How America Crucified Jesus Again

1001 Books To Read Before Your Kindle Battery Dies, Part 67
James H. Cone, The Cross and the Lynching Tree

During America’s so-called “Lynching Era,” from roughly 1865 to 1955, whites murdered over five thousand Black Americans for mostly fictitious offenses. They faced few legal consequences, and often the law connived with this street justice. Most appallingly, these white assassins almost universally used Christian language and Biblical justifications to support their violence. African Americans, domineered by this behavior, supported themselves, remarkably enough, using this same Christian religion.

Union Theological Seminary professor James H. Cone, one of his school’s first Black faculty, grew up under Jim Crow, knowing the fear lynching offered. This isn’t historical escapism for Cone. Knowing directly the ways faith brought solace, he has written extensively on how religion means something unique to oppressed peoples. With this volume, he turns that attention specifically to violence, and how religion binds terrified individuals together into a people.

Lynching meant something almost identical in America that crucifixion meant in Rome: a political maneuver to silence despised peoples by generating paralyzing fear. African Americans literally had no idea who’d die next, in ways both humiliating and public. No wonder, Cone writes, that African American theology emphasizes the cross in ways white Christianity doesn’t, because Black Christians needed a God who shared their experiences of unjust, bigoted suffering and death.

Despite their usual presentation anymore, lynchings were seldom spontaneous; Emmett Till’s attackers plotted his assassination for four days. Though the perpetrators inevitably claimed some legal justification, we now know, these were usually fictitious. Attackers targeted Blacks who got rich, exercised autonomy, or otherwise didn’t accept race-based etiquette. This “frontier justice” was almost inevitably unjust. For many lynched African Americans, their last living sight involved white crowds surrounding flaming crosses.

This jagged gulf between white and Black Christianity dominates Cone’s largest chapter. How did even liberal-minded and anti-racist theologians fail to notice the parallel between lynchings and Christ’s crucifixion? Cone uses Reinhold Niebuhr as his exemplar. Niebuhr made justice the keystone of his social theology, and addressed injustices against Jews and the poor long before mainstream Christians did. Yet somehow he never connected that theme to American lynchings.

James H. Cone

It wasn’t that Niebuhr failed to notice. As Cone demonstrates through Niebuhr’s own publications and papers, when challenged to speak out, Niebuhr demurred. Ensconced in an entirely white Northern university, he saw lynching separately from faith. “This suggests why it is so hard for whites and blacks to talk about white supremacy,” Cone writes: “even among progressive intellectuals like Niebuhr, there is too little empathy regarding black suffering in the white community.”

African Americans did understand, however. Cone dedicates one chapter each to the theologians, artists, and women whose participation fueled the anti-lynching and Civil Rights movements. Cone describes how difficult it is to separate lynching and other racial violence from the efforts to redress injustice: Dr. King’s first pulpit, Emmett Till’s lynching, and Rosa Parks’ refusal to move, happened in very quick succession.

Theologians’ interpretation of crucifixion related directly to lynching, a theology of triumph over fear, not even a metaphorical connection. If the God of the universe shared Black Americans’ suffering, if the God of the Oppressed knew violent, politically motivated death, then what had anyone to fear? “Scholars who criticize blacks for their ‘otherworldly’ religion,” Cone writes, “should look a little deeper into the ways blacks resisted the demonic in their midst.”

Artists used Christian metaphors to not only express individual suffering, but bind African Americans together into a resistence movement. Cone cites a panoply of artists, mostly writers, but also musicians, performers, and others, whose use of crucifixion metaphors meant something special to Black audiences. Even nominally agnostic artists like James Baldwin and WEB DuBois embraced religious symbolism. “Faith and doubt were bound together, with each a check against the other.”

Cone dedicates an entire chapter to women whose works steered Black Christian influences in the struggle. As in other traditions, men might “lead” the church, but women propel it. Influential women like Ida B. Wells, the journalist and pamphleteer, or Fannie Lou Hamer, whose speeches were generously salted with lines from psalms and hymns, provided a guiding voice for Black resistance. Their presence was absolute, and their message electrifying.

