The Pulpit and the Voting Booth

Amy E. Black (editor), Five Views on the Church and Politics

Like it or not, political Christianity is a looming force in American and International politics today. Progressives like Niebuhr and King, and conservatives like Falwell and Huckabee, have drawn inspiration from deeply seated religious beliefs. But many Bible-believing Christians probably don't realize their church traditions have historical political positions. Even fewer probably realize how solemnly take their commitment to larger society.

Wheaton College poli-sci professor Amy E. Black compiles opinions from scholars representing five Christian traditions: Anabaptist, Lutheran, Black Church, Reformed (Calvinist), and Catholic. All five contributors are themselves professors, representing departments of Philosophy, Political Science, and Theology, from schools both religious and secular. All specialise in the highly controversial intersection between private spirituality and public ethics in the political realm. These are serious authors on serious topics.

These authors write for dedicated readers, in somber, exhaustively documented prose. Though not so opaque that only university scholars could read them, these authors do expect literate Christian audiences ready to think deeply and question well: pastors, congregations, activists, and the intellectually ambitious. It has distinct foundational principles (Christian validity, for instance, isn't up for debate), but the ramifications of those foundations get tested from multiple scholarly and spiritual angles.

Each chapter runs approximately forty pages, including the authors' respective arguments, followed by brief responses from the other four authors. This direct debate format gives readers the opportunity to evaluate the different traditions, from insider and outsider perspectives. Because too many Christians are unfamiliar with their own churches' social issues positions, much less any others, this wealth of information let's engaged believers test their beliefs against diverse and conflicting views.

The various opinions about the church's relationship to politics reflect the traditions' historical relationships with power. The Anabaptist and Black Church traditions arose in legal persecution, and distrust power-- though Anabaptists remain committedly apolitical, while the Black Church has a dedicated activist history. Lutheran and Reformed churches originated from political turmoil, and made strategic alliances with kings. And the Catholic chapter bespeaks a strong Counter-Reformation character.

Critical readers will find plenty to agree with, and plenty to dispute, in every chapter. As a long-term Lutheran, I found Robert Benne's "Lutheran" chapter particularly frustrating, because he doesn't acknowledge his own blinders. Writing from a Missouri Synod angle, his positions are, to non-aligned eyes, downright reactionary. He mocks the ELCA position as governed by partisan alliances, but seems unaware how often he recites Reaganite politics as religious interpretation.

But we could level similar charges against almost every chapter. Of the five traditions represented, only one, the Catholic tradition, is organizationally unified. The others represent umbrella categories, and as such must treat in broad generalization. Though dense and scholarly, this book isn't, probably cannot be, truly exhaustive. Individual authors don't offer lists of recommended further reading, but you could make shopping lists of their pretty thorough source notes.

It's particularly noteworthy how no authors much quote their religious traditions' founders. The Anabaptist author, Thomas W. Heilke, shows greatest influence from John Howard Yoder, for instance, and the Calvinist author, James KA Smith, substantially cites Abraham Kuyper. (Lutheran author Robert Bennett, has no preponderant source.) The Catholic and Black Church authors, lacking single founders, show more inclusive influence, though unsurprisingly, Thomas Aquinas looms large in Catholic politics.

I could wish one source played more into the authors' reasoning: none much cites Scripture. I understand that Christians of good will and solemn faith have, throughout history, sometimes twisted Scripture to serve ungodly ends, so highlighting an interpretive lens maybe matters more right here. But if Scripture doesn't form the foundation of Christians' distinct political views, we're no different than the countless noisy voices cluttering modern political debate.

For the most part, the authors seldom take sides in real debates. This book focuses on political thought and justification, not outcomes. Not only are churches forbidden by law to make electoral endorsements, but most mainline churches dislike giving adherents marching orders, at least post-Reformation. (This book pointedly isn't for passive people or Jim Jones-style cults.) Some issues, particularly care for the poor, do recur. Dogma, however, does not.

Late in this book, J. Brian Benestad writes: "What the law could and should achieve in a liberal society will always be a subject for debate, in which Catholics have the right and duty to participate." Substitute "Christians" for "Catholics," and you have our thesis. Disparate viewpoints contribute details: from within or without? Through activism or example? As politicians or the people? The debate is as worthy as any single answer.

