Department of Down the Rabbit Hole

Among the creepiest effects of the Iraq quagmire has been the shifting of alliances by Christopher Hitchens and Patrick Buchanan.  

Both men are die-hard controversialists.  Hitchens is (or was) an Anglo-American lefty, hard to imagine without a cigarette in one hand and a whiskey in the other, of the sort who becomes more belligerent and yet perversely more brilliant as the night's boozing wears on.  Once upon a time, he was something of a role model to us at the Egg.  Buchanan, the sometime Nixon staffer and presidential candidate, has grown increasingly isolated, as he has staked out positions so far to the right that they resemble no post-1930s Euro-American politician of any substance, unless you count Jean-Marie Le Pen.  And, like Le Pen, it has been impossible for most civilized people to take him seriously.

But then came Iraq.  Even earlier, just after 9/11, Hitchens detected in the Islamists the precise enemy of his tribe:  Fascism.  (Did he invent the term Islamo-fascism?  The debate will rage for decades, but we think he did.)  He went on the attack, and urged the nation to do likewise.  He has defended the Iraq invasion and, by extension, the Bush Administration, with his customary startling vigor, no doubt shedding old friends as rapidly as he has made new ones.  (In his typically beguiling manner, he has kept those new rightist friends at arms-length by couching much of his attack on Islamism in the rhetoric of militant atheism.  You see why we love the man?)

Buchanan also detected an ancestral enemy, one remembered only vaguely these days by the most palaeo of palaeoconservatives.  After all, a fear of "foreign entanglements" is at least as deeply rooted in the American political heritage as a zeal for quasi-imperial meddling.  Pat's people, the Republicans of yore, were isolationists.  And he saw, as early as anybody else, that the Bush Administration was not, by the traditional standard, even remotely conservative.  So while Hitchens was trying to rally support for Iraq from a leftist position, Buchanan was denouncing it from the right.

This presents a conundrum for those of us who considered Iraq to be a disaster from the very moment it was contemplated.  To whom now could we look for leadership in the arena of the talking heads?  Traditionally, after all, the enemy of my enemy and all that.  But to befriend Buchanan seems risible, and to abandon Hitch seemed, at least for a long time, like intellectual suicide.  After all, we told ourselves, God -- ahem -- knows that he's right about the new fascists.  And yet he seemed wrong about everything else.

Oh, it wasn't that much of a conundrum:  Hitchens left us behind long ago, on his pilgrimage (or is it hegira?) to the dark side of the Potomac.  And we still can't take Buchanan seriously.

So now it comes down to this.  Click the link for Pat's review of Hitch's new book on WWII, and be prepared to read between the lines.  Basically, Hitchens argues that the enemy -- Fascism -- was so evil, that we had a moral duty to use every tool available to us to defeat it.  This includes fire-bombing and even nuking civilian targets, expressly in order to terrorize the populations of Germany and Japan as the Nazis had terrorized Britain.  Buchanan mocks this argument on moral grounds, and ends with the oblique suggestion that the Nuremberg trials were a sham, because Allied officers were guilty of crimes comparable to their Nazi counterparts.

So, um, okay.  What Hitchens really means is that we should torture the hell out of anybody we capture in the Middle East, right?  So that means Buchanan must be right.  But wait:  Buchanan is an apologist for Hitler, so he can't be right.  Right?  

We were agonizing over this insoluble problem when -- holy cats!  Excuse us, but a rabbit just pulled a pocket-watch from its waistcoat.  We're off in hot pursuit.

Department of No Surprise: G.A.S. Edition

Headline over a letter to the Guardian:  "Anglican Split About Power, Not Sex."

We couldn't have said it more succinctly.

3000 Miles Wide and Three Inches Deep

That's a sociologist's somewhat unscientific description of religion in America, based on the Pew survey we mentioned yesterday.

Remember the 92% of Americans who believe in God, however that word is defined? 70 percent of those with a religious affiliation believe that there is more than one way to salvation, no matter the teachings of their, umm, "affiliation." This includes 57% of the soi-disant evangelicals.

