Selling Salvation

This article is a policy statement from the Church of the Orange Sky. The views expressed here do not necessarily represent Capitalist Jesus™ in his new SUV.

Several days ago I invented a fantastic solution to the problem of gay marriage in Canada, at least for people who favour small government solutions whenever feasible. As a lapsed socialist and current anarchist, I thought it was a brilliant idea, and I'm pleased to announce it has passed peer review in British Columbia and Ontario. However, the grand unveiling will have to wait a little while, for the anniversary of the last gay marriage vote in Canada. (For those counting, that was the third vote in the third Parliament, tabled by the third Prime Minister. It's oddly trinitarian.)

After the 2005 vote under Martin, back when I was still writing at Notes from the Abattoir, I predicted that we would not see a sustained campaign from the religious or secular right now that gay marriage had been effectively legalized. This was for several reasons: it's a lot more difficult to motivate support to overturn a law than to prevent one from being passed; a lot of people probably came to realize that the sky has not fallen; and, let's face it, the contemporary Western church is really not very good at real political opposition. Maybe that's for the best, since the church should never really be a political movement anyways. The church isn't the only one to fall prey to this problem; a lot of protests don't last long once the issue is cemented into law and fails to provoke mass civil disobedience.

I did a little reading on the Web and confirmed that many of the marriage-defence sites seem to have started to abandon the issue; DefendMarriage.ca has not moved on from its 2006 petition campaign yet (and in fact has lost its separate domain name), Restore Marriage Canada hasn't updated its site since 2006 either, etc, etc. Many of the organizations should be transitioning back to a general Focus on the Family type of approach, like the Institution of Marriage and Family Canada, which held a conference on "good economic policy in support of good family policy," which sounds a bit like "social conservatives" adopting social democrat approaches to social problems if you ask me.

Anyways, along the way I came across ChristianGovernment.ca, which revived my interest in another topic I've considered before. The site doesn't obviously sound like it's going to be an advertisement, and the main page even makes a token effort at raising some rhetorical points: "Christian civil government" is federalist, decentralist, and an "act of service" (to this end, it points out that senior politicians are called "ministers" in deference to "the Christian worldview," which teaches that politicians should be servants, not tyrants."

First off, this romantic myth of Christianity as the source of democracy and accountable government is getting very tiring. Historically, both the Jewish and Greek variants of early Christianity were explicitly dissenting movements with no great interest in political power. Political mechanisms were grafted on later, mostly borrowed from Greco-Roman political philosophy, which is where the actual concepts of political servant-leadership comes from. For every historic Christian source defending federalism, there are at least two more defending the divine right of kings and various other notions which don't fit our Christian democracy myth.

For the moment, however, I'm concerned with something else going on at the site, which is that it's really a gimmick intended to sell Timothy Bloedow's book on the subject, State vs. Church: What Christianity Can Do to Save Canada From Liberal Tyranny. You click on the "Buy!" link and Bloedow thanks you for visiing the web page, insists that "this book will be an encouragement and benefit" to readers fighting "Canada's culture war" (whatever the fuck that is), and offers the book for a fairly standard price of $20 (paperback).

We've all read this sort of article. Either on the Internet (as in this case) or in one of the countless Christian magazines out there, someone writes a column with some vaguely intriguing ideas about an important issue and closes with a couple paragraphs about how their book addresses the issue in more detail and everyone who's interested should buy said book. The "culture warriors" of the religious right make their pitch in militarist language, conveniently not-quite-mentioning the fact that, like arms manufacturers in every age, they stand to make big profits if you decide to join their culture war (in this case via the bookshop rather than the battlefield).

The intersection of business and religion is one that is inherently difficult to navigate. Churches have this problem, too; but the benefit of churches is that they are almost entirely donation-based. In most cases, people won't even look funny at you if you routinely receive the services of the church without actually contributing money in return. For the most part I don't really like the economic model of the Protestant church, but I have to admit one benefit: if you want to (or have to) free-ride, you can do so without too much difficulty. There's a fairly important theological rationale for this: most churches implicitly, and many churches explicitly, market their version of the truth as quite literally a matter of life and death. It would be deeply immoral, not to mention devastatingly unbiblical, to grant and withhold such truth on the basis of material wealth.

In the context of the church, the Biblical writings we have from the early church more or less bear out this argument, and to our credit this is something we've actually maintained, at least in part. James, from the Jewish side of the early church, wrote in his epistle that believers ought not to show favoritism to the wealthy by giving choice seats to "a man... wearing a gold ring and fine clothes," while directing a poor man "in shabby clothes" to sit on the floor. This was because, James reasoned, God has "chosen those who are poor in the eyes of the world to be rich in faith." Taken literally, this would seem to be going almost as far as liberation theology in specifically linking God with the poor, against the rich (who he later accuses of "exploiting" the church and "slandering the noble name" of Christ). A lot of evangelicals today would be uncomfortable with such an anti-materialist and anti-capitalist argument, but at least most of us have preserved the principle of free teaching in church.

