Christianity Archives - Page 8 of 15

Paul Simon and religion

Paul Simon will be releasing a new album in the spring of 2016.

Terrestrial friend Dan, the proprietor of the Albany Weblog, scratched his chin:

Roger, it recently occurred to me that many of Paul Simon’s songs from the Simon and Garfunkel era were very religious and strongly flavored with his Catholicism, but after he went solo that overt religious bent seems to have mostly disappeared. Usually we see religion creep in to his or her work as an artist grows older, not the other way around. What do you think?

Well, everything I know about Paul Simon suggests that he was not Catholic but, rather, a secular Jew. Indeed, in Hollowverse: “Simon was raised Jewish and his mother was devout, celebrating all of the Jewish holidays and regularly going to Synagogue. However, his father wasn’t nearly as devout as his mother.”

He followed his father’s example. Still, he refers to himself as a Jew in the title song of the album Hearts and Bones.

In How Can You Live In The Northeast, he seems cynical about ALL religion.

How can you be a Christian?
How can you be a Jew?
How can you be a Muslim, a Buddhist, a Hindu?
How can you?

Weak as the winter sun, we enter life on earth.
Names and religion comes just after date of birth.

I suspect you haven’t heard his 2011 album So Beautiful or So What, which is filled with religious, and even specifically Christian references. Christianity Today put it on its Best Album list. In this PBS interview from early 2012, Simon said, “For somebody who’s not a religious person, God comes up a lot in my songs.”

The question got me thinking about Paul Simon and religion more generally. One’s music/art can surely be shaped by the majority culture. Here’s a list, obviously incomplete; links to the titles go to the lyrics.

Simon & Garfunkel

Go Tell It On The Mountain from Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M. (1964) – a cover of a traditional song
LISTEN here or here

Blessed from Sounds of Silence (1966) – a variation on the Beatitudes
LISTEN here or here

Bridge Over Troubled Water, the title track (1970) – “When you’re weary, feeling small…”
LISTEN here or here

Solo Paul Simon

Have A Good Time from Still Crazy After All These Years (1975) – more cheeky with the intentional poor English: “God bless the goods we was given…”
LISTEN here or here

Slip Slidin’ Away (1977) – “God only knows, God makes his plan. The information’s unavailable To the mortal man.”
LISTEN here or here

Spirit Voices from The Rhythm of the Saints (1990) -“And all of these spirit voices Sing rainwater, sea water. River water, holy water. Wrap this child in mercy – heal her. Heaven’s only daughter. All of these spirit voices rule the night.”
LISTEN here or here

Wartime Prayers from Surprise, 2006- “But when the wounds are deep enough And it’s all that we can bear We wrap ourselves in prayer.”
LISTEN here or here

How Can You Live In The Northeast from Surprise, 2006
LISTEN here or here

These all from So Beautiful, or So What (2011)

Getting Ready For Christmas Day – “Ready, getting ready, For the power and the glory and the story of the Christmas Day.”
LISTEN here or here

The Afterlife – “After you climb up the ladder of time The Lord God is near Face-to-face in the vastness of space”
LISTEN here or here

Love Is Eternal Sacred Light – “Evil is darkness, sight without sight A demon that feeds on the mind.”
LISTEN here or here

Paul Simon will be releasing a new album in the spring of 2016.

Traipsing thru the theological wilderness

I mean chair-throwing disdain, and I had to referee at least a couple times.

This is a continuation of my own theological wilderness journey, which I wrote about here.

After I broke up with the Okie, I dropped out of college in December 1974 and lived for a semester in Binghamton, which I’ve mentioned, especially how my mom saved me from afar. I was a handful of blocks from the church I grew up in, yet I know I didn’t go there in the winter, which could have at least been a break from my frozen state.

But I must have gone at least once after I was in Boys in the Band in June 1975, a play about gay life. I recall being in the parsonage next door when the male minister had expressed some possible romantic interest in me. It was not upsetting, but it was surprising; I heard much later that he traveled 90 miles, to Syracuse, to meet up with potential connections.

New Paltz

Returning to college in New Paltz, I lived in a coffee house run by the college chaplain, Paul Walley, who had helped me to drop out without academic penalty. I lived there with two guys, both named Mike. Our rotating job was every Saturday night, to make the mulled cider and host folks who would sing there, and clean up before and after.

I remember only three things about that time. One was an unrequited love. Well, that was probably overstated, since she probably didn’t even know. I do recall a bunch of us singing Take Me To The Limit, and I must have had a drink or two because I could hit the upper harmony.