Cone has written extensively on the influence of resistance and power dynamics in Black theology. This book explicitly marries spiritual beliefs to lived history, a prime example of faith translating into action. Cone’s historical descriptions of real-life lynchings will horrify readers, especially whites, for whom lynching has retreated from memory. But this isn’t about the past. Cone exhorts us, the living, today.

Classical Music for the Modern Ear

Laura Sullivan, Feast of Joy and Love

Okay, honesty time: I cringed inwardly when I saw this album’s opening track featured a medley of Bach’s “Jesu Joy of Man’s Desiring” and “Minuet in G,” two of the most over-performed pieces of Baroque music. They’re usually played in bloodless styles completely lacking Bach’s devotion, especially at weddings. But Laura Sullivan immediately plays “Jesu” by mixing her piano and spare orchestration with an Enya-like wordless chorus that pushes an overplayed piece in new directions.

Following her Grammy Award for her 2013 album Love's River, composer/pianist Laura Sullivan has begun vigorously re-releasing her prior independent New Age albums. But calling her music “New Age” feels dismissive, like comparing it to those studiously inoffensive albums of piano and Hammond organ music my parents played every holiday dinner. Sullivan’s music sounds different, more enterprising, like an attempt to create mature, sophisticated pop for grown-up audiences. Her strangely introspective arrangements succeed well.

Sullivan’s careful orchestration resembles current chamber pop stars like Bon Iver or The Decembrists. But she approaches her sound from the opposite direction: rather than creating Top 40-friendly pop that mines the best baroque sounds, she crafts listenable classical music that incorporates pop breeziness. Her music will sound charmingly familiar to anybody versed in pre-Mozart classical sounds. Not that she limits herself, though. Her uncluttered arrangements include hints of Latin, Celtic, and other world musics.

Besides Bach, Sullivan repurposes works by Beethoven, Albinoni, and the anonymous classic “Greensleeves.” This in addition to her original compositions, which don’t necessarily ascend in the strictly classical manner. Her best works, like the Cape Breton-infused “Shalaelah” or the transnational “Café des Artistes,” have a Philip Glass character, based on recognition of patterns rather than development of themes. Her Greensleeves arrangement exemplifies this effect, carrying motifs from piano to voice and back, frequently in near-harmony.

Piano drives these tracks, which makes an interesting change from many single-artist New Age recordings. Though the notes indicate Sullivan uses digital samples to bolster her acoustic instruments, she doesn’t rely upon synth and electronics to create her music—mercifully enough since that usually only sounds good in garage rock. She supports her music by multi-tracking her vocals (and her husband Eric), sometimes incorporating strings and saxophone for increased richness. But she remains committedly acoustic.

Laura Sullivan

This combination of theme-driven arrangements and spare instrumentation permits Sullivan some moments of surprising clarity. In “Pinot Noir,” for instance, Sullivan cedes lead to saxophonist Noel Jewkes, whose steady jazz progressions overlay Sullivan’s piano and barely audible brushes on percussion. (Sullivan uses some percussion, but mainly lets her left hand establish the groove.) This track is the closest Sullivan comes to out-and-out melancholy, yet she makes it feel like a mere breather on the road.

As the title suggests, Sullivan maintains a primarily positive attitude throughout this album, with works mainly in common and waltz time, with easygoing tempos you could slow-dance or stir-fry to. Nothing sufficiently Bolero-like for risqué business, sorry. But for the preliminaries, for holding hands while watching the sunset or cooking dinner on an open fire, Sullivan’s music provides not just a mindless background, but an actual tempo, a useful and pleasurable groove for shared movement.

In some ways, Laura Sullivan represents what’s possible for musicians who embrace modern technology. Not only does she have creative control enough over her music to create a sound she wants, independent distribution through her private label ensures her personal guidance continues over her work. Like the more mainstream Ani DiFranco, Sullivan has a level of artistic autonomy little seen since early recordings displaced traditional troubadours. Perhaps music has now returned to the originating musicians.

Except, if Sullivan hadn’t solicited this review personally, I might never have discovered her sound. My adolescent prejudices against New Age music would’ve kept me from trying this album even if I’d encountered it somewhere. The means of creating music have devolved to individual musicians, but the means of publicizing remain tenaciously owned by the Big Five media conglomerates. How can musicians assert control over their music, if curious listeners like me never hear them?