Christian writing is a bit of a different story. Not that there's really an extreme shortage of reading material from pretty much any branch of the religion, available online. And if you time it right, you can often get a fair chunk of evangelical literature free of charge. I've known groups willing to hand out Lee Strobel's somewhat contrived Cases books, and I've also seen free attacks on The Da Vinci Code handed out by evangelical groups on campus. However, for the most part the Christian publishing industry operates the same way as its secular counterpart, with the twin exceptions of a more focused market and frequent claims that its books hold major significance for your life, in this world and maybe in the next as well. So my question is: why does written spiritual truth always come with a price tag?

There's a very good historical reason for books to cost money: they're expensive to produce. In past centuries, this cost was not merely inconvenient but truly extreme. Until the invention of the printing press, a single copy of any decent-sized book would require many months, and often years, of labour. Gutenberg's original printing press was derived from existing and predominantly East Asian woodblock printing, which did make printing easier - once you'd engraved the text, page by page, into a wood template. And that was only the writing bit - parchment required large amounts of hide, ideally (for the best quality vellum) from stillborn or unborn animals. Gutenberg's first Bible required 300 sheepskins - meaning that, even with movable type, Europe lacked the resources for mass book printing until paper was made from linen and hemp rags.

Even with the comparatively cheap ink and paper of today, books do still have to be printed, and as I understand it the publishing industry still takes the lion's share of the book price in compensation for providing this service. There are only a handful of books which one can easily get without paying someone for it, and for the most part they're religious texts like the Bible and Koran, purchased on your behalf by someone else willing to cover your costs.

Beyond covering production costs, however, books are copyrighted to preserve profitability, and here the Christian publishing industry could - but does not - provide any challenge to the prevailing capitalist model. At the moment, even most of our in-print Bible translations are under copyright protection - for example, the International Bible Society holds the text of the New International Version, and it is published exclusively by Zondervan, which is one-quarter of the Grand Rapids publishing cabal which holds a stranglehold on North American evangelical book publishing. The others are Eerdmans, Baker, and Kregel, and taken together they're the major partners of the Evangelical Christian Publishers Association, the Christian publishing lobby, which together does $2.3 billion in business each year. Since the 1980s, Zondervan has been mostly owned by Harper Collins, which serves the same general-purpose role in the secular world as Zondervan does in the religious one. HarperCollins is in turn owned by News Corporation, which means that every time you buy an NIV Bible, you're lining the pockets of Rupert Murdoch, the owner of Fox News.

The NIV is a common translation and this network of intellectual property is also common. The New King James Version is "owned" and published by Thomas Nelson, a Scottish firm which, with its network of subsidiaries, has grown to include educational presses, Thomson Corporation, Nelson Thornes, etc. It also owned the American Standard Version once upon a time, but sold the rights to an NGO in 1928 and lost its exclusive publishing contract in 1962 after failing to meet the demand for new printings. The American Thomas Nelson later bought the Christian music label Word from ABC, spun it off to Gaylord Entertainment, then bought the Cool Springs, World Bible, and Rutledge Hill presses; and also founded the dubious conservative propaganda and "news" site, WorldNetDaily. Today it's owned by InterMedia Partners (which bought the company for $500 million last year) and manages a number of profitable conferences, like Women of Faith and Revolve.

Given these tie-ins, perhaps it's no surprise that Christian book publishers are indistinguishable from secular ones: in many cases, they're the same people. Kind of ironic, considering the things some of those books have to say about the evils of secular modernity. Some other Bible versions are owned by non-profits, like the New American Standard Bible (NASB), which is owned by the Lockman Foundation and published by that foundation's own Foundation press; or the English Standard Version, owned and distributed by Crossway Bibles (a subsidiary of Good News Publishers). However, even being a nonprofit evidently isn't enough to convince the Lockman Foundation or Good News Publishing that they ought to relinquish their ownership "rights" to the supposed words of God. Oxford and Cambridge university presses run a translation scheme too, which has produced the English Revised, New English, and Revised English translations.