One of the Mikes, the dark-haired one, performed the 18-minute Alice’s Restaurant Massacree at the coffeehouse. Oh, and Mike and Mike HATED each other, for reasons I didn’t understand, with a great passion. I mean chair-throwing disdain, and I had to referee at least a couple of times, and finally had to get Rev. Walley to intercede.

After finishing college in May of 1976, I was depressed and directionless. I recall opening the passenger-side door of a friend’s car, while it was traveling 20 mph, threatening to exit the vehicle, though I did not.

1977 – the year of my discontent

Eventually, I found my way to my parents’ sofa in Charlotte, NC in early 1977. If they went to church, I did too, to one of the AME Zion churches, the same denomination I used to attend back in Binghamton. It was “nice,” But it was all rather perfunctory. I knew all the words by heart, but they had ceased to MEAN very much.

Though, in fact, there was a time that the parents were doing flea markets a lot and did not go to church much, which was fine by me. I didn’t much enjoy the flea market, because some of the competing vendors seemed to take an instant dislike for me because I used words with more than two syllables.

By the summer, I had made my way north, hitchhiking from Charlotte to Binghamton, where I stayed briefly. Then I crashed on the sofa of my sister Leslie and her then-husband Eric in Jackson Heights, Queens, New York City. Eric had a new agey quasi-theology that was too fuzzy for me.

My part-time job in Manhattan, somewhere in the 50s, was as a telemarketer, selling TV Guides to former subscribers, and the annual version of the Encyclopedia Americana, or was it Brittanica, to those who already owned sets. I worked 6 pm until midnight, four or five nights a week, calling the west coast in the later hours.

I had a LOT of time on my hands during the day, especially since my sister was modeling in Boston quite often. I’d take the subway, well, everywhere it’d go, and I became rather expert at it in the three or four months I lived there.

One day, somewhere near Macy’s, on 34th Street in Manhattan, some waifish blonde young woman started talking to me about something – I didn’t catch on right away, as she was rather cute – and did I want to come up to their house in the Bronx and learn more?

Very soon thereafter, I traipsed up to the Bronx building, which looked more like a residence. It was the local headquarters for the Unification Church, known derisively as the Moonies, after its founder, the Reverend Sun Myung Moon, who had founded the denomination in Korea in 1954. A handful of non-followers were there with the believers, and we’d always have something to eat, as we engaged in rather interesting philosophical discussions about life’s meaning.

Pretty much from the second visit on, the Moonies including the aforementioned blonde woman, wanted me to come up to their place upstate, though they never specified where it was. I’m now assuming they meant the Unification Theological Seminary, in Barrytown, Dutchess County, NY. I was always “too busy,” but the truth was that I was nervous about the religion’s cult image, and charges of brainwashing. When I moved out of my sister’s place in September, the flirtation with the Moonies ended.

Next time: what SHOULD have been the most significant religious event in my life.

N is for Nonviolence: Walter Wink

Imagine, then, the soldier’s surprise when, at the next mile marker, he reluctantly reaches to assume his pack, and the civilian says, “Oh, no, let me carry it another mile.”

Back in 2002, the late theologian Walter Wink (d. 2012) ran a workshop at my current church about “militant nonviolence.” “The idea, he said, was not to be a doormat to aggressors but to turn their arrogance against them. He cited Jesus’ advice: ‘If anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also.'” But what does that look like?

You should read JESUS’ THIRD WAY, excerpted from Wink’s 1998 book The Powers that Be: Theology for a New Millennium. It explains that when one has received a backhand slap, it’s done to insult, humiliate, degrade. “The left cheek now offers a perfect target for a blow with the right fist; but only equals fought with fists, as we know from Jewish sources, and the last thing the master wishes to do is to establish this underling’s equality.”

My favorite example, though involved “If anyone forces you to go one mile, go also the second mile.” (Matthew 5:41).

It is drawn from the relatively enlightened practice of limiting to a single mile the amount of forced or impressed labor that Roman soldiers could levy on subject peoples… Whoever was found on the street could be coerced into service… The majority of the rank and file… had to depend on impressed civilians.

What we have overlooked in this passage is the fact that carrying the pack a second mile is an infraction of military code… The centurion… might fine the offending soldier, flog him, put him on a ration of barley instead of wheat, make him camp outside the fortifications, force him to stand all day before the general’s tent…

It is in this context of Roman military occupation that Jesus speaks. He does not counsel revolt. One does not “befriend” the soldier, draw him aside and drive a knife into his ribs. Jesus was surely aware of the futility of armed insurrection against Roman imperial might…

But why carry the soldier’s pack a second mile?… The question here… is how the oppressed can recover the initiative and assert their human dignity in a situation that cannot for the time being be changed. The rules are Caesar’s, but how one responds to the rules is God’s, and Caesar has no power over that.

