Bühnenweihspiele

As part of my somewhat accidental Lenten culture binge (I bought teh tickets in dribs and drabs over the last months, not noticing I was packing one week to the gills), I today saw two remarkable pieces of musical theater which conjured up the religious power of performance through performative enactments of religious worship.

The first, a matinee, was The Civilians' documentary-theater musical "This Beautiful City," about Colorado Springs' transformation into the evangelical capital of America and the rise and fall of Ted Haggard. The work was cleverly constructed and well performed against a wonderful set. The best bits to me were those where they recreated the young adult worship and praise at Haggard's New Life church - itself already intensely and self-consciously theatrical (picture source) - and a rather creepy spiritual warfare group called RHOP. If it presented two sides of its issues - theocracy and liberalism, end times evangelism and sexual tolerance - and not the middle, this may have been because documentary theater can't invent characters. If any there are (I feel I have to believe there are), how would you find ordinary evangelicals who take it all with a grain of salt? The closest, ironically, was one of Ted Haggard's sons, who said that he wasn't that surprised to learn of his father's misconduct - theirs is an interesting family and "it sounds Haggardesque." Instead of invoking end times battles with spirits he said the crisis was helping his father be a better Christian, indeed he's "closer to being human now than ever before." The Haggard affair happened just as The Civilians were in "The Springs" doing research; it was a windfall for them but also somewhat overshadows the larger more nuanced picture they're trying to paint.

The other was part of the opening festival for the new and lusciously warm sounding Alice Tully Hall, the U. S. premiere of Vladimir Martynov’s “anti-opera” based on Dante's “Vita Nuova," with the stage filled with the London Symphony Orchestra, the EuropaChorAkademie and soloists, including three choirboys from St. Thomas Choirschool. I'm not sure it's a great piece of music - many pieces of new music strike me as disjointed, this one switching from atonal to lushly neoromantic to minimalist repetitive to medieval Orthodox liturgical and a citation (I'm 90% sure) from the start of Richard Strauss' "Capriccio" - but it has its somewhat hypnotic moments. Most impressive was the spectacle of it, which led me to the conclusion that, at least in the context of this opening festival, it's a Bühnenweihspiel (Wagner's name for Parsifal) - thought perhaps the stage directions are part of the piece?

It began with an empty stage (empty but for music stands). As the house lights dimmed, the choir and full orchestra came in, talking quietly, dressed in black - no white shirts. Suddenly a voice, one of the boy sopranos, pealed out from the right aisle of the audience, incipit vita nova, echoed by another boy approaching the stage on the left and completed by a third who'd been sitting on the edge of the stage, his feet hanging over the side, looking a little terrified in his white shirt and striped schoolboy tie. As they came together, conductor Vladimir Jurovsky and soloist Mark Padmore (Dante) walked unobtrusively on, joined eventually by the stunningly beautiful Tatiana Monogarova (Beatrice). The voice of Amor was sung from the side balcony. As the piece progressed, the choir along the back wall churned and split into now two, now three choirs, now one again, before finally processing down the aisles singing a litany. But before this Beatrice disappeared from the stage. The lights even on the stage were dimmed for all of the second and much of the third act, until suddenly, in a vision of heaven, all the lights came back on and she reappeared at the side of Amor on the balcony, transfigured (by numerology: she died in the ninth month, nine is thrice three, three is the Trinity, and - this part was lost in translation - nova/nine is is also nova/new life), invoking the intercession of Christ. Eventually the lights dimmed again and the orchestra left the stage, in sections, carefully clicking off the lights on their music stands, percussion, then brass, then strings, until all that was left was a Glockenspiel and, after she left, a xylophone in the back. The audience wasn't sure what had just hit us, it seemed more and less than a concert performance of an opera. Bühnenweihspiel indeed!

Sore winners

Well, the four-part Stuart Polly Interfaith study "A parting of the ways? Jews and Christians in the first centuries of the common era" ended last night. (The first three.) I'd like to say it ended in a draw, but in my estimation the historian Seth Schwartz won hands down. The fourth century is when Christianity was legalized and eventually became the official religion of Rome, and it was interesting to survey this period with an eye to the experiences of Jewish communities. Seth glossed the growing anti-Jewish rhetoric in theology and law as showing that the Christians were "sore winners." This was not just witty but profound.