Using the Bible as my example may be a bit extreme, and it's not generally too hard to find parts of any translation online in searchable databases, or even to find translations that are old enough to be in the public domain (like the King James Version). However, the absurd idea that one can "own" the text of 2000-year-old religious scriptures is one that need not be endorsed by the Christian community. There's no immediate need to rise up and seize these translations back from the publishing cabals, since for the most part anyone who wants an English-language Bible can get one, at least here in North America; but it should give us pause to consider where to draw the line between commercial interest and the dissemination of ideas about religious truth. At the very least, this could be easily carried over into the release of free online versions by some of the authors who currently spend so much time flogging their new books on Christianity in the 21st century, Christianity in the culture wars, or even Christianity with respect to some other more interesting topic I'd be seriously interested in reading about. If we're serious about promoting discussion amongst religious people, and also potentially religious people (i.e. converts with thick wallets), surely we are as wrong to tie up the discussion in potentially expensive legal protection as we would be to charge entrance fees to listen to pastors' sermons.

The standard capitalist response to what I'm suggesting is that there isn't going to be any more written innovation - i.e. more books - if there's no way to make a profit from them. This isn't a very good rationale among Christians, and it does suggest that we as the Christian consumers bear part of the blame. In theory there's no particular reason why we shouldn't think it natural and normal to give at least something back to the author with or without being legally required to do so. On the other hand, the dubious value of self-interest (our weak version of what would otherwise be called "greed") is hammered into us since childhood, inside and outside the church, and so except among friends we generally don't think about value except in terms of exchanging money. The only movie I've ever downloaded then considered sending some compensation for, for example, is The Corporation, and that one only because the producers took the innovative step of releasing a "shareware" version to the file-sharing networks, which is exactly the same as the standard version except for a brief spiel at the beginning encouraging viewers to send in donations if they enjoy the film.

There are conceivable compromises between the status quo on the one hand, and throwing everything into the public domain and trusting one's fickle readers on the other. The open source computing community, for example, has achieved growing success with free and copyleft licenses, which retain legal "ownership" while permitting people to copy and redistribute the book however they wish, including giving away copies for free. Many companies in the field offer free source versions downloadable over the Internet, but make their money selling hardcopies and customer support to consumers who need something more solid than an unsupported downloaded file.

In theory, many of the major writers in the evangelical field should be okay with these ideas. James Dobson, for example, says that, at least for his followers and listeners, he waives all royalties on his publications "to obtain the lowest possible price from the publisher." There's an even cheaper price - $0 - which could be obtained if Dobson were to post a PDF of his presumably very important books online. On the other hand, if this were done on a large scale, publishers might be less willing to publish the print versions, and that in turn would rob Dobson of his royalties from non-listeners, who (at least according to the link above) may not be eligible for the royalty-free book sales.

To see the future of Christian publishing, perhaps we can return once again to examining Bible translations. A handful of new versions, like the Updated King James Version (UKJV), literally are new works deliberately declared to be in the public domain. The World English Bible, which is still being prepared, is supervised by Rainbow Missions, which has waived its copyrights and will place the entire translation in the public domain. A Wiki-based translation, the Free Bible, is even underway here, which, if it ever goes anywhere, should prove very interesting. If worst comes to worst, Christian authors may even have to feed themselves by making tents during the day, like Paul did.

Once book publishing has been reformed a little perhaps people can start paying attention to the even worse state of the Christian music industry, which has managed to convince churches to pay annual "licensing fees," albeit minimal ones, for the privilege of having worship music available every Sunday (see, for example, Christian Copyright Licensing International). The big Christian record labels are also owned by the big record labels. ForeFront, Gotee, Sparrow, Tooth and Nail, Chordant and a few others are owned by EMI Christian Music Group, which, as the name suggests, is a subsidiary of EMI. Word Records and its various holdings (Myrrh, Canaan, DaySpring, Rejoice, etc.) followed a long and twisted path from ABC to Thomas Nelson, Gaylord, Time Warner, and finally Warner Music Group. Provident, which holds Brentwood, Essential, Flicker, Gray Matters, Reunion, and Praise Hymn Music Group, is actually Sony BMG's Christian music division. This corporate mega-structure isn't necessarily a problem if we want to see religious music as a major commercial venture - let's just not delude ourselves about what we're doing by coating it in charitable religious language.
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The Reverend Reads the Bible

The Praxis Institute, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Church of the Orange Sky, is pleased to present a revolutionary new perspective on the Christian Bible. The Church regrets that its authorized spokesman may have erred in representing one of the links in a previous post. Please be assured the individual in question will be stoned as soon as possible to preserve our honour.