Laura Sullivan creates a “lite classical” sound nuanced enough that a part-time snob like me can approach her sound without feeling talked down to. But her spare arrangements and vernacular piano invite pop audiences to participate in her journey too. Her sounds, which range from Gregorian austerity to celebratory sophistication, bring committed listeners on a journey, or if you’d rather listen with half an ear, she buoys your mood. Sullivan wants to restore your soul.

Spotting the Bullshit Entrepreneurs

FAKE

The very first headline on my Facebook feed this past Monday seemed designed to grab my attention. “Drug Kingpin Joaquin ‘El Chapo’ Guzman Escapes Mexican Prison Once Again,” it screamed in oversize type, highlighted with an aged file photo of El Chapo looking stereotypically greasy. Given El Chapo’s violent history, and pattern of slipping unnoticed into American territory, I clicked the link.

Immediately, something felt wrong. The ABC News logo appeared distorted. The page took absurdly long to load. (I’m not linking the page here because I suspect it dumps a torrent of tracking cookies.) It misspelled common words in journalism, like “extradite.” And despite giving a detailed timeline of El Chapo’s escape, it cited no named sources. As evidence accumulated, I realized I’d probably gotten Punk’d.

In late 2015, Caitlin Dewey claimed on NPR that she ended her long-running Washington Post column “What Was Fake On The Internet This Week” for one simple reason: one person couldn’t possibly stay abreast of the Internet’s lucrative bullshit industry. Advertising aggregators don’t check the sites that purchase their product. Thus, until clickbait stops attracting social media visits, fake news sites will remain lucrative businesses.

Bullshit is, sadly enough, a growth industry.

Last time I wrote about this problem, my Spidey Sense flipped over an article accusing Senator Ted Cruz of blaming Texas flooding on Native American rain dances. But I made a fundamental mistake: I identified a specific offender. “Naming and shaming” apparently works; eight months later, that specific website has gone away. But the underlying problem has not. Bullshit vendors change their domain names, and persevere undeterred.

FAKE

Therefore, rather than identify specific fake news websites (smarter critics than I have done it better anyway), let’s consider what red flags clearly identify fake news:

- The URL looks slightly off
This latest time, I got bilked by a website claiming to be ABC News. But I didn’t look closely. The ABC network’s news website is abcnews.go.com, but I noticed too late that I’d clicked on abcnews.com.co. That particular domain suffix, .com.co, is common for news fakery, and “spoof” websites have been established for MSNBC, CNN, NBC News, and other legitimate news and opinion sources.

Similarly, many new fakers purchase domains that look almost plausible. The National Report and World News Daily Report could, conceivably, be legitimate newspaper titles. But generally, the URL contains red flags to avoid taking these sites seriously. So stop reposting “news” from sources like Stuppid.com, lest friends think that address describes you.

- They don’t cite sources
This one causes problems. Political reporters will often cite unnamed sources because their insider sources rely upon anonymity to keep their jobs. Likewise, crime reporters frequently won’t name sources, because they can’t blow ongoing operations or undercut a case still awaiting trial.

However, serious journalists will fact-check anonymous sources with named sources. Somebody reporting Oval Office leaks wouldn’t dare reprint accusations without first checking somebody who could be named. If, tomorrow, anonymous sources leaked claims that President Obama was banning tobacco, good journalists would ask spokespeople from the ONDCP, ATF, or at least Press Secretary Josh Earnest. Without that fact-checking, journalism would be mere scandal-mongering.

- The design looks cheap
Fake news sites are generally scripted hastily. They’re backdrops for the advertising, which gets the domain owners paid. If company logos look like they were done in one sitting, using Microsoft Paint, that’s a good sign we’re viewing a phoney site. The logo at abcnews.com.co looked like a vague approximation of the official ABC News logo, without that boring old dimensionality, contrast, or care.