David Mamet's Lost Classic, Found

1001 Books To Read Before Your Kindle Battery Dies, Part 68
David Mamet, adapted by Richard Bean, House of Games

Doctor Margaret Ford, a respected university psychologist, has recently published a book on compulsive behavior, making her clinical practice suddenly very valuable. One of her clients, a compulsive gambler named Billy, threatens suicide over an unpayable marker. Dr. Ford follows Billy’s trail into a sweltering den of sin called the House of Games, and accidentally joins a gang of committed grifters, led by the romantically dangerous “Mike.”

The original 1987 film House of Games marked the film directing debut of legendary Chicago theatre auteur David Mamet. It also cemented his reputation as America’s contemporary master of confidence games and baroque conspiracies. The movie’s robust cast and roaming locations probably reflect a director unsure whether he’d ever get a second bite of the apple, but Richard Bean’s 2010 stage adaptation has a small cast and intimate two-set design.

Early scenes mirror Mamet’s original screen images: Dr. Ford in her office, then into the gambling den, where she pierces a penny-ante swindle. But from there, Bean’s adaptation abandons Mamet’s events, while maintaining his “long con” themes. Where Mamet spends many long scenes on Mike giving Ford a walking tour of the underworld, Bean has Mike invite her into his world. Before long, she thinks she’s become one of them.

Bean divides the play into ten scenes—following common British theatre conventions today (this play debuted at London’s Almeida Theatre), act breaks are variable for a particular theatre’s needs. The transition between Margaret’s clean, elevated, sunlit clinic, and Mike’s sordid netherworld, plays up the way she believes she can walk between settings. She could stop events whenever she wants. She’s just become addicted to class tourism.

Mamet, in writing his movie, avoided getting too specific about Dr. Ford’s psychological understandings. Bean prefers to make use of the science. As Margaret discovers the irrational motivators which make long cons possible, motivators which the grifters understand through experience and keen observation, she feels compelled to hang Latinate terminology on it. The need to intellectualize what others just do, illuminates themes Mamet barely, fleetingly acknowledged.

David Mamet

This also goes toward the re-staging of Mamet’s original story. Bean pretty accurately manages to recreate the speech rhythms which made Mamet famous (critics praise Mamet’s fragmentary dialogue as “realistic,” but many theatre conservatories have dedicated courses in acting Mamet, because he’s so difficult). While the grifters speak the disconnected “street English” Margaret’s cultural prejudices demand, she uses complete sentences, unable to digest dangerous ideas apart from grammar.

That makes Margaret’s ultimate resolution of Mike’s betrayal more satisfying than the original movie. If you haven’t seen it, avert your eyes now: in the movie, Margaret uses what Mike taught her to separate him from his companions, shoot him, and get away scot-free. Satisfying, but blunt. Not here. This Margaret leaves Mike alive to face the humiliation of knowing he got out-gamed by what should’ve been a routine mark.

Many David Mamet plays, and more recently his movies, focus on themes of class tourism. This probably reflects internalized guilt: born to middle-class Chicago Jewish comfort, Mamet nevertheless embraced a youthful fondness for risk-taking. He made and lost stacks of cash playing poker, money he could afford to gamble with in ways his fellow players often couldn’t. Stories like this suggest struggles, still unresolved, with petit-bourgeois white contrition.

The greater intimacy inherent in Bean’s adaptation, however, actually changes Mamet’s character interpretations. Margaret’s journey into crime becomes something different, leading to a different payoff: rather than seeking vengeance, she finds ways to turn the tables by revealing hidden truths. By the play’s conclusion, her identity has truly, irrevocably, transformed. Mamet equivocates this point, but Bean wholly declares you can’t linger in the underground without getting some on you.

In Bean’s rendering, this story isn’t about thrill-seeking and guilt. It’s about how humans exist in constant community, taking pieces of our identity from one another. It’s about how we rely upon trust to make even the most basic arrangements, and how even the most inveterate liars need to trust one another, at least sometimes. And it’s about how, when we let others inside our defenses, they never truly leave.

It takes brass to change David Mamet. As one of American theatre’s few artists who actually makes a living writing, Mamet has influence few living craftsmen share. Yet in translating Mamet’s immense, geographically sprawling story to stage confines, Bean picks out psychological implications even Mamet possibly missed. The movie and the play make interesting companion pieces. And Mamet makes audiences question who we think we are.

Are (Were) Christian Schools Racist?