An update to my previous post - The Sword of Gryffindor, which I linked to in the previous post, has prepared some lengthier reflections on the "culture war" with respect to Harry Potter. I think the suggestion of stepping away from the usual liberal-conservative categories has some merit. Kudos to the people who didn't see this as a big deal, and to the ones who used it to suggest a future beyond "culture wars." The religious right has begun to grumble a little, too - Laura Mallory thinks this is further "indoctrination" into "anti-Christian values," and people at the "Values Voters" summit think the injection of homosexuality into the series makes it too "political." I'm fascinated by how making a character gay makes him (or her) intrinsically "political," when him being implicitly heterosexual was politically irrelevant. In any event, this is hopefully the end of my present interest in Harry Potter and I will say no more about it, except perhaps to note that my frustration in this case applies in similar form to people hunting for homoeroticism in The Lord of the Rings or Fight Club.

A message from one of the Mad Reverends - I've found what could have been our blog's anthum, though sadly we had nothing to do with the production or distribution of it: WWJD? (A Music Video). Asinine, hilarious, and heretical, all at the same time - ideals to which I also aspire.

This blog has sort of a disturbing pattern: both of its mysterious authors both vanish for months on end, popping up only when their frustration with world events reaches a boiling point and they need to bitch about corruption, sexuality, school killings, and various other marginally depressing topics. This proposes a problem for the exaggerated hopes of the Church of the Orange Sky, which now finances this project in the belief that Jesus Drives an SUV is going to spearhead a revolution in North American Christian culture. A new Cultural Revolution, if you will, except without Red Guards or Maoist personality cults. At the very least, the Mad Reverends' Cultural Revolution will require more frequent blog posts.

Fortunately, as a semi-Christian writer, I can always resort to writing about the Bible. There's thousands of chapters in it and it's a constant subject of conversation on Sunday mornings (not so constant at other times of the week, mind you). Back when I first became a Christian, a well-meaning youth pastor gave me a free copy which I studiously read from cover to cover, trying along the way to convince myself of the absolute truth of the contents. Occasionally I suspect I should read it again, with the benefit of a little more maturity and ability to think critically, though I usually get rather bored after stumbling about in the Old Testament for a while. Nevertheless, while on one of my many periods of procrastination lately, I sat down and re-read the first few chapters of Genesis. I'll start there and see how far I get this time. In the meantime, you're welcome to my thoughts on the contents, some of which is even more difficult to accept than I remember it being.

The fact that the Judeo-Christian creation myth is the first story in the first book of the first Testament of the Bible creates considerable difficulties for me, since it means that I have to develop my view on the inerrancy of the Bible – as well as what the Bible really is, if it’s not the inerrant word of God – right off the bat. Of course, as a reminder of the fact that the Scriptures have been ineptly manipulated by human hands in the centuries following the original writing of them, here we’re also treated to a curious chapter placement: notice that the second chapter of Genesis begins in the middle of the first creation story, rather than a few sentences later, when we move to the second creation story.

For someone simply looking for Scriptural inconsistencies, it doesn't take long to hit paydirt. Genesis 2 is a very different story of the creation than Genesis 1, because this story has man created first, followed by plants, which are followed by animals. From a literal perspective, these accounts are probably irreconcileable. One of the more widely referenced contemporary evangelical propaganda websites, Answers in Genesis, argues that “Jewish scholars” understood verb tenses based on context, so the problem vanishes, apparently assuming that our own translaters are therefore incompetent at reading ancient Hebrew, which is very disappointing. In any event, this is irrelevant because Genesis 2 actually notes that “the Lord God formed the man” at a time when “no shrub of the field had yet appeared on the earth,” a statement which has nothing to do with verb-tense context. In Genesis 1, the “trees bearing fruit with seed in it according to their kinds,” and other plants, were created on the third day, before even the sun was created; in Genesis 2, the garden (with its trees) appears after the man. Answers in Genesis further explains that Genesis 2 is a “recap” which might not present events in “chronological sequence,” since it is “a more detailed account of the creation of Adam and Eve and day six of creation.”

My real problem with the six-day creation, however, is not that the Biblical account of it has some textual enigmas, but that the whole process really does not make a great deal of sense. The worldview which lays behind the creation myth, and almost certainly would have belonged to Moses himself even if modern young-earth (and even old-earth, to some extent) scientists are desperately trying to find an adequate reinterpretation, is clearly the work of a cosmology alien to our own. The Scriptures say that the Earth was initially “formless and empty.” God created “light” ex nihilo and then “separated” it from the darkness, so that there was light for part of the day but darkness for the rest of the day. He does not actually create the Sun until the fourth day. This would mean that God not only created the Earth before the Sun, but that in the absence of the Sun he created some other source of light, with the Sun existing only to provide order to the procession of day, season, and year.