Top: real
Bottom: FAKE

The same goes for other graphics. Legitimate news-gathering sites try to include new photos where they can; fake news sites’ photos are so vague, they clearly came from a Google image search. (I know mine are no better, but I’m a part-timer, and I don’t even pretend to be anything but a blogger.) Fake news sites generally lack any interactive content, or maybe just a comments list. Anything more requires expensive, time-consuming programming that fakers don’t care about.

Checking the links helps, too. Because the Internet allows instant cross-checking, serious news organizations will include links to prior stories, rather than making readers sit through another reiteration of the background and context. Hovering over the links in the El Chapo story, by contrast, I found over two-thirds of them redirected to Wikipedia. These links were purely for set dressing.

- They have sloppy copy editing
Misspellings and careless grammar aren’t just lackadaisical. They serve important business purposes. Should their stories go viral and cause emotive backlash, content creators can grin, point critics toward their haphazard writing, and say: “Nobody should’ve mistaken this for legitimate news.” Sadly, in free speech countries like America, this defense is legally solid.

- They have very little content
Most clickbait readers don’t follow links beyond the landing page. But sometimes, if a story feels fishy, checking the home page helps frame the debate. Real news is constantly updated, and will have dozens, or more, stories dated today on the front page. Because fake news is essentially creative writing, and because these sites generally have only one employee, they don’t update nearly as often. Most fake sites, like abcnews.com.co, update less than once per day.

- They verify your existing prejudices
Okay, this one is slippery. Partisan opinion channels like MSNBC and Fox News unambiguously cater to their audiences’ prior expectations. But fake news sources go further.

The El Chapo article that spurred this commentary was larded with comments accusing President Obama of culpability, somehow, for a Mexican criminal escaping a Mexican prison. This tendency was emphasized by linked articles claiming President Obama had signed an executive order limiting private citizens to owning three firearms, and Donald Trump had selected Sheriff Joe Arpaio as his running mate.

So basically, abcnews.com.co exists to fan conservative flames. The late, unlamented Stately Harold did something similar for liberals. By encouraging readers to cross-post their content on social media (Stately Harold even urged readers to tweet specific hashtags), they don’t just generate traffic. They actively set readers up for partisan mockery.

- They’re just too perfect
The news, like real life, is sloppy. One day, stock market returns and international news seemingly verify left-wing collectivist ideology; the next day, something awful on the police blotter apparently proves conservative authoritarians correct. Interpretations of fact are usually subject to debate, and desperate journalists can only run “he-said, she-said” coverage. Legitimate news is often more confusing than clear, at least to committed readers.

Fake news, by contrast, seldom has loose ends. It fits an inflexible view of the world: El Chapo is Evil, and President Obama is a dictator, but Donald Trump has the authoritarian hand to fix everything. Or, Ted Cruz is so silly, so overwhelmingly racist and anti-science, that he’d obviously rather blame rain on Indians than global warming. Or whatever, take your pick: if you finish reading a “news” article even more secure in your pre-existing beliefs, it’s probably fake.

Real news should make us at least slightly uncomfortable. I don’t mean firing us up with righteous indignation; real news should make us doubt our neat opinions, at least sometimes. Reality isn’t ideological. Smart, informed readers should frequently finish reading news items and struggle to wrap our heads around it. If the only thing we can say is, “See? I was right,” it’s probably fake.

The Mean Streets of Faeryland

Bishop O'Connell, The Forgotten: An American Faerie Tale

This review is a follow-up to Once Upon a Time In Olde Boston Towne

Children and teenagers are vanishing nationwide. Poor street kids mostly: the unwanted, the unloved, youth nobody will miss. Only the initiated truly understand the real pattern, though, as half-fae changelings and gifted young wizards vanish off the streets. It falls to the fae’s newly installed Regent of North America, the terse, mononymic Dante, to track the missing and reclaim the dispossessed. But mysterious forces outside Dante’s domain array history’s largest dark magical army against him.

Don’t call Bishop O’Connell’s second American Faerie Tale novel a sequel. The protagonists from O’Connell’s first novel appear as supporting characters, mainly in later chapters. Dante, who previously served mainly as a convenient plot driver, becomes central in a gritty story that’s equal parts Jim Butcher, Dashiell Hammett, and The Boondock Saints. These books form a series, but O’Connell doesn’t comfortably rehash past successes, veering instead into new directions like few genre writers would anymore.