Liberty University, Jerry Falwell's bastion of American conservative intelligentsia

An article circulated furiously on social media this week explaining the roots of the organized Christian Right, which became an influential American voting bloc in the late 1970s. The original article, published on Politico, was entitled “The Real Origins of the Religious Right.” But more readers probably read the “Reader’s Digest version,” published on Slate, entitled “It Wasn’t Abortion That Formed the Religious Right. It Was Support for Segregation.”

The Slate title pretty accurately captures the thesis of both articles. But the Politico original is pretty sparsely sourced. Religious conservatives will find the article easy to dismiss, while those who dislike the Religious Right’s cultural influence will celebrate. Therefore we must beg the question: should we take this vituperation seriously? Short answer: Yes. Long answer: How much time do you have? Because the facts require nuance and patience.

Both articles focus on how the IRS rescinded Bob Jones University’s tax-exempt status for maintaining discriminatory admissions policy. BJU didn’t admit black students until 1971, upheld basic tokenism until 1975, and didn’t rescind policies against interracial dating until media outrage in 2000. Even name-checking BJU basically guarantees to polarize discussions, something its administration embraces with pride. But centrist Catholic author Michael Sean Winters suggests a very different source.

Winters, in his book God's Right Hand, barely mentions BJU. Not unfairly, either: outside religious-political discussions, BJU, an unaccredited sectarian school, has no national profile. Much more emphasis falls on Jerry Falwell, Thomas Road Baptist Church, and Liberty University. Falwell managed to build one of America’s first vertically integrated religious empires, with not only a coast-to-coast multimedia presence, but a completely intact educational ladder from pre-K to post-graduate.

Falwell wasn’t himself racist. He even drew some congregational ire, in semi-rural Virginia, by hiring an Indonesian music minister. He openly embraced fellow Christian leaders of various racial and doctrinal backgrounds. This probably reflected his status as an adult Christian convert: not raised amid proto-Evangelical culture, he never internalized the fortress mentality. This probably explains both his lasting influence, and his success building an innovative ministry.

Jerry Falwell

However, Winters identifies a constellation of influences that motivated the previously apolitical Falwell to co-found the Moral Majority, the first monolithic conservative Christian organization. Before Falwell, Christians weren’t statistically likely to favor one political party over another. Remember, a Democrat, Jimmy Carter, moved the terms “Evangelical” and “Born Again” into America’s lexicon. But Christians quickly turned against Carter because he favored law over religion in governance.

The 1970s saw many changes in American governance that angered moral conservatives like Falwell. The first gay rights initiatives got passed. The school integration and mandatory busing demanded by the Brown v. BOE judgement came into maturity. Lopsided poverty protection problems that basically transferred money to minorities in stacks garnered attention, electrified by the trial of Linda Taylor, the original "Welfare Queen." Ideological conservatives had legitimate grievances in that decade.

For Falwell and others, however, the crowning indignity came in 1978. The government floated a regulation targeted specifically at Evangelical Christians. Quoting Winters:

The final straw that broke the back of evangelical isolation was a 1978 proposal from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to require Christian schools that had no black students to prove the segregation was not a result of their conscious efforts.

This passage includes three important nuggets. First, it required Christian organizations to prove a negative. It’s possible to demonstrate somebody is racist. But proving somebody isn’t? How does one accomplish that? Second, the IRS proposal, which was never instituted or enforced, clearly uses regulation to overreach the law. This remains a common conservative grievance; reading Winters, it’s impossible to miss that conservatives essentially keep re-fighting the battles of 1978.

Third, note the buried term: “evangelical isolation.” Evangelical conservatives like Falwell, whose Thomas Road Baptist Church was located in a primarily white area, didn’t necessarily intend to exclude Blacks. Rather, they meant to exclude modernity. Following the PR humiliation of the Scopes “Monkey Trial,” Evangelical conservatives attempted to build their own proprietary society, parallel to the mainstream. Even today, Liberty University remains squishy on teaching evolution, even to future biology teachers.

The organized Christian Right originated not from an attempt to bust racism, but from an attempt to drag Evangelicals, kicking and screaming, into modernity. That included racial issues; and while most Evangelical leaders will disavow Apartheid motivations, dog whistle language still occasionally appears. But it’s a mistake to assume Evangelicals are unilaterally racist. They have a wide range of opinions. They just don’t want any part of your modern world.