It's probably easier to teach an interfaith subject as a historian than as a theologian, but it was more than that. Seth seemed comfortable with a messy complicated history which put the lie to any retrospective simplification; there was a piety here in recognizing this complexity and not giving up on it. (Last night' debunked myth was that Constantine's conversion led to the start of the middle ages for Jews; in fact, things weren't so great for Jews before Constantine, the Christianization of the Roman Empire took a long time, and while it progressively "combed" Jews out of positions of civil authority it at the same time supported and strengthened Jewish religious institutions.) Peter, by contrast, seemed hamstrung by having to talk about the first centuries of Christianity without using the word "heresy," which last night played a major role, although dressed up awkwardly as "what in retrospect was deemed heresy." He reflected on his experience at the end, saying that it had been a learning experience for him to present "the same message" here that he offers at his seminary (I wouldn't have thought the "same message" is what B'nai Jeshurun asked for, though it's Peter's way of being honest), and of course I've found it a learning experience for the same sort of reason. But really: can't you tell the story of the origins of Christianity without speaking of heresy? Or to turn it around, can you tell it as a story of messiness and complexity?

The question isn't just rhetorical. Heresy seems an indispensable concept for Christianity. Peter reminded us that the Apostle Paul himself had said "For there must be also heresies among you, that they which are approved may be made manifest among you" (1 Cor 11:19), and offered, somewhat lamely, that this suggested that divine providence favored a kind of religious diversity. (To his credit, in saying this he went out on a limb other Orthodox would gladly cut off.) But did Paul say that? The King James Bible translates it thus, but the Revised Standard Version and many other newer translations speak of "factions," not "heresies." Not that "factions" are darlings of the divine, or that this passage wasn't understood to refer to heresies for most of Christian history, but Peter's use of that translation in a talk in 2009 is a theological choice.

The stumbling block for Peter, the one he stumbled over the honest way not to ignore, was that in the theological tradition he was sharing, providence does need heretics for true Christians to define themselves against (even as they also identify with them, for every Christian knows himself to be a sinner like all sinners). Doesn't it also need the Jews, or some of the Jews, to reject and keep rejecting Christianity - and so deplore and punish? He tried to resist this rather obvious point, and was at his most eloquent and sincere when he concluded that since Christians have a cyclical rather than linear sense of time (since Christ is alpha and omega etc etc), the survival and thriving of Judaism, which all Christians "in their right mind" must acknowledge as the rock on which their faith is built, is a good thing - a different argument from those of the early Fathers he was describing. Is it that simple, or that complicated? Why must the "heretics" and the Jews be regular guest stars in the Christian story? Sore winners indeed. But... how to do better?

Sartorial advice

You've heard me describe the different cultures, lingos and values of faculty and student affairs professionals. I encountered an interesting reminder of the difference in a committee meeting on faculty advising yesterday. A proposal we were considering, invoking a book called Making the Most of College, started: "Advisers help students derive the maximum educational and personal benefits from their undergraduate experience. A faculty adviser facilitates this outcome through knowledge of institutional resources ... of curriculum offered and support services, clarification of policies and procedures ... etc., etc." A sociologist on the committee asked if we didn't want something more philosophical as a start, something about the liberal arts education ideal of student-directed learning and citizenship, and I tried to strengthen his case by saying: "The language we have now makes us sound like personal shoppers at Bloomingdales!"

Should you not know what personal shoppers do:

Quite simply, our personal shoppers save you time. They'll pre-shop the store for you, then present an array of items for your review in a private setting at our store. However you choose to shop, our consultants are here for your convenience, to make your life a little less hectic.

• They'll assist you in selecting the perfect gift for any occasion and any recipient - providing you the gift of time.
• They'll shop the full store, from clothing to home and much more to insure they address all your needs - whether it's for yourself or something for your family or friends.
• They'll identify your style preferences and select items tailored to your personal taste.
• They'll suggest the most appropriate merchandise for any occasion, and will keep you abreast of the latest trends, in-store events and, of course, what's on sale.
• They'll coordinate everything from alterations to gift wrapping, and they'll organize the delivery or shipment of your purchases.
• They'll work with your schedule and budget.

But the punch line is what my friend, the director of advising, said. "Aren't you basically personal shoppers?" He asked this with such a deadpan that I still don't know how many layers of irony were beneath it.

