story isn’t important enough, that she must tell someone else’s? Why does this collection, which started out so intimate, finish up so entirely external?

Again, don’t think this means I consider Schulman a poor poet. Like Wordsworth’s later work, she shows flashes of distinct genius. But this collection feels hasty, like Schulman fears she’ll never get another bite of the apple. If that’s so, surely she doesn’t want this sprawling, diffuse collection to define her final legacy.

John Fogerty at 68

I cringed slightly to learn that John Fogerty’s newest collection, Wrote a Song For Everyone, is both a duets album and a career retrospective. Both of these tend to be the product of artists ready to be embalmed. But at age 68, Fogerty has surely earned the right to secure his legacy however he deems fit. I’m just not persuaded his best work is behind him.

Fogerty is of course best known as leader of Creedence Clearwater Revival. When I saw him live in concert, he led with CCR’s defining classic, “Born on the Bayou,” a B-side track that nevertheless cemented his place in rock history. This track, and its A-side, “Proud Mary,” proclaimed CCR’s subsequent arc of organic rock, infused with a mix of country, soul, blues, and zydeco.

Rock was deeply split in 1968. While Deep Purple, Jimi Hendrix, and Steppenwolf nursed a highly produced blues-rock that evolved into heavy metal, acts like Little Feat and The Band championed a more austere, rural sound. CCR appeared, superficially, to come into the latter camp. But Fogerty also cherry-picked sources like doo-wop and Motown. Thus, like Hendrix, CCR’s popularity transcended race in what was still a shockingly segregated music business.

Fogerty could relate to his audience in ways many pop stars couldn’t, because he was one of them. Where the MC5 constructed their vision of bohemian poverty, Fogerty was a middle son from a broken home. He didn’t need to fake unpretentious aspirations in “Porterville” or “Hey Tonight.” While Country Joe McDonald wailed his bombastic “I-Feel-Like-I’m-Fixin-To-Die Rag” against Vietnam, Fogerty, a genuine draftee, expressed real shared sentiment in his signature classic, “Fortunate Son.”

CCR burned fast and hard: they released five albums in 1969 and 1970, each an acknowledged classic. But Fogerty was also a tyrant. As lead guitarist, vocalist, and chief songwriter, he felt free to make demands of his bandmates. In band photos, John’s brother Tom, original bandleader when they cut some unsuccessful 45’s as The Golliwogs, looks haunted as his former band, and his career, drift outside his control.

Despite their distinct retro sound, CCR wasn’t unique in their time. Gram Parsons labored to create his Cosmic American Music, though he dwelt beneath the shadows of popular artists like Roger McGuinn and Mick Jagger. The Eagles created a slick, commercial version of CCR’s sound, getting the number-one hits that evaded CCR. But it’s tough to imagine these acts’ success without Fogerty and CCR bequeathing them an eager audience.

Tom Fogerty quit the band in January 1971, and John’s remaining bandmates lobbied for more creative control. Badly outnumbered, Fogerty acquiesced, but refused to sing lead on songs his bandmates wrote. He made his merely adequate bandmates sing their own songs, essentially sabotaging CCR’s final album, which is nearly unlistenable. Fogerty now refuses to play with his surviving bandmates (though his reasons are complex and not entirely unfair).

Asked to name CCR’s classics, fans might cite “Proud Mary,” “Down On the Corner,” or “Lookin’ Out My Back Door.” These bouncy singalong gems remain radio staples. Yet on broader view, Fogerty’s repertoire proves remarkably pessimistic. Early on, Fogerty penned songs like “Bad Moon Rising” and “Fortunate Son.” This only got more extreme with time; tracks like “Someday Never Comes” and “Have You Ever Seen the Rain” bespeak an extremely bleak outlook.

CCR’s bitter split was followed by years of battles with their label, Fantasy Records, over who owned Fogerty’s compositions. An unfairly lopsided contract limited Fogerty’s control of his own songs, and Fantasy licensed CCR’s songs in ways that cheapened their image. (Fogerty’s songs have recently appeared in commercials for Walgreen’s and Kellogg’s Raisin Bran, among others.) Incensed, Fogerty stopped playing his best songs rather than grant royalties to Fantasy.