The Great Lost Pimp Strut of 1986

Iceberg Slim, Shetani's Sister

LAPD vice detective Russell Rucker and Manhattan pimp Master Shetani are almost identical personalities. Addicted to control, both will ignore any rule to maintain their illusions of autonomy. When Master Shetani decides to relocate his stable to sunny Shakey Town, he places two alpha males on an inevitable collision course. California's glamorous street subculture will never be the same.

Iceberg Slim, the often forgotten godfather of hip-hop, originally wrote this manuscript in 1986, then stuck it in a bottom drawer and died with it unpublished. Biographer Justin Gifford, in his introduction, intimates Slim did this to punish his publisher, who failed to pay him royalties. But elsewhere, Gifford credits Slim's first wife as unbilled co-author of his best work, and that marriage ended in 1978. I suggest Slim knew this novel didn't meet the standards of his jive-era classics.

Master Shetani has grown rich enough running girls to own real estate off pre-gentrification Times Square. He controls his stable with judicious applications of heroin and violence. But he's grown hardened, and hates himself, lashing out for superficial offenses. California offers opportunities for change, especially when his bottom woman gets a coke-addled vice cop in her pocket. Shetani sets out to reinvent himself.

Detective Rucker, a fiftyish widower, stopped drinking to appease his sweetheart. But he's clearly on a dry drunk, using shows of force to silence his demons, hiding from consequences behind his badge. When he kills a knife-wielding pimp, he handles his regret by diving into a bottle. Turns out, the late Big Cat was Master Shetani's boyhood friend. Now two strong-willed antiheroes have a debt of honor to pay one another.

This novel has three core problems. First is Slim's rudimentary grammar. Though Slim's classics, published from 1967 to 1978, impressed audiences with their mastery of Black street English (some of which Slim probably invented), this prose feels less "street," more "hasty." His strictly subject-object sentences and scanty vocabulary leave me feeling I'm reading a first draft the author never re-read after writing it in one sitting.

Iceberg Slim

Second, Slim writes about sex in very ham-handed language. In a novel about a pimp, we expect copious raunchy content; but Slim writes with the kind of sloppy, overblown terminology I remember from 8th-grade locker room bull sessions. He sounds like a blustering teenager trying to impress underclassmen with his sexual war stories, not a grown man who actually served in the trenches, as both Slim and his characters putatively are.

Third, and most importantly, he doesn't treat his characters equally. Slim, who served a hitch in Leavenworth for pimping, invests more time, ink, and psychological insight into Master Shetani than Detective Rucker. Even Rucker's right-hand man gets page space, and character development, Rucker never gets, possibly because he's nakedly corrupt scum. A character driven to do right actions for wrong reasons doesn't merit Slim's attention.

Not that Slim glamorizes the pimp lifestyle. Slim spent his later years urging pimps to quit the life (his devotion to the girls was somewhat squishier). Accordingly, he paints Master Shetani as morally destitute, a self-hating monstrosity who humiliates women to silence his own inner monologue. He snags a new girl who reminds him of the beloved sister he lost, and shows glimmers of humanity. So naturally he turns her out.

But Slim just doesn't invest in other characters the same way. Russell Rucker stays mostly a cipher throughout the book, a wonderful example of unrealized potential. Maybe that's because Slim knew pimps better than cops, but serious authors overcome knowledge gaps. He could've contacted cops personally for research purposes (which I say, knowing a convicted Black pimp questioning police in 1986 would've ended up face-down on the linoleum).

Knowing what I know now about addiction, Iceberg Slim's career reads like a lifelong quest to stifle childhood demons. Growing up fatherless and geographically unmoored, he spent adulthood struggling against self-doubt. Several characters in this book recount bitter memories of abusive, judgmental mothers, a useful clue. First by dominating women, then by shaming others for doing likewise, Slim probably tried to exert power he'd lost over his life.

Had he published this book during his lifetime, a seasoned editor could've helped Slim refine it into a mature, dangerous investigation of themes running his own life. But right now it reads like an unedited draft, a seed of raw potential begging an experienced gardener's nurturance. As an idea, this is a great book. But as a published novel, it's mainly a curiosity for Slim's most dedicated fans.