Endangered religion in the Village

Here's an excerpt from the Winter 2008-9 issue of The Anthemion, the newsletter of the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation. Its proud account of its efforts to preserve two "endangered" houses of worship is interesting to read. (Click the pic to enlarge.) The description suggests that in both cases - the Congregation Mezritch synagogue on East 7th St and the Russian Orthodox Cathedral of the Holy Virgin Protection on East 2nd St - the houses of worship at issue are being protected from their own congregations' plans, presumably in order to grow (or survive) as religious congregations! What stand should the religious geographer take on such cases?

Barrow Street; New York; United States of America; Continent of North America; Western Hemisphere; Earth; Solar System; Universe; Mind of God

By some chance I have a surfeit of things coming up in the next ten days - two operas, two plays, dance, and two of the special concerts for the opening of the new Alice Tully Hall. If they're all as good as the new production of Thornton Wilder's "Our Town" I just saw at the Barrow Street Theater, I'm in for a treat. "Our Town" is one of the great American plays - some say the greatest. It's about the mystery of life, truest in a way in the most ordinary of moments, but most people know it from cloying high school productions, or from the the rather sentimental movie. This revival (which started in Chicago) is none of those things, and restores to the play the experimental frisson of a bare stage production (in 1938!) by a playwright who'd spent time with Luigi Pirandello. Director (and Stage master) David Cromer presents a deadpan production which lets the profundity sneak up on you. And deep in the 3rd act is a theatrical miracle you won't soon forget. Check it out while it's in previews, if you can still get a ticket!

Cupcake theology

Today the Church of the Holy Apostles celebrated the twentieth anniversary of the arrival of Mother Liz Maxwell in our midst - with cupcakes. Well, not only cupcakes: The church was festooned with balloons and paper hearts with fan letters to Liz from the parish's children. Father John Dinaro's sermon (mindful also of the Academy Awards tonight) started with a reference to the mother ship in "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" which some movie critic had described as offering a vision of God, and ended (we were all thinking "no, he isn't going to... surely he's not..." but sort of knowing he would) with an allusion to Mother Liz. At the "shindig" which followed the Eucharist, a base baritone from the choir named Clifford sang "My Girl," accompanied by male and female "Cliffettes," and then there was contra dancing.

But it was the cupcakes which got me, perhaps because I had so disapproved of the idea. All of us had been enjoined to "bring a cupcake" which represented our relationship with Mother Liz, which I thought at once an invasion of privacy and a trivialization of it. But in fact the avalanche of cupcakes in different sizes and colors, three or four times what was needed to fill out the letters L I Z, became a perfect representation of a diverse and caring community, and how one of the gifts a priest like Liz brings to a community is to let all feed each other. (I'll see if someone took a picture and post it.) It wasn't quite loaves and fishes, but it's the kind of community practice which Samuel Wells, in God's Companions: Reimagining Christian Ethics, rather provocatively argues can take the place of theology.

Darshan

As I set some urad dhal and red kidney beans to soak on the kitchen window sill this morning (I've been really getting into Indian food lately, thanks to MDH masala mixes from an Indian grocer on Curry Hill), I noticed I was being watched by a Buddha. In fact, every time I've looked down at the garden or out towards the Empire State Building, I might have been seeing it...

See it hidden in plain sight in the picture below, the yellow rectangle right in the middle! How could I have missed it?

Classic

Got to see John Ford's wonderful, rich, dark Western "The Searchers" (1956) at MoMA this afternoon. It's a classic in every respect, including that every time you see it you see more in it. It was my fourth time, and certainly not the last. If ever you have the chance to see it on the big screen, drop whatever you're doing and see it!

Overruled?

Last night's interfaith limud at B'nai Jeshurun, the third of four sessions on "A parting of the ways? Christians and Jews in the first centuries of the common era," was relatively calm compared to the first two. Perhaps it's because the 3rd century CE is pretty obscure. But I guess we've also gotten used to the emergence and weirdness of Christianity, and the Christian theologian has relaxed enough to crack a few jokes. Next week, as we end with Constantine, we'll be back in territory we know.

So what was newsworthy (that is, generated questions in the Q&A) this time was not Peter Bouteneff's account of Origen's understanding of scripture, but Seth Schwartz's sly suggestion that there was no such thing as "rabbinic Judaism" in this period - or for most of Jewish history, for that matter. And this from the Gerson D. Cohen Professor of Rabbinic Culture at The Jewish Theological Seminary! It was fascinating.