So much for Cal Thomas and his ravings about Obama's theology. Turns out Obama votes with the majority on this one.

George Carlin, RIP

It is a fitting tribute that the ABC News website ran an article called "Do Carlin's 'Seven Dirty Words' Still Shock?" -- and more fitting still that they wouldn't print any of the words in question.  Because you never see words like that on, y'know, the Internet.

The dinosuars will go on censoring themselves long after the giant asteroid smashes into the planet and obliterates them.  Carlin would not have been surprised.

We were a little surprised, though, when Keith Olbermann -- our latest guilty pleasure -- mentioned something we did not know.  The original routine began with a bit about a guy whose phone is tapped by the FBI.  He knows this, so every time it rings, he picks up and says "Fuck Hoover."  

So, in honor of George Carlin, we at the Egg intend to spend the day answering our phone "Screw Cheney."

America Is a Christian Nation!

That's what the Christianists will be shouting this week, following a Pew survey in which 92% of respondents affirm their belief in "God or a universal spirit."

But of course, a category like that is so broad as to be philosophically meaningless.  As Luther says, "that upon which you set your heart and put your trust is properly your 'god.'"  He is at pains to point out that not all the 'gods' intended by this definition are God.  Luther points especially to money and possessions, but there are plenty of other false gods, worshiped devoutly by the masses:  country, family, self-esteem, you name it.  The Times Book Review, even.

Even those who happen to call their god by the name "God," or by any of the various historic names which are often denoted in English by that awkward catchall (YHWH, Allah, Father-Son-and-Spirit, among hundreds of others) do not mean the same thing.  "God," to Christians, is incarnate and triune; this is, irreducibly, who God is.  Without both characteristics, God is not God from the perspective of Christian theology.  Yet to both Jews and Muslims, a god with these characteristics simply is not, and cannot be, God.

The true situation, however, is far more complex than this.  Not only between religious traditions, but within any single tradition, there are competing images of God.  Sometimes, the competition becomes so fierce that the majority labels the minority "heretical."  (The Arian God is not the Orthodox God).  More frequently, the differing parties agree to disagree.  (The God present in, with and under the eucharistic elements is, at least arguably, not the God whose only true presence is localized in heaven.)   But most often, the differences persist, unspoken and scarcely acknowledged, between those who are ostensibly united by a single faith.  (Some of our own church members believe that God receives the blessed dead  immediately and spiritually, others that God is waiting to revive everybody, physically and together).

This may sound like Scholastic nitpicking, but it is not.  Because there are some people who believe that "God" requires them to kill for religious reasons -- think of jihadists and Crusaders.  There are others who believe that "God" permits them to kill, under certain circumstances, such as war and self-defense -- the traditional position of Constantinian Christians, and virtually all Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs, and many more Buddhists than most Americans realize.  And there are some who believe that "God" absolutely forbids them to kill -- most Anabaptist Christians, many Buddhists, all Jains.  These people worship different and distinct gods.

Although it is customary to lump, say, Lutherans and Mennonites together under the label "Christian," the truth is that, from this perspective, they hold a dramatically different doctrine of God.  Which is nothing more than a theological way of saying that they impute different attributes to the ultimate reality -- or that they believe in different gods.  From the perspective of the public square, Mennonites and Jains worship the same deity, at least functionally.  As do Bin Laden and Ann Coulter.

So when we hear that 92% of our compatriots believe in a god, we are not much moved to displays of triumphalism.  A little phenomenology of religion and a smidge of pastoral experience combine to convince us that the respondents are not united by any nebulous thing called "faith," but rather divided by their many separate gods.

Which is why the American Constitution, while allowing all 92% to hold their beliefs unmolested, requires the government to function as though the remaining 8% were right.

Pentecostalism May be Dangerous to Your Health

A Tennessee man went to his "non-denominational" church, which is the kind where they assign people to stand near the altar and catch worshippers who may fall over when the Holy Ghost cometh upon them.  