Imagine, then, the soldier’s surprise when, at the next mile marker, he reluctantly reaches to assume his pack, and the civilian says, “Oh, no, let me carry it another mile.” Why would he want to do that? What is he up to? Normally, soldiers have to coerce people to carry their packs, but this Jew does so cheerfully, and will not stop. Is this a provocation? Is he insulting the legionnaire’s strength? Being kind? Trying to get him disciplined for seeming to violate the rules of impressment? Will this civilian file a complaint? Create trouble?

From a situation of servile impressment, the oppressed have once more seized the initiative. They have taken back the power of choice. They have thrown the soldier off balance by depriving him of the predictability of his victim’s response. He has never dealt with such a problem before. Now he must make a decision for which nothing in his previous experience has prepared him. If he has enjoyed feeling superior to the vanquished, he will not enjoy it today. Imagine a Roman infantryman pleading with a Jew to give back his pack! The humor of this scene may have escaped us, but it could scarcely have been lost on Jesus’ hearers, who must have been delighted at the prospect of thus discomfiting their oppressors.

Nonviolent direct action was the strategy of Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. King outlined four principles of action:
1) Define your objectives.
2) Be honest and listen well.
3) Love your enemies.
4) Give your opponents a way out.

Wink specifically points to King’s fourth point: “Jesus did not advocate non-violence merely as a technique for outwitting the enemy, but as a just means of opposing the enemy in such a way as to hold open the possibility of the enemy’s becoming just as well. Both sides must win. We are summoned to pray for our enemies’ transformation, and to respond to ill-treatment with a love that not only is godly but also, I am convinced, can only be found in God.”

Nonviolent direct action is Jesus’ third way.

ABC Wednesday – Round 17

Christianity and me, Part 1: Losing My Religion

By the time I got to 10th grade, I had started carrying around my Bible.

Arnoldo Romero is one of the regular ABC Wednesday participants. On his E is for Ecclesiastical post, he talked about his faith journey. Hey, he’s a PK, or preacher’s kid; I know a few of those.

He wrote, “I have even considered going into the ministry at a couple of points throughout my lifetime.” I responded, “When I was 12, most people thought I would become a minister, and I tended to agree,” to which Arnoldo responded, “I’d love to learn more about your spiritual journey and what led you to have a change of heart about going into the ministry sometime.” My answer: “That’s going to take a blog post. Or two.”

Or more, because, somewhere tied in there, I need to respond to an earlier question from Arthur – no, I haven’t forgotten – about the author Ta-Nehisi Coates, and specifically his atheism.

Let’s start at the very beginning. I was raised in the church, specifically Trinity AME Zion Church in Binghamton, NY. AME stands for African Methodist Episcopal. Like the AME Church, founded a decade before in Philadelphia, the AMEZ church was founded as a result of racial prejudice on the part of the M. E. (white) church, this time in New York City, “licensed a number of colored men to preach, but prohibited them from preaching even to their own brethren, except occasionally, and never among the whites.”

I was baptized when I was five months old. My paternal grandmother, Agatha Green (nee Walker) was one of my Sunday school teachers. The junior choir, under the direction of Fred Goodall, who was there for decades, included both my sister Leslie and me.

When I was nine, I was “saved.” I was at someone’s house on Oak Street, about a half a block from my church, but I wasn’t with folks affiliated with my church, and in fact, I’m not remembering whose house it was at all.

What I do recall was watching a Billy Graham crusade one afternoon or early evening on television. The evangelist Graham had a regular column in one of the Binghamton newspapers at the time. On the TV, he did his usual altar call, where he asks if we in the audience, as well as those gathered wherever he was, wanted to accept the saving grace of Jesus Christ. It sounded good to me. So I said yes.

The secretary to the principal of my school, Daniel S. Dickinson, was named Patricia J. Gritman. Though I don’t remember the process, at some point, Pat asked if I wanted to go to a Bible study at her house on Front Street, a half dozen blocks from where I lived. I attended Friday Night Bible Club for at least five years, as did Leslie. We memorized Bible verses, some of which I STILL know; sang songs; and, according to Leslie, ate a lot.

I was still attending Sunday school at my church, As I got a bit older, my father, Les Green, led a group of kids, including Leslie, our cousin Debbie and me, in a group called the MAZET singers, MAZET being an anagram of our church’s acronym.