The main point was that after the destruction of the second temple and the suppression of the Jewish revolts, Jewish life was disorganized. Contrary to common belief, the rabbis didn't save the Jews because there weren't enough of them - barely a hundred by 300 CE - and because they had no authoritative role. It's not clear who they were - perhaps the descendants of mid-level bureaucrats from the temple, who had worked as arbiters on questions of law? But Roman law was now the law of the land. We don't know what they were doing; the idea that a synagogue needs a rabbi was many centuries away. Perhaps, Seth suggested, they were like those few leaders of Polish and Lithuanian yeshivas who survived the Holocaust and ended up working in factories and driving taxis because they had no other skills people would pay for.

Eventually a body of rabbinic texts emerged, but one of its most celebrated features takes on a different meaning when seen against this historical background - the recording and even glorying in disagreement, with Rabbi X saying one thing but Rabbi Y saying another. In late rabbinic texts, this is indeed consciously praised (well, dialectic is but not disagreement for its own sake, and not pluralism). The earlier texts, Seth suggested, probably recorded differing views simply because there was no authoritative way to settle a question. It was only later that the rabbis asserted the value of their quarreling, amongst themselves and even with G-d - as in the famous story of Eliezer and the carob tree where G-d approves of rabbis who have lost interest in divine approval - which Seth recounted, while noting also that the end of the story, less well known, is apparently less happy.

(Source: Howard Schwartz, Caren Loebel-Fried and Elliot K. Ginsburg, Tree of Souls: The Mythology of Judaism [OUP 2004], 67, by way of Google Books.)

Judson Church

Another kind of New York religion. (Remember to click pic for details.)

More sinned against than sinning

The BBC, partly responsible for last year's nonsense about a supposedly "new seven deadly sins," has more news on the deadly sins and the Catholic church. It's nonsense this time, too, but this time the nonsense is the Vatican's. A study based on the confessions made to a now 95-year-old Italian Jesuit priest have been analyzed for gender difference. Turns out men confessed to lust more than any other deadly sin, and women to pride.

"Men and women sin in different ways," Msgr Wojciech Giertych, theologian to the papal household, wrote in L'Osservatore Romano. "When you look at vices from the point of view of the difficulties they create you find that men experiment in a different way from women."
Msgr Giertych said the most difficult sin for men to face was lust, followed by gluttony, sloth, anger, pride, envy and greed. For women, the most dangerous sins were pride, envy, anger, lust, and sloth...

The BBC's headline concludes Women are prouder than men, but men are more lustful, according to a Vatican report which states that the two sexes sin differently. Well, maybe. All the usual problems about surveys which rely on self-reporting arise here. But the confessional presents interesting further twists, too. In a society where women are supposed to be humble and self-effacing and men proud, wouldn't more women than men confess to pride even if (as if one could measure it) there were equal amounts in each sex? And if sexuality is considered part of healthy masculinity, wouldn't you expect more men to confess to lust? The BBC reporter not only failed to raise these sorts of questions, but mentioned that pride is traditionally considered the worst of the vices without putting two and two together.

Faith in the city

For Religious Geography of New York, I'm having students read Robert Orsi's introduction to his pioneering anthology, Gods of the City: Religion and the American Urban Landscape (1999). It's an amazing synthesis of history and urban studies, which argues that American religion - which tends to celebrate the rural - shaped and was shaped by a love-hate relationship with the urban. It's a complicated argument, full of ironies. Here's a taste:

For two hundred year, despite (or perhaps because of) the ceaseless urbanizing of the population, the city was cast as the necessary mirror of American civilization, and fundamental categories of American reality - whiteness, heterosexuality, domestic virtue, feminine purity, middle class respectability - were constituted in opposition to what was said to exist in cities. (5)

[C]ity people in the United States have always had to live in other people's ideas of where they live as well as in real places on the ground... Spaces on the urban landscape are both geographical sites where real people live and constructions of terror and desire among those who live elsewhere, including elsewhere in the city. (6)

Mainline American religion worries that people lose their moorings in the welter of diversity and temptation of the city. In fact, Orsi suggests, cities are sites for religious innovation and exploration - in part precisely because they provide so highly ramified an experience. That's sort of the point of my class, so I hope the students get it!

Running on empty

From Krugman we learn

Last week the Federal Reserve released the results of the latest Survey of Consumer Finances, a triennial report on the assets and liabilities of American households. The bottom line is that there has been basically no wealth creation at all since the turn of the millennium: the net worth of the average American household, adjusted for inflation, is lower now than it was in 2001.