Here's how it goes:  Preacher taps man on head; man falls; no catchers are present.  Man smacks his head on the floor, and sues the church for $2.5 million, which is real money, even in today's devalued dollars.  Oh, and the insurance company rejected the church's claim, on the grounds that they are freaking idiots, who should have made sure their catchers were on the ball.

We propose that the church in question file suit against the Holy Ghost, for malicious mischief.

McCain Family Lives in a Glass House

Maybe literally, we don't know, although very wealthy people often build those things.  But we're talking figuratively today.

Cindy McCain has been on the hustings, sweetly reminding people that "I've always been proud of my country."  Her goal is to establish some contrast with Michelle Obama's unfortunately-phrased February remark that "for the first time in my adult life, I am proud of my country."

The HuffPo has recently provided us with at least two reasons that the McCain family ought to reconsider making hay with this, and neither one is aboout altruism, fairness, or the fact that Mrs. Obama is not a candidate.  They are pure self-interest:

Item the First:  Mrs. McCain is a Thief and and Addict.  As recently as the 1990s, she was an active drug addict, who stole her stuff from the American Voluntary Medical Team, a relief organization she had created, either to help poor people or to cover her tracks.  Stephen Elliott sees the layers of hypocrisy here:

1. "Like most ridiculously rich people, she didn't have to go to jail for her crimes and was allowed to enter a rehab program rather than face criminal charges."
2. "Try to imagine what the reaction would be if Michelle Obama had a history with drug addiction? If Michelle Obama had stolen drugs meant for third world countries to support her own addiction?"
3. And regarding Mrs. McCain's claim to have "always" loved America, "She spent at least three years stoned out of her mind. It's impossible to know what she thought during that time. Was she really proud, or was she just hallucinating?"

Item the Second:  Senator McCain Has Also Said Stupid Things.  For example, click the link to see a March interview in which he tells an interviewer that he "didn't really love America" until he was a prisoner of war.

The McCains would be well-advised to talk about real issues, rather than to invent false ones. ABut  if they are going to invent issues, they ought to choose ones that make them look less foolish.

Henry Chadwick is Dead

Among the best-worn spines along Father A.'s bookshelf is a Penguin paperback called simply The Early Church, by the Anglican historian Henry Chadwick.  Although the paper is cheap and yellow, and the print is abominably small, this book was an indispensable supplement to the "official" textbooks assigned by seminary professors and remains a useful reference many years later.  It is clearly a beginners' guide:  few quotations, fewer sources, and little acknowledgment of questions disputed by historians.  But it is for that reason, along with its clear prose and straightforward narrative, an indispensable vade mecum for those stumbling into their study of the earliest Church.

Rowan Williams' touching obit in the Guardian pays tribute to Chadwick's extraordinary scholarship and ecumenical leadership, as well as -- obliquely -- to his faithful pastoral service in what sounds like an unpleasant tenure at Christ Church.  It also includes this sobering nugget:

No one could replace Henry and no one will. The Anglican church no longer shows so clearly the same combination of rootedness in the early Christian tradition and unfussy, prayerful pragmatism, and the ecumenical scene is pretty wintry with less room for the distinctive genius of another Chadwick. But the work done stays done, and it is there to utilise in more hospitable times.

Henry Chadwick was born in 1920, ordained in 1943, and taught first and Cambridge and then, for many years, at Oxford.  He is survived by his wife, his daughters and his brother Owen, also a fine church historian.  But more than that, he is survived by the many thousands of students and pastors whom he helped to understand the sources of their own tradition.

"We Have Cake, They Have Lies"

“These are the nicest protesters I have ever had the privilege of policing,” one policeman said. “They even bring lunch.”

For the love of mercy, click the link and read a London Times takeout on Anonymous, the internet-driven protest against Scientology.  It is both funny and fascinating.  (By the time we hit the part about KFC, the entire Egg pressroom was in hysterics).

Yes, they are nice young people, these Anonymi, what with their Guy Fawkes masks and snacks for the bobbies.  They are also onto something:  it is entirely possible that all the public protests in the world cannot stop the Iraqi war machine.  But it is just possible that enough publicity can put a dent in the organization that thought Battlefield Earth deserved a green light.