Los Angeles By Firelight

1001 Movies To Watch Before Your Netflix Subscription Dies, Part Five
Bill Duke (director), Deep Cover

Russell Stevens, a Cincinnati uniformed patrol cop on a dead-end career track, gets conscripted by the feds to bust a powerful drug ring controlling central Los Angeles. Given a new identity as cocaine pusher John Hull, Stevens vanishes into his duty, sleeping rough, building networks, and advancing rapidly. But he quickly discovers himself becoming the monster he promised his junkie father he’d never be. Neither the law nor the criminal underworld will let him leave.

Released under two weeks before the 1992 Los Angeles Riots, this film concisely captures the simmering cauldron of issues that fueled that violence: racial stratification, ham-fisted street policing in the late Reagan-Bush years, drug turf wars which peaked that year, and fears that the government used drugs to control poor blacks. Though critically revered, the movie barely broke even, “too black” for mainstream distributors. Yet its relevance is urgent in today’s “Black Lives Matter” environment.

Laurence Fishburne plays Stevens, in his last role billed under his former child actor moniker of “Larry” Fishburne. In his run up LaLa-Land’s drug culture, he finds a quick ally in David Jason (Jeff Goldblum), a Jewish lawyer whose connections, and eagerness for street cred, make him an easy mark. Jason is the most revolting form of class tourist, sleeping with black women, appropriating black cultural signifiers, then sleeping soundly in his exclusive gated community.

Stevens, as Hull, and Jason find themselves wedged between conflicting forces. From beneath, they’re owned by Colombian kleptocrat Anton Gallegos, who considers his pushers interchangeable cannon fodder. From above, LAPD vice detective Taft (Clarence Williams III, TV’s The Mod Squad) considers Hull a kindred spirit. He quotes the Bible and attempts to save Hull, but finds himself hamstrung by laws, public scrutiny, and his manifestly corrupt partner. Seasoned movie audiences know somebody’s going to die.

The drug lifestyle proves powerfully seductive to Stevens. Starting out his undercover role in cargo pants and a wife-beater, he graduates to button-down shirts, before earning his own hand-tailored suits. But he staunchly resists sampling his own product, and won’t even drink alcohol, for no other reason than that he promised his dying father. Perhaps he should; it would calm his objectless rage and self-loathing. Twelve-step devotees will recognize Stevens as a classic dry drunk.

This movie is redolent of hip-hop culture, which in 1992 was just bursting into the American mainstream. The movie’s soundtrack features Los Angeles hip-hop stalwart Dr. Dre, and one of the first recording credits for Dre’s promising young apprentice, Snoop Doggy Dogg (still billed thusly). Stevens quotes Iceberg Slim while capping a rival dealer in a dance club restroom. The rival wears parachute pants and a high-top fade, signalling the brutal death of Eighties idealism.

Jeff Goldblum (left) and "Larry" Fishburne, approaching the film's final confrontation

Most tellingly, Stevens’ DEA handler Carver (Charles Martin Smith, American Graffiti) encourages this slide into profligacy. Operating a massive sting on shoestring budgets, Carver urges Stevens to push product, live large, and kill. He seems eerily well-informed, calling himself “God,” but lacks money to enforce his divine dictates. At key moments, Carver also proves vulnerable to top-down political pressure, turning against the operative he created in exactly the way Stevens despises from his Colombian contacts.

While Stevens increasingly vanishes into his John Hull role, David Jason follows the opposite track. Starting off nebbishy in his slim-fit courtroom suits, squeamish to watch his pusher superiors enforce street ethics with terminal force, he gradually becomes everything Stevens leaves behind. He starts using guns as tools of street politics, and wears tight t-shirts showcasing his massively hulked-out figure. By the climactic confrontation, he evolves into about the scariest white nerd in film history.

The story unfolds in different directions simultaneously. “John Hull” sells drugs to Shakey Town’s lowest black denizens, trembling human refuse desperate for anything to kill the pain. But the corruption his investigation uncovers reaches the very top, far above DEA machinations or political oversight. Stevens performs an elaborate political pas-de-deux, appeasing two enemies while keeping his conscience clean. He embodies the then-growing African American fear, that the state was using crack to keep Blacks poor.

Into the 1990s, Laurence Fishburne played increasingly sententious Magic Negro roles, culminating in Morpheus, among the most frustratingly Confucian characters ever played onscreen. But here, at the commencement of his mature career, Fishburne plays something altogether different. Rage and desperation battle beneath his tightly controlled exterior, an explosion waiting to happen. Sorta like situations happening today. A quarter century on, this story looks frighteningly familiar. Like all great literature, this movie is ultimately about us.