During the years of alienation from his own work, Fogerty, a notorious perfectionist, struggled to produce listenable recordings. Though fans embraced his album Centerfield, its immediate follow-up, Eye of the Zombie, failed completely. His album Hoodoo so completely failed to meet Fogerty’s standards that he ordered the master tapes destroyed. He so faded from view that a 1993 Reuters report called him a “recluse.”

Around this time Johnny Cash, one of CCR’s early proponents, appealed to Fogerty to play his classics, lest America remember “Proud Mary” as an Ike & Tina Turner hit. For this and other reasons, Fogerty’s live shows became highlight reels of CCR’s best moments. When I saw him live in 1997, over two-thirds of his set consisted of CCR hits and, at age 52, remained a tireless performer, highly keyed to his audience.

Reclaiming his CCR works really revitalized his creativity. Although charting solo tracks like “Almost Saturday Night” and “Centerfield” captured audience attention and kept his name alive in a turbulent music business, even fans must admit that most of his early solo work lacked the CCR spark. But when “Proud Mary” and “Who’ll Stop the Rain” returned to his repertoire, he suddenly became able to produce albums like Blue Moon Swamp and Revival, indubitable sequels to CCR’s best work.

In some ways, Wrote a Song For Everyone feels like a possible capstone for Fogerty’s career. He could retire after this: by revisiting twelve of his self-penned classics (ten CCR tracks and two solo songs), melding his style with popular rock and country artists, asserts his broad influence in today’s most popular guitar-driven music genres. Yet the two original tracks display a continuing creative vitality, suggesting that, if he chose, he could keep playing.

Some pairings seem surprising. My Morning Jacket’s dreamlike arrangement on “Long As I Can See the Light” brings new insight to the track’s short-term melancholy and longer-term optimism. Bob Seger’s take on “Who’ll Stop the Rain,” complete with piano line pinched from “Night Moves,” turns this into a Seger track that merges seamlessly with his classic work. And Fogerty teams with Alan Jackson, another veteran prone to comebacks, to revitalize “Have You Ever Seen the Rain.”

Other combos seem downright natural. The Foo Fighters sound like they were made to record “Fortunate Son,” while Miranda Lambert, possibly the best thing going in today’s moribund pop country milieu, pairs sweetly with my absolute favorite CCR track, “Wrote a Song For Everyone.” And the massive ensemble, including Jennifer Hudson, that joins Fogerty on “Proud Mary” manages to meld Fogerty’s original with Ike & Tina’s remake, bonded with a distinct zydeco/jazz flourish.

Fogerty’s two original tracks convince me that he still has distinct future possibilities. “Mystic Highway,” a straightforward country rocker with a gospel-style breakdown, could fit seamlessly on his 1980s albums, while “Train of Fools” could have come off Blue Moon Swamp. Considering his band’s early dissolution and his long legal troubles have kept Fogerty from truly fulfilling his potential. But these tracks reassure me that, perhaps, his best work isn’t yet done.

In some ways, John Fogerty emblematizes today’s music business. In particular, he represents the ongoing battle between the “music” half and the “business” half: should the need to make a profit trump the artist’s prerogative to create art that feeds the soul? A generation from now, nobody will remember lucrative acts like One Direction. John Fogerty’s work will long outlast the man himself, because it nourishes the human spirit. And this new album proves that definitively.

The Christian-Industrial Complex

Nadia Bolz-Weber, Salvation on the Small Screen? 24 Hours of Christian Television

You know it exists: that channel (or cluster of channels) on your cable service, which you always flip past, where silk-suited preachers exhort the masses. Sometimes they offer True Believers vast earthly prosperity in return for “love offerings.” Others promise to feed Darfur or support missionaries in Mongolia. These networks are part of a parallel economy of Christian stores, media, and other services that Nadia Bolz-Weber calls “the Christian-Industrial Complex.”

Bolz-Weber, a recent seminarian and avowed humorist, decided to watch twenty-four straight hours of Trinity Broadcasting Network (TBN), America’s largest Christian broadcaster, home of such hot names as Joel Osteen and classics like PTL. Coming from a liturgically conservative but theologically moderate church, she admitted not watching Christian TV. Most Christians who attend mainline churches won’t go anywhere near Christian TV. So what happens if we do?