Mr. Sulu Getting Hitched

George Takei, known to science-fiction fans everywhere as the mysterious father of time traveler Hiro Nakamura on the hit show Heroes, once played some other character on some other show, but we forget the details.  That was back in the days before California gave out wedding licenses to same-sex couples, so nobody can remember it anyway.

Anyhoo, Takei and his partner Brad Altman picked up their license yesterday, made the obligatory "live long and prosper" joke, and moved on with their lives.  We wish them well, and hope that neither man falls victim to the Psi 2000 thing.

And On A Less Serious Note

So one of the newlyweds in the last post is the Rev. Dr. David Lord.  Does anybody besides the Egg think that guy's life must be pretty tough?

We are reasonably confident that people come up to him at parties and say, "Hey, that makes you Father Lord!  Get it -- Father Lord?"  And then, after a second, they probably add, "I guess you hear that all the time," in a tone of voice that suggests they still hope he does not.  But he does.

A cleric named Lord. Hysterical.  Just ask anybody from this list of our own friends and colleagues:  Michael Church, Mark Christian, David Parsons, Stephanie Pope, or John Priest.  Not to mention the one poor guy whose name caused even our icy-cold heart to melt with compassion, a classmate named Randy Bishop.  Get it?  Randy Bishop.

Wedding Season Ruined By Gays!

This time of year, old Father Anonymous is ordinarily busy scheduling weddings, counseling sweet young couples who tell him white lies about their lives together, and wondering how many more times his poor organist can stand to play the Wedding March.

Not this year, though.  Oh, we've got a few little matrimonies coming, and the couples are exceptionally sweet this year.  But the number seems awfully low.  For a while, we couldn't figure out why.  And then we started reading the newspapers, and the cartoon lightbulb went off over our tonsured head:  It's the gays, by gum!

See, they're getting married now.  Massachusetts will marry in-state couples, California will marry anybody, and a handful of other states (including us here in the Minor Outlying Islands) will recognize the deal as done.  

But it's not just us Yanks, not by a long shot.  The big news from what's left of Anglicanism this week is the marriage of The Rev. Dr. David Lord and The Rev. Peter Cowell, at St. Bartholomew the Great in London.  All the press reports are using inverted commas -- you know, 'marriage,' 'wedding,' and so forth.  One supposes they must, since this was, at least technically, the blessing of a civil union.  (We occasionally do this for straight couples, who have been to City Hall, but later decide they want a church "wedding.")  But except for pronouns, it is reported to have been the Prayer Book service, right down to "with my body I thee worship."

Needless to say, international Anglicanism -- getting into the spirit of this inverted-comma thing, we're going to start calling it the Anglican "Communion" -- is all atwitter.  Howls are coming from every corner, although it is often difficult to tell whether they are gleeful or dolorous.  The southern tier and its adherents will surely gain some momentum as a result of this, and the more extreme liberationists will no doubt claim a stupendous moral victory.  But in fact, the south was in no danger of losing momentum and liberationism manages to find victory in every act of rebellion, including those which are utterly crushed.  (Somebody, somewhere, considers Michael Servetus to be the victor in his struggle with Calvin.  Despite that whole burned-alive thing).  The same dynamic can be discerned, less easily perhaps, in US politics.

The only parties for whom this new wave of same-sex broom-jumping is not a victory are the moderates, especially those who have not yet put little marks around "Communion."  The howls coming from Canterbury are of genuine pain, as the G.A.S. becomes daily more noxious.  (That's Great Anglican Schism, and we won't define it again).  We feel for the Archbishop, and for all the rest of those Anglicans (or Americans) who had been hoping to fence-sit for another generation, until none of this seemed quite so pressing, and then slowly adjust to times that had already changed.