Next, God creates an “expanse between the waters” above and the waters below, which is called the “sky.” Where the waters above eventually go I’m not sure, since the universe is not filled with water at present. After he creates the plants, he creates “lights in the expanse of the sky to separate the day from the night,” and to “mark seasons and days and years.” These are “governed” by two “great lights,” the sun and the moon. Of course, the moon is not really a light at all: it is a giant rock which serves us as a giant mirror. God created only one “great light.” Finally, once all this work is finished, he creates a large number of animals and plants which coexist with one another, despite the fact that they never do so again throughout our entire fossil record -- including primitive organisms, dinosaurs, and human beings.

What emerges from Genesis 1 is the creation account of a people who saw a flat Earth, surrounded by water hovering above the sky; an Earth-centered universe with an uncertain span beyond this solar system (beyond which there are billions of other stars and millions of other galaxies), in which the sun and moon were lights which “hung” in the sky above the Earth. It would be simplistic and somewhat immature to now rush forward with new scientific evidence that the Earth is not flat, and in fact revolves around the Sun, which is one of an uncounted number of stars in the universe with dubious claims to uniqueness. The most obvious method of discounting these differences is that Moses simply related the creation of the world as he saw it, which was from an imperfect human perspective we today do not share. To this, more traditional Christians have in the past responded to me: if that's true, how can we trust any other part of the Bible? Fair enough, if "trust" is earned through some sort of Enlightenment-inspired textual examination of the Bible as a single flawless unit.

It has to be said that, unsatisfying as this may seem, this is the point where old earth creationists and many of the current crop of young-earth creation "scientists" have to abandon pretensions about Biblical inerrancy. If they don't use the above argument, they have to instead argue that Moses didn't actually understand the real truth of the stories he was writing in Genesis. That's a disturbing argument given the questions it raises about the relationship between God and humanity (including the humans who wrote the Bible), and it's one which most people want to drop later on, when it becomes more convenient to say the author can be ignored because he was tied down by a particular cultural context (i.e. the argument we use to dismiss many of Paul's various statements about the subjection of women within the church).

Can we decide now, long after the fact, that Moses is dead and we can read into his words whatever "godly" meaning we wish? The Statement of Faith of the denomination in which I am currently nominally a member, the Canadian Fellowship of Evangelical Baptist Churches, believes that “the Bible [is] the complete Word of God… as originally written… [and] verbally inspired by the Spirit of God and entirely free from error.” I’m not entirely certain what it means to “verbally inspire” a text, but it seems to imply that God determined the selection of the words used, as well as their meaning. The Biblical authors (so far referred to here as "Moses," though it could have been damned near anyone) thus become the unthinking channels through which God’s language is communicated. If this is true, then God has told humanity statements which appeared at times to be untrue. I should stress that I can’t disprove the fact that the earth was created in six days in the manner described in either Genesis 1 or Genesis 2: I simply have no reason to believe it. This, perhaps, is the root of the disagreement, and really there is no way past it. I simply do not believe that the creation event in Genesis 1 is what really happened, over the period of 144 hours at an unspecified point in history. I cannot “choose” to believe such a thing simply because it is in accordance with accepted doctrine, and frankly, I would look with suspicion on anyone who was able to accept something as truth simply because they were told to by an institution of the church.

It is possible that people such as myself are the targets of the “science” being practiced by members both of the old earth and the young earth creation camps. However, in many ways I find these even less useful. In my experience, neither a conversion nor a faith that is based on human interpretation of the geological past is likely to be deep or enduring. This is because ultimately my relationship with God is and always has been based on an experiential awareness of the presence of the Lord; what I consider “knowledge” has been subject to that awareness, rather than the other way around. I do not believe that Christianity is likely to win many converts by arguing that it has a scientific account of the history of the planet.

Speaking of science, that branch of human activity is normally the observation, identification, description, investigation, and theoretical explanation of natural phenomena. A scientific hypothesis is an inference which can never be proved; it may be supported by observation and evidence, and it may be disproved when this evidence contradicts the thesis. Today's creationists take the opposite approach, beginning with the creation of the world by God and then casting about for evidence to support a chain of events in keeping with their predetermined conclusion. Yet this ignores the fact that our religion is by definition a non-scientific thing: God is not a physical, natural phenomenon and thus should not fall within the jurisdiction of scientific investigation anyways, just as we would not attempt to share the gospel through the instructional manual for a toaster oven.