Merriam-Webster defines “cynical” as “captious, peevish; contemptuously distrustful of human nature and motives.” Bolz-Weber admits both her cynical viewpoint and her sarcastic rejoinders. She even calls her blog “The Sarcastic Lutheran.” I was surprised, though, since I come from Bolz-Weber’s denomination and largely share her views, just how cynical my responses to her cynicism were. I was profoundly disturbed, not by her, but by my own reaction.

Accompanied by a rotating roster of fellow jesters, Bolz-Weber spends an entire day watching TBN. She admits she wanted some conservative evangelicals to join her, but was unable to find anybody who actually watches TBN. Apparently, mainline pastors and TBN devotees run in circles that never overlap. Moderates, atheists, Jews, sure: she could find all these. But not one conservative evangelical. In Denver? Seriously? She couldn’t hang a flyer at Orchard Road?

Then Bolz-Weber lobs bombs at TBN’s personalities that often just look mean. She mocks televangelists’ mannerisms, homiletics, and hair. Rather than breaking new ground, she often rehashed specific mockeries I remember from “Bloom County” comic strips, circa 1987. I started rolling my eyes and guffawing. Though I’m no televangelist apologist, I found myself answering Bolz-Weber’s cynicism with my own. When I realized what I’d done, it shocked me.

Philosophic cynicism may be a legitimate response to life’s near-constant assaults. But knee-jerk cynicism is nothing but a way to hold people at arm’s length, exonerating ourselves from the need to communicate. About TBN’s aggressive money solicitations, Bolz-Weber writes: “I am seriously skeptical about how much of the money people send in is actually used [to feed Sudanese refugees] and how much is used to fund [Rod] Parsley’s lifestyle.”

So am I. Yet I responded to Bolz-Weber’s cynicism with a cynical eye-roll. I’m cynical about her cynicism. Very “meta.” And in that moment, something cracked: I’ve feigned a world-weary attitude to prevent either Rod Parsley or Nadia Bolz-Weber from touching my soul. If I can remain looking down my nose at either would-be persuader, I need not reevaluate my own positions. I can continue, untouched by another human’s need. My scars protect my status quo.

Equally important, I needn’t understand or communicate with anybody whose views differ from mine. If they’re beneath my contempt, why should I listen? Bolz-Weber admits this, too. Years of postgraduate theological study have left her more able to communicate with atheists and Jews than her own fellow Christians. Therefore, she realizes, the more TBN she watches, that televangelists meet a need she’s profoundly unprepared to answer in her own parishioners.

We all know the phenomenon, where people only talk with people they already agree with, and emerge from the conversation believing a more extreme, intolerant version of their original beliefs. Psychologists call this “group polarization,” though the military has an altogether more appropriate term: “incestuous amplification.” Too many Christians today demonstrate this incestuous tendency. No wonder unbelievers find our daily discourse strident and unpleasant.

Bolz-Weber and I, almost simultaneously, find ourselves unable to sustain our practiced cynicism under its own self-contradictory weight. We cannot hide our hearts behind practiced academic trickery and hope to convince anyone else that our positions have merit. We cannot call ourselves ambassadors of the Prince of Peace while regarding some people with reflexive contempt. Cynicism, ultimately, is the opposite of Christianity.

Did Bolz-Weber intentionally provide an object lesson in my own prideful errors? Maybe. We bookish Protestants are a repetitive lot, demonstrating the same errors with monotonous regularity. Cynicism is easy; Christ’s love is hard. Because we come from similar spiritual backgrounds, it shouldn’t surprise me that Bolz-Weber and I commit the same sins. And her ability to overcome hers gives me hope that I can overcome mine.

Holy Vigilante, Batman! (Part Three)

Bane's Dichotomy Between Servitude and Chaos

Something has always bugged me about Christopher Nolan’s Batman movies. Not their tightly plotted stories or gritty urban-realist design, which make the Burton/Schumacher films look dated and primitive. Nor the justification for vigilantism, which I couldn’t criticize better than comics writer Alan Moore already has. But watching The Dark Knight Rises, I finally realized: Nolan has turned Batman into a fascist tract.