O’Connell tells a two-pronged story reminiscent of Depression-era pulp novels. In his first storyline, Dante pursues clues about missing kids from Boston to Kansas to Seattle, and beyond. He enjoys all fae-kind’s magical resources in his investigation, but all the resources of a tiny, invisible minority has its limitations. This procedure-oriented storyline includes oblique, and not-so-oblique, nods to popular crime serials like Criminal Minds and The X-Files. It’s sleek, muscular, and doesn’t flinch from confrontation.

The second storyline features the wandering teenage wizard Wraith. (Okay, her name’s really Jane, but in O’Connell’s world, the dispossessed give themselves comic book names.) Rejected by both humanity and fae-kind, Wraith makes alliances with “fifties” and “slingers” (half-bloods and untrained wizards) to stay beneath general notice. But grey-robed child snatchers criss-cross America, seeking unwanted, magically gifted teens like her. They seem to especially want to capture Wraith, for reasons lost inside her swiss-cheese memory.

Bishop O'Connell

Veteran reader know these parallel storylines must eventually converge, ideally around the two-thirds point. Our only question becomes: when? And how will Dante’s masculine film noir plot and Wraith’s free-form punk explosion transform one another? As with O’Connell’s prior book, this novel doesn’t wholly break new ground. Rather, O’Connell repurposes narrative standards familiar to most genre readers, creating a story that’s both comfortingly familiar and dangerously frank in addressing our modern society’s deep festering wounds.

Where O’Connell’s first book was basically a conventional quest epic fleshed out with Jungian archetypes, this novel is a modern crime drama made larger by the inclusion of humanity’s legendary fears of the dark. Both share the theme of struggles for power, but they disagree deeply about what power means. Nobody here wants to wrest control of an idealized Celtic afterlife; they’re busy worrying about maintaining control within this world, which often proves much dirtier.

In exercising his newly-won, and precarious, dominion, Dante sometimes uses his inborn magical powers: shapeshifting, crossing great distances through magical forests, ensorcelling mere mortals to keep his secrets. But when confronting a disobedient fae administrator, he also doesn’t mind simply pulling his guns. Sometimes simple hardware still works best. Dante’s make-do ethical structure sometimes leaves us feeling clammy: he’s clearly the hero, but we frequently don’t approve of whatever he does to maintain his authority.

Wraith is frequently a more reliable character, inasmuch as she doesn’t have underlying morals. Her code has only two tenets, staying alive and staying loyal. She occupies a world where Manichaean concepts of good and evil don’t apply. But neither do winning and losing. Wraith’s world has two options: survive, or get captured by grey-robed snatchers. Nobody knows what the snatchers do with the teenagers they capture, but the trail of bodies gives a clue.

These two ethics bespeak a Nietzschean will-to-power motive directly counter to most fantasy. Though O’Connell has previously demonstrated that eternal verities exist in his universe, they don’t matter much. Humans might face everlasting judgement, but O’Connell’s fae characters, the ones who really drive this story, have their destinies written by whichever Court they’re beholden to. This results in a universe driven by one ethical imperative, familiar from the Greek tragedies Nietzsche loved: Winners win. Period.

Thus O’Connell’s characters demonstrate some of the most cold-blooded efficiency in literature since Sam Spade slept with Brigid O’Shaughnessy, then turned her over to the gallows. And oh look, one of O’Connell’s supporting characters is named Brigid. Probably a coincidence. O’Connell creates a world where we judge characters by their actions, not their intentions. Sometimes this is cold to individuals (brutal deaths are painfully common). But O’Connell’s epilogue implies that, in the end, balance obtains.

Man-Eating Banks and the Ghost of Andrew Jackson

Paul Kahan, The Bank War: Andrew Jackson, Nicholas Biddle, and the Fight for American Finance

Popular history remembers President Andrew Jackson for two things: oppressing Indians and hating corporations. Among corporations, he reserved special wrath for banks. When he made undoing the Second Bank of the United States his personal campaign, he turned American finance unprecedentedly partisan. But Bank president Nicholas Biddle didn’t go down quietly. Two gifted, headstrong leaders quickly turned the struggle for financial control into a war for America’s identity.