Particularly in the case of the Old Earth investigators, then, creationists tend to slide towards the seemingly more appealing alternative of simply arguing that the other options available to us – namely, the theory of evolution – are irreparably flawed and must be discarded, even if there is not a better theory currently available. Most such arguments derive from some variant of the notion of “irreducible complexity” – that is, that aspects of life and nature are so complex that they could not possibly have arisen without divine intervention in the form of some sort of creator, or at least intelligent designer. The fact that presentations of this theory usually require misrepresentations of what the actual theory of evolution is does us no credit with many of the audiences we are attempting to persuade, and even when it does, I do not believe that the Christian faith should ever be – or should ever need to be – spread through intellectual dishonesty. Neither did St. Augustine, incidentally, who, in similar circumstances, complained that

It not infrequently happens that something about the earth, about the sky, about other elements of this world, about the motion and rotation or even the magnitude and distances of the stars, about definite eclipses of the sun and moon, about the passage of years and seasons, about the nature of animals, of fruits, of stones, and of other such things, may be known with the greatest certainty by reasoning or by experience, even by one who is not a Christian. It is too disgraceful and ruinous, though, and greatly to be avoided, that he [the non-Christian] should hear a Christian speaking so idiotically on these matters, and as if in accord with Christian writings, that he might say that he could scarcely keep from laughing when he saw how totally in error they are. In view of this and in keeping it in mind constantly while dealing with the book of Genesis, I have, insofar as I was able, explained in detail and set forth for consideration the meanings of obscure passages, taking care not to affirm rashly some one meaning to the prejudice of another and perhaps better explanation.

A little like Augustine's idiots, some of the young earth crowd go further by developing seemingly sophisticated theories to explain a scientific method of divine six-day creation. This is hardly new – some geological catastrophists used to argue that most of the Earth’s features were established in the Great Flood, and most young earth types still do – but it has expanded to include more smoke and mirrors. Barry Setterfield, for example, has amassed some frankly confusing arguments that the speed of light (and therefore time) declines over time, allowing more human history to happen in a year in 2000 B.C. than a year in 2000 A.D. Extremely conservative groups, such as Rapture Ready, frequently attribute their failures to the hardened anti-Christian attitude among scientists, and sometimes go so far as to claim that many scientists want to come forward with the evidence which disproves evolution but are being repressed by the atheist academic establishment. It is true that this establishment is and always has been reluctant to accept new ideas that fundamentally change existing theoretical frameworks, but there is more at work here: the “scientific” case for creation is largely limited to the claim that evolution does not work, and that the remaining “gaps” must be the result of divine intervention. This is not a scientific "theory" and we should not bother to pretend that it is: as I remarked before, the tools of science are inappropriate for the religious and spiritual task which we have set for ourselves.

Some of my brethren would doubtless respond that my conclusion about Genesis 1 and 2 is unacceptable from a Christian perspective because it casts doubt on the reliability of God’s Word. This is often coupled with the claim that dismissing parts of the Bible is the first step on a slippery slope leading to the rejection of the entire Bible. My answer to this is very simple: I first trusted the gospels through the influence of the Spirit of God, and I never felt compelled to believe in the accounts of Genesis 1 and 2 in the same way. I struggled to do so when instructed to by the church, and ultimately concluded that belief does not follow from obedience. Furthermore, I simply do not believe that the Bible is some sort of unitary machine made up of innumerable cogs and pulleys and belts; I do not believe, therefore, that pulling out one or two of these cogs is somehow going to “break” the Bible.

If I have dismissed their historical validity, is there still religious meaning in the accounts of creation in Genesis? Perhaps there is. A Jewish philosopher from the first century, Philo, argued that “it is quite foolish to think that the world was created in the space of six days or in a space of time at all”; to Philo, Moses’s creation account was an allegory of God’s perfection. Mind you, Philo also thought that the number of days were chosen to represent mathematical perfection. Three centuries later, the somewhat unconventional Christian theologian Origen of Alexandria, also rejecting a literal reading of creation, wrote that “I do not suppose that anyone doubts that these things figuratively indicate certain mysteries, the history having taken place in appearance and not literally.” Many of the early Christians, too, saw the story of creation as an allegory for God's love for and salvation of humanity.

At the end of the day, though, I don't find much meaning in those statements either. The creation question has ceased to have any real meaning for me one way or the other. I hadn't really realized I would conclude with that somewhat nihilistic observation when I started writing this post. I suppose it means I will have to submit a resignation to my old church on the grounds that I no longer accept their statement of faith, though in fairness I should have done that quite some time ago, since this is hardly the first serious disagreement I've had with that silly little document. On the bright side, this liberation will bind me closer to the Church of the Orange Sky, which is the profitable postmodern future of all good religion.
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Oh, no! Dumbledore was Gay!

This message is brought to you by the Praxis Institute, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Church of the Orange Sky.

First off, an update on my last post, in which the Roberts dynasty totally lost the plot and went off in search of extravagant vacations, teenage sex toys, and political influence: God has issued new orders to Oral Roberts University and president Richard Roberts has departed on a "leave of absence." The Church of the Orange Sky welcomes God's intervention in worldly affairs but calls upon all parties involved to stop invoking God's name in vain.