Batman has long represented mighty justice, emerging from shadows to deal swift comeuppance to criminals. But unlike blindfolded, scales-bearing Themis, Batman makes no pretence of impartiality. He maintains hip-pocket alliances with cops, dispenses summary justice that any judge would discard, and openly disdains due process. He’s every frazzled parent’s ultimate Hail Mary pass: stay in line, or some black-clad bogeyman will serve physical comeuppance.

This makes sense in the Depression-era milieu that first birthed Batman. In an age of rampant official corruption, seeing a rich socialite use his wealth for eleemosynary ends must have gratified countless teens. Even today, when sensational crime stories lead nightly newscasts, Batman seems like a bastion against tides of urban lawlessness. Christian Bale conveys this raspy-throated image of bootleg vengeance with understated elegance.

But that description, which accurately embodies Nolan’s first two Batman films, rings hollow here. Once decaying, Gotham has enjoyed eight years of peace, defined herein as “order.” Sharp-suited tycoons feel safe walking the streets. Where contract murder once ruled Gotham, the city has turned a skilled jewel thief into their local celebrity. Gotham has achieved a pre-9/11 state of decadent complacence.

Note that the situation for common Gothamites hasn’t improved. Selena Kyle and her partner live in squalor equal to any number of windows Batman peeped through during crime’s heyday. But the “Dent Act” prevents bottom-feeders from threatening the hierarchy. After eight years, Gotham maintains the same mayor and police commissioner, suggesting that city governance is decided on high; elections occur to ratify decisions over which citizens have no power.

Into this environment of bread and circuses—that is, parties and football—rides Tom Hardy as Bane, who begins as a mercenary but adopts the stylings of populism, repeatedly offering to return Gotham to “you, the people.” By this he doesn’t mean Jeffersonian ideals of an informed, engaged citizenry; instead, Bane constructs an army of riff-raff to enforce his Maoist social design. His first act is to open the jails and establish a convict-run kangaroo court.

Thus Nolan presents Gotham an unpalatable choice: either comply with the hierarchy, or give command of their city to its lowest members. Nolan lards the narrative with allusions to Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities. His inescapable moral: we choose which form of manifest social injustice to accept. Do we prefer peaceful subservience under the hierarchy, or chaotic Reign-of-Terror rule by the commune’s foulest denizens?

Batman, with his wealth and technology, could use this opportunity to reject both choices. But with his hovercraft, pulleys, and access to vantage points, he literally stands on high, fighting to restore the old order. It’s like if, amid Cold War desperation, an avenging angel chose to reinvest feudal domains and divinely anointed kings. Batman chooses the tyranny of peaceful mediocrity over the tyranny of an uprising he cannot control.

Importantly, when Batman dispenses justice from on high, he doesn’t represent the Christian God. When Bane dynamites the prison gates, he says: “the powerful will be ripped from their decadent nests, and cast out into the cold world that we know and endure.” Compare the Virgin Mary’s praise in Luke 1:52-53: God “has brought down rulers from their thrones, but has lifted up the humble. He has filled the hungry with good things, but has sent the rich away empty.”

Like Nietzsche, Batman rejects Christian and Platonist ideals of justice, favoring something older and more savage. Forced to choose between Bane’s Bolshevik militia and Batman leading a phalanx of uniformed cops, Gotham itself has no choice. The city’s champion chooses for them, throwing his support and physical strength behind a legal superstructure which even Commissioner Gordon admits he built on a lie. Gotham’s citizens have but one choice: to submit.

Early in the film, Bane calls himself “necessary evil.” Commissioner Gordon might describe Batman as equally necessary. But social theorist Jacques Ellul wrote: “necessity never establishes legitimacy; the world of necessity is a world of weakness, a world that denies man.” If Batman simply embodies the form of injustice Gotham can accept, perhaps Ra’s al Ghul was right. Time has come to burn it down and start over.

Holy Vigilante, Batman:

• Part One—Sancifying Civilian Justice
• Part Two—Defining Justice in a Nihilistic Universe