Historian Paul Kahan declares openly, from his introduction, that this book isn’t about the dead past. Historians have always interpreted the Bank War via current events, and following the catastrophic bank failures of 2007, this reëvaluation becomes even more important. Today’s competitions between Tea Party originalists and progressive activists play out, with eerie similarity, the rhetorical (and sometimes other) conflicts that propelled the Bank War, to general society’s great cost.

America’s first Congress chartered, and George Washington ratified, a Bank of the United States to stabilize America’s economy and print national currency. But Thomas Jefferson, that ardent anti-Federalist, hated such centralization of power. The Jeffersonian Democrats hounded the bank, and when its twenty-year charter expired, they let it die. The economic consequences were grave, and the federal government chartered the Second Bank of the United States at their first opportunity.

Andrew Jackson embodies American ideals of the self-made man. And yes, he came from nothing to achieve personal wealth and political authority. But his “self-made” wealth included a battalion of slaves, besides bounties awarded during the first Creek War. As America’s electoral process became more inclusive, Jackson parlayed these successes into his eventual Presidency. Once elected, he governed through personal bombast, and didn’t mind carrying personal grudges into office.

By contrast, Princeton-educated Nicholas Biddle was Jackson’s polar opposite. Citified, intellectual, born into pre-Revolutionary political connections, Biddle parlayed his inherited privileges into an appointment, first to the Bank’s board, and ultimately into its presidency. Biddle pursued a proficient, national, non-partisan agenda, with remarkable success. He believed the Bank did good. And when Jackson’s personal attacks turned downright irrational, Biddle resolved to save his bank by whatever means possible.

An anti-administration cartoon
showing President Jackson, who
exercised his veto authority as much as
all prior Presidents combined, as "King
Andrew the First." Click to enlarge.

Jackson’s anti-Bank policies, fueled by personal animus, quickly became his defining economic legacy, and not only his, but the Democratic Party’s for nearly a century. Kahan writes: “any history of the conflict between Biddle and Jackson over the bank’s recharter is necessarily a history of Jackson’s administration as a whole.” Considering Jackson’s unprecedentedly harsh actions against Native Americans, this statement smacks of white privilege, but its core remains solid.

Kahan describes the Bank War in language somewhere between a political thriller and a journalistic report of a total catastrophe. What starts as a war of words escalates into a competition of political blackmail, horse-trading loyalties, and utter spite. Jackson led Cabinet purges whenever he suspected disloyalty. Biddle used Bank resources to sabotage Administration policies that jeopardized the Bank. Both men believed their actions completely right and justified.

Before Jackson, the Democratic Party enjoyed near-unopposed rule. The trade-off was that it lacked rigorous policy, and basically installed government officials based on personality. Jackson transformed that: his demands for personal loyalty regarding the Bank gave the party its first-ever binding policy agenda. It also generated the Whig opposition, making American political elections competitive for the first time in two generations. Jackson’s Bank War essentially redrew America’s political allegiances.

One sees mirrors of modern personality-driven politics throughout this story. “Unburdened by self-reflection,” Kahan writes, “Jackson was incapable of viewing opposition to his policies as anything other than evidence of corruption and a personal affront that demanded an aggressive response.” Biddle proves hardly better; Kahan notes that, once committedly non-partisan (and a former Jackson voter), the Bank president eventually became as vindictive and irrationally motivated as Jackson.

History has passed its judgement on both sides. Lacking central authority to stabilize the economy, the post-Bank governments struggled with rapid fluctuations; as Catholic economist John C. Médaille notes, America’s economy between 1850 and 1940 was in recession fully forty percent of the time. Historically speaking, Jackson was wrong. His policies divided the country, undermined the economy, and commenced bitter partisan battles that ultimately culminated with the Civil War.

Yet Americans have largely forgotten Nicholas Biddle, while Andrew Jackson is on the $20 bill—ironically enough, since paper money was one reason he hated banks. Maybe we need to recall the Bank War more thoroughly. Paul Kahan is right; this story matters because it’s our story. And in today’s volatile economic conditions, the Bank War is more present, more relevant, than ever.