I was going to write about the demise of TV-links, which I used to use to watch all of my favourite TV shows, and how the entertainment industry has forged a disturbing new link with state power in the West. (It's a bizarre alliance of state and entertainment which is much more interesting than Marx's alliance of state and capital.) In the last few years we've seen servers and individuals arrested and charged in various countries, and their property seized by the government, even in the complete absence of actual criminal activity: DVD Jon, the Pirate Bay, now TV-Links, and so on. But this is a religious blog rather than a political one, so you'll have to ponder the declining relevance of civil rights and habeas corpus elsewhere.

In the meantime, one of my friends has brought to my attention an even more exciting development: Hogwarts headmaster Albus Dumbledore was gay. This constitutes new post-canonical doctrine from Her Obscenely Wealthy Excellency, J.K. Rowling. Answering questions in Carnegie Hall, Rowling apparently earned great applause for a short, bald answer to a question about whether Dumbledore had ever fallen in love: "I always thought of Dumbledore as gay". Allegedly this helps explain Dumbledore's early friendship with the fictitious wizard doppelganger of Adolf Hitler - i.e. he fell in love with the guy and was blinded to just what was really going on. I expect this new twist will generate great excitement over the next five or six days before fading away again, so I thought I'd jump on the bandwagon of public commentary, though with what I anticipate will be a bit of a different slant.

First off, it's worth noting that I personally think Rowling is a bit of an ass. A few weeks ago, she wandered off the reservation and attempted to sue an Indian group for the heinous sin of building a replica Hogwarts castle at a Hindu religious festival. (The attempt failed, which gave me a little respect for the Indian courts system, but didn't alleviate my disgust with Rowling, who apparently now feels that she owns the exclusive use of non-existent magic castles.) Now, she's attempting to add some ex post facto wisdom to the Harry Potter series in order to seem a little edgier. Falling into obscurity with her billion well-earned dollars obviously isn't enough.

My quick Google search for "slash Dumbledore" indicates that plenty of fan fiction writers have already come to the conclusion that Dumbledore was gay - or at least that he indulged in sex with other men, which in the tawdry realm of Internet fanfic is a very important distinction. Rowling claims that she's always had this idea in her head and even insisted on edits to the movie scripts in order to prevent Dumbledore from being accidentally pinned down as a straight guy. She even claims that "if I'd know it would make you so happy, I would have announced it years ago." Uh-huh. I suspect either her publisher told her she wasn't allowed to say that publicly until after the seventh book was published, or she's only recently decided to experiment with generating more controversy. Rowling is an intelligent woman, I think, and not naive about the effects of her public comments.

The new statements were greeted with a wave of self-righteous and self-congratulatory remarks from what I suppose could be termed the liberal wing of the Harry Potter fan world. This blogger, for example, who may or may not be influential and widely read (my Google search for "dumbledore gay" isn't necessarily a reliable method of determining popularity), writes that the event "proves... to be correct once again, as we've always maintained that Rowlingw ould be, for lack of a better word, a 'liberal' Christian." The lengthy list of comments, which makes the following of our blog seem small and humble indeed, contain various references to expected great reactions from American right-wing Christians. A few otherwise sympathetic writers suggest that Rowling has caused them to doubt their support of her books (here).

The real conservative response has so far been muted, possibly because they're sharpening their pitchforks but more likely for a host of other reasons, one of which is that they just haven't had time to prepare a lengthy response yet. One blogger suggests that people who were pleased to hear Dumbledore was gay should be subjected to "intense psychological investigation," since evidently homosexuality is beyond the pale in a "children's fantasy book." In addition, this writer believes that "every scene involving Dumbledore... will unavoidably be colored by this revelation."

Personally, I don't see why anyone should care whether Rowling sees Dumbledore as heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual, or anything else. My partial readings of the series suggests that his sexuality plays absolutely no meaningful role in any aspect of the story. Why it should matter, therefore, is completely beyond me, and in my mind anyone who is either elated or disgusted by the announcement has missed the point. The real message ought to be that we should stop trying to place sexuality at the center of our identity as human beings. I merely disagree with this in relation to gay pride and other like-minded groups. But I am totally confused when certain religious groups attempt to do the same, essentializing gay and lesbian people as sinister, inherently promiscuous hedonists on the one hand and, on the other, trumpeting the wondrous glory of monogamous heterosexuality as God's not only intended but expected and possibly required way for humans to enjoy themselves.