But seriously, people.  The cultural need and the theological arguments have both been accumulating for decades.  Since 28 June 1969, to be precise, when a bunch of gay men and drag queens decided that they had a legal and moral right to sip their martoonies at the Stonewall Inn without police harassment.  That's forty years next summer, or roughly since the next US president was still sleeping with a teddy bear.  So a few states, and a few churches, have just figured out that if you sit on the fence long enough, people start to think you're just a scarecrow.  

For more on this, click the link to read an essay by the Rev. Martin Dudley, who solemnized the Lord-Cowell nuptials.  His apologia pro rite sua is worthwhile, even if we do cringe when he begins by proclaiming his own "robust" heterosexuality, and claiming the nickname "Dud the Stud."  But the point to note here is that Dudley also presided at the first CofE wedding of a couple who had been previously divorced -- not so long ago, either.  For most of our readers, the idea that this too was controversial will seem freakishly quaint.

So we at the Egg are neither surprised nor particularly emotional about these recent developments.  At no point in our life, child or adult, did we not expect them.  To us, and to most of our generation, they are no more remarkable than a woman running for president.  The next generation or two, we gather, are already scratching their collective head and saying "Umm ... hasn't it always been done this way?"

But there is one catch.  You see, brides are notoriously competitive.  So our theory is that a lot of straight couples are holding off, waiting until the fuss is over so that people will pay attention to them (or specifically, to her) again.   Truth is that the gays have raised the bar -- a fabulous service!  St Martin the Great!  International press coverage!  How can modest little St. Dismas-by-the-Quickie-Mart and a misspelled blurb in the Peoria Star ever hope to compete?  So although we can't prove it, our working theory is that those pesky gays, what with their their civil rights and religious observance,  have conspired to keep straight people from tying the knot.

Which just proves that the US conservatives were right all along.  Gay marriage really is a threat to non-gay marriage.  It's just a theory, for now.  We could be proven wrong if straight people ever start getting married again.

Department of No Surprise: Albino Monk Edition

Church officials in Rome will not let filmmakers use the churches of Santa Maria del Popolo or Santa Maria della Vittoria to film Angels and Demons, a prequel to The Da Vinci Code.  According to a spokesman for the diocese, the film "does not conform to our views."

Understatement of the week, and it's only Monday.

The Crypt Keeper Doesn't Read My Blog

McCain can't use a computer, and claims to rely on his wife for all things cyber.  

The good news is that, unlike Judge Alex Kozinski, he won't be embarrassed when his porn stash hits the press.  The bad news is that this puts him considerably more out of touch with mainstream America than, say, Bush I's confusion over the price of milk.  It raises him to a level of out-of-touchness that rivals Bush II's slack-jawed response to a reporter that he'd never heard about any $4/gallon gasoline.

Among the other things for which the candidate relies upon his wealthy spouse, it now seems, is $100,000 in zero-interest credit-card debt.  The rich really are different.

Real Men Don't Eat ... Meat?!

We were soooo sure it was quiche.

But it turns out that Mac Danzig, apparently a world champion in some brutal combat sport as well as one of America's Fittest Guys, according to the magazines they sell in drugstores, is also a vegan.  No milk, no meat, just a steady diet of teeth and knuckles.

The vegans of our misspent youth (and there were many) tended to be willowy young ladies with translucent skin and ethereal manners, or men who were indistinguishable from same.  We thought they were cool, until we found out that Hitler was also a vegetarian.

Still, we are reminded of Luther's frequent contention that Adam and Eve ate only fruits and vegetables, and that meat consumption was a sign of the Fall.

Bishop Hooper's Annus Horribilis

... was the year they made him a bishop.

In the last ten months, Penrose Hooper has (a) been elected bishop of the Lower Susquehanna Synod; (b) taken a month-long trip to rehab for his alcoholism; and (c) learned that his synod treasurer embezzled a million bucks.  Oh, and his daughter is studying to be come a rabbi.

Rumor has it that Hooper, shortly after his election, tried to back out of the job.  You can't blame him.

Oldest Church in the World?

Maybe, or maybe not.  