At school, I tried not to lord my religion over others, but issues came up. For instance, the vast majority of my classmates found a way to cheat on some written tests in biology, but I was unwilling to do so, to the detriment of my grade.

By the time I got to 10th grade, I had started carrying around my Bible. I didn’t discuss the Book unless asked, but it was my statement of faith.

If someone were to ask me what I was going to be in this period, I probably would have said “a minister.” I got the feeling that others in my church thought so. I was becoming familiar with Scripture, and I was an active church participant, reasonably intelligent, and very well-behaved.

Around that period, I started attending another church on Sunday evenings, Primitive Methodist Church in Johnson City, a primarily white church. Usually, I’d walk about 0.6 mile to my friend Bob’s house, then we’d walk over 2.5 miles to the service; sometimes, we’d walk back, too. This was a more, for lack of a better word, fundamentalist POV.

A funny thing happened, though. As I got even more knowledgeable about the Bible, I found it more confusing, at least if one were supposed to take it all literally, as opposed to reading parts of it as allegory. Part of the problem was sheer mechanics. Genesis 1’s and Genesis 2’s creation stories deviate from each other. If Adam and Eve were literally the first people, who did Cain and Seth have children with?

More problematic was the notion that we American Christians had to send missionaries all over the world to save souls, lest they all go to hell. The narrative was that some person, even a child, in India who wasn’t even aware of Jesus Christ was sentenced to eternal damnation? I had a great big problem with a loving Jesus being part of that, but I received no satisfactory answer. There were other issues, too, but that was the big one, presumably tied to John 14:6.

Then, I started poking at even the most prosaic issues that Christians I had associated with had been telling me. Some thought going to the movies was sinful, or maybe that Disney movies were OK. Playing cards were wrong, even though my Sunday school-teaching grandmother taught me how to play canasta. I never much bought into these minor issues, but they made me much more cynical about the whole faith thing.

Little by little, doubt crept into my previous impenetrable fortress of faith. In retrospect, I find it interesting that I never made any active attempt to find a church when I went away to college in New Paltz, even though there were at least three within walking distance.

(To be continued, at some point.)
***
Some R.E.M. song.

B is for The Disputation of Barcelona

“The Jews were forced to listen to the sermons preached by the Dominican friars. “

Here’s something I’ve only known about for a few weeks.

“The Disputation of Barcelona (July 20–24, 1263) was a formal ordered medieval debate between representatives of Christianity and Judaism regarding whether or not Jesus was the Messiah.” Apparently, these disputations, over matters of faith, and other important topics, took place from time to time.

“Martin Luther opened the Protestant Reformation by demanding a disputation upon his 95 theses, 31 October 1517. Although presented as a call to an ordinary scholastic dispute, the oral debate never occurred.”

The Barcelona disputation “was held at the royal palace of King James I of Aragon in the presence of the King, his court, and many prominent ecclesiastical dignitaries and knights, between Dominican Friar Pablo Christiani, a convert from Judaism to Christianity, and Rabbi Nahmanides (Ramban), a leading medieval Jewish scholar, philosopher, physician, kabbalist, and biblical commentator.

“During the Middle Ages, there were numerous ordered disputations between Christians and Jews. They were not free and authentic debates (like modern ones), but were mere attempts by Christians to force conversion on the Jews. They were connected with burnings of the Talmud at the stake and violence against Jews. The Disputation of Barcelona was unique, in that it was the only occasion on which the Jewish representative was allowed to speak freely.”

So it sounded like a respite from the general persecution of the Jews on religious grounds, and the rigging of the system. However, the aftermath, according to the Jewish Virtual Library:

The [Barcelona] disputation… prompted the Dominican Raymond Martini to devise a better method of providing christological interpretations to the aggadah. In 1280 Martini concluded his book Pugio Fidei (Paris, 1651), and henceforward it was used indiscriminately by every Christian controversialist wishing to invalidate Judaism.

The king cooperated with missionary activities throughout the realm and the Jews were forced to listen to the sermons preached by the Dominican friars. An order was issued by the latter between August 26 and 29 directing the Jews to erase from their copies of the Talmud any passages vilifying Jesus and Mary. Failure to do so was punishable by a fine, and books which had not been censored as required would be burned…

This was, functionally, a less bloody event of the centuries-long Inquisition, “one of the great blights on the history of Christianity.”

And what, you may reasonably ask, piqued my interest in this arcane topic? It was the death of the actor Christopher Lee at the age of 93 in early June 2015. A Facebook friend posted a reference to The Disputation, a 1986 TV movie starring Lee as King James of Aragon.

Better still, you can watch the hour-long drama here or here.

ABC Wednesday – Round 17