If indeed Dumbledore should be understood as a gay man, then the lesson is that we can understand and relate to people without first having to ponder the implications of their sexuality. I personally find that much more refreshing than this notion that we now need to revise our reading of a children's book series in order to celebrate - or condemn - the fact that the author thinks a school principal happened to be gay.
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Oral's Not Moral

Whoever he is that, owing no man anything, and having food and raiment for himself and his household... seeks a still larger portion on earth; he lives in an open habitual denial of the Lord that bought him. - John Wesley

Prominent evangelicals are good at attracting three things: money, converts, and controversy (not necessarily in that order). Plenty of them have been tarred and feathered in the last few years and I decided a while ago to start giving them the benefit of the doubt when stories first broke, but this one's just plain weird.

The ruling dynasty of Oral Roberts University has run into trouble after a whole raft of allegations surfaced recently from some fired professors. On one occasion, the president's daughter and her friends flew the institution's jet to the Caribbean for a $30 000 vacation. The ministry picked up the tab on the grounds it was an "evangelistic function." I'm sure they just couldn't wait to spread the word to the beaches of the Bahamas. The Roberts' children also get exclusive use of a stable of horses owned by the school, as well as special tutoring time with university employees.

Many of the allegations feature the president's wife Lindsay, which ORU's website idiotically refers to as the "First Lady." For example, she billed in excess of $800 per month on her cell phone, in large part thanks to hundreds of late-night text messages to "underage males." She dropped $39 000 at Chico's in one year and later explained of her new clothing that "as long as I wear it once on TV, we can charge it off." She also has a red Mercedes and a white Lexus thanks to generous ministry donors.

This particular school has been weird from the beginning, though. The story goes that its founder, Oral Roberts himself, was approached directly by God with what seems to be a bizarre threat: raise $8 million to found a Christian university, or you will be "called home." Personally, I would have called God's bluff on that one. It would be a win-win situation, I'd think. Unfortunately, Oral took the coward's way out and raised the $8 million, which he wisely invested in building a corrupt but profitable estate for his descendants.

God recently proved he retains an interest in the academy by visiting the son, Richard Roberts, to deliver a new message: God wants him to publicly deny the accusations I've just recited above. Oh, good. I wonder whether Roberts would have felt confident in denying the accusations without divine instructions.

ORU is a charismatic university, which means we can expect it to be a little crazier. (By contrast, bible colleges like Pensacola College are non-charismatic, so they're still arrogant and self-righteous, but they don't speak in tongues.) It's home to some of the wickedest Christian architecture I've ever seen - for example, check out the enormous praying hands and the temple-like "learning centre", and other cool photographs on the Wikipedia page. The online tour here is a grand parade of self-absorbed largesse featuring the 60-foot-tall praying hands, a dormitory constructed in a style that supposedly "imitates" the trinity, a bunch of "Towers" modeled after the Star of David, a large geodesic dome symbolizing the "wholeness of man," the 200-foot-tall "Prayer Tower," a hideously large church supposedly representing the "shield of faith," and a three-level administration building. (Even this is significant: it's three levels because God is also three persons in one.)

With this amount of sheer idiocy, it's no wonder Christians get a bad rap sometimes. It may come as a surprise to many people, obviously including most of the students at ORU, that at one point in Christian history, all money and goods donated to the church were considered by sacred right to belong first to the poor and the oppressed. For the leadership of the church to take any of this collection to maintain buildings or to live on for themselves was, at best, a necessary evil; ideally, they would make their own living, or be provided for separately of money taken for the use of the church. I suspect we borrowed this tradition from the Jews, who didn't pay their rabbis out of the religious funds either, and, among the diaspora at least, saw giving to the poor as the appropriate substitute for sacrifice at the temple in Jerusalem.

On the other hand, if we spent money like that, we wouldn't have giant praying hands and enormous prayer towers. I'm sure God appreciates what we've done for him.

I re-read the ten commandments a while ago and it struck me that the interpretation of taking the Lord's name in vain that was drilled into me as a teenager is all wrong. I'm sure you're familiar with the idea: it's wrong to say "Oh, God" when you're having sex, or to say "God damn it" when you're upset with something -- for example, "God damn Oral Roberts University."

I don't think that's true. For one thing, asking God to damn something seems perfectly legitimate to me - provided it's something worth damning. More importantly, I believe that we take God's name in vain every time we falsely attribute something to him because we think it will sound more credible. "God has helped me get this job," for example - or, "I feel the Spirit is calling me to move on," which is what most pastors say when they leave one job and move to a better-paying one farther south. (In some parts of the world, it might not necessarily be farther south - but it always was for me, because I come from the pagan north.)

Bravo, Roberts family. You've founded a university, bilked hundreds of millions of dollars from people who put their trust in you, and made a mockery of your supposed faith. There's less you could do in a lifetime.
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