There are currently several contenders for the title, the most recent of which is a cave underneath St. George's, itself an extremely old church building in the Jordanian city of Rihab  It is described as a circular worship area with stone seats, as well as living quarters with a long tunnel connected to a water-source.

This may or may not be the oldest church in the world, but we know a certain parish on Long Island that almost certainly has the oldest church council in the world.

McCain's Economic Plan (See Below)

Obama has said, often, that McCain is running for Bush's third term.  It's a sharp line, reminding us of the strange way that McCain has tried to embrace Bush -- literally,  with an on onstage hug -- while trying to keep at least notional distance from the most hated presidential polices since LBJ.  Or even since Reconstruction.

The gentleman from Arizona has come up with his own response:  "He says I''m running for Bush's third term?  It seems to me he's running for Carter's second."

Well, now.  That's a good sound-bite, isn't it?  But let's be serious.  Carter gets the blame, deserved or not, for inflation and high oil prices -- but we've already got those, in spades.  That's the Bush legacy.  Carter also gets the blame for an ineffective response to the Iranian hostage crisis -- after all, eight American soldiers died, and America came out looking a bit milquetoasty.  But now we have 4100 dead soldiers, and we look like a lying, warmongering bully.  Again, that's the Bush legacy.

So in fact, Bush seems to combine, and greatly excel, some of the failures for which Carter is routinely excoriated by the right.  Of course, he has utterly failed to realize any of Carter's genuine accomplishments, such as the Camp David accords.  (Needless to say, Bush will never be a candidate for any Nobel, but he couldn't score the Peace Prize if they put it in a box of Cracker-Jack.)

The real point, though, is that Obama's proposed policies bear no particular resemblance to Carter's.  Both men are churchgoing Christians, but other than that they have little in common.  What is McCain trying to suggest?  We have no idea, except -- perhaps -- to frighten the ultra-Israeli bloc with the threat of peace initiatives.

But here's what we love best about the brief Politico piece linked above -- one commenter's description of McCain's economic plan:  "Dump wife and marry rich."

Bush Fired Rove ... in Church

Apparently the White House has a shortage of conference rooms.

This, at least, is what we conclude from the story told by Paul Alexander, in his book Machaiavelli's Shadow: 

On a Sunday in midsummer, George W. Bush accompanied Karl Rove to the Episcopalian Church [sic] Rove sometimes attended. ... They made their way to the front of the congregation. Then, during their time in the church, Bush gave Rove some stunning news. "Karl," Bush said, "there’s too much heat on you. It’s time for you to go.”

The speculation is that the President was trying to avert an explosion by the notoriously hot-tempered Rove.  This strikes us as odd.  After all, he's the POTUS.  What's Rove gonna do -- take a swing?  The Secret Service would love that.

The big surprise is that Rove goes to an Episcopal church.  Probably Truro or Falls Church, though. 

McCain's Divorce: Does It Tell Us Anything?

The Daily Mail article, based in part on a rare interview with the first Mrs. McCain, is worth reading if you think that character matters in your chief executive.

Your probably know the outline version.  While McCain was a POW, his beauty-queen wife Carol nearly died in a car crash.  She survived, but was crippled and disfigured.  They were reunited in 1973, and stayed together until 1980; one month after the divorce, he married an heiress.

The story can be read in different ways.  One reading makes it pretty unremarkable:  they both changed, a lot, during the years they were separated; they gave it their best shot, but couldn't make it work. He has always admitted some fault in the matter, and still picks up Carol's medical bills.  She has his bumper-sticker on her car.  Que sera sera; move along, nothing to see here.

The other reading makes McCain look pretty bad.  He was a notorious womanizer before the marriage, and after his return home was living a high-powered public life in which his wife had no place, and adultery followed.  Friends and acquaintances, including Ross Perot (who paid for a lot of Carol's medical care) are quoted to damning effect -- McCain has no character, he's cruel, etc.  

Frankly, we lean toward the first and more charitable reading.  It is easy to imagine, and seems to fit with what both parties have said over the years, and continue to say.  But if the second and more sinister version is correct, and McCain were to win the general election, we would all be in a mess of trouble.