I guess we sort of knew that. Throughout the Bush years we heard about economic growth which did not raise incomes, and that the Bush tax cuts were redistributive, concentrating ever more wealth in the hands of the already wealthy few. But effectively no new wealth at all?

Indeed, it's worse than that. For even as there was no growth, everyone was borrowing and spending as if there were growth all around and lots more just around the corner. (Well, not everyone.) Every pundit in town has noticed that Bernie Madoff's ponzi scheme wasn't the only one in town. It wasn't just the subprime conjurers, but a whole culture: everyone thought you could borrow to buy a house which you'd be able to sell to some other sucker at twice the price in just a few years without a thought to where that sucker was supposed to find the money to ensure your nearly effortless and virtually instantaneous achievement of immense wealth.

What's got me puzzled and dejected is the layoffs resulting from the start of a slide towards reality, and that so many of them are abroad. Fifty million in the next year, I read somewhere. Were those livelihoods all premised on our delusions too? What would those fifty million otherwise have done? And what responsibility to we bear? I certainly don't know the answers to these questions, or even how properly to frame them. But it's just not right that others should be paying for our mistakes.

Layers

Museum hopping

Spent today enjoying the works of two of the city's famous art museums. I only intended to go to one - the Metropolitan, for Beyond Babylon (though I was taken also by the premonition of Spring in the huge bouquets of pussywillows and peach blossoms in the great hall). But because the subways were messed up (again), I got a chance also to see part of the Museum of Modern Art collection which is (in facsimile) gracing the walls of the Atlantic-Pacific subway station. There's a virtual tour of the exhibit, but it's really worth seeing the works in situ and watching and listening as commuters respond - or don't.

ad Justin

The second Polly Interfaith Study at Congregation B'nai Jeshurun was even more interesting than the first. Some in the audience found Peter Bouteneff's presentation last week patronizing and preachy, so he started with an account of his experiences with interfaith dialogue. He worked for five years with the World Council of Churches in Geneva, and referred us to Leonard Swidler's "Dialogue Decalogue":

Dialogue Decalogue: Ground Rules for Interreligious Dialogue
1st Commandment: The primary purpose of dialogue is to change and grow
in the perception and understanding of reality and then to act accordingly.
2: Interreligious dialogue must be a two-sided project—
within each religious community and between religious communities.
3: Each participant must come to the dialogue with complete honesty and sincerity.
4: Each participant must assume a similar complete
honesty and sincerity in the other partners.
5: Each participant must define him/herself. Conversely—the one
interpreted must be able to recognize him/herself in the interpretation.
6: Each participant must come to the dialogue with no hard-and-fast
assumptions as to where the points of disagreement are.
7: Dialogue can take place only between equals, or par cum pari.
8: Dialogue can take place only on the basis of mutual trust.
9: Persons entering into interreligious dialogue must be at least minimally self-critical of both themselves and their own religious traditions.
10: Each participant eventually must attempt to experience
the partner’s religion “from within.”

Bouteneff has found that people appreciate candor. Only that way you can have "dialogue instead of denial." Especially if you're looking at the first centuries of the Christian church, the selective appropriation and rejection of Judaism is inescapable.

That's well and good, but other forms of denial crept in, most irritatingly a denial that he was doing theology. Even as he stressed that everyone knows "there's scripture, and there's the interpretation of scripture," when questioned he kept saying he was merely "letting the texts speak for themselves." Were he a naive Protestant, this might have been understandable (if still naive), and I can understand as a pedagogue that you don't want to have to say that an outsider can't understand even a single line of your tradition. But still. Especially when you're speaking to Jews, who understand the inescapability of interpretation and the indispensability of commentary, pu-leese.

To be fair (or at least honest), part of my response comes from denial of my own. The early theologians Bouteneff discussed - Justin Martyr, Melitto and Irenaeus - aren't important to me, their variously Platonizing views in fact nearly unintelligible. The post-Holocaust western Christian theology I'm exposed to is philosemitic in a way very few earlier forms of Christian theology were. Judaism is now thought of as the friendly older brother of Christianity, not as the Cain who killed Abel. But there seems no way around the fact that Christians read the scriptures they share with Jews differently than Jews do. For Christians, Second Isaiah is about Jesus - and so is most of the rest of what we call the Old Testament. Does this make Jewish readings wrong? Not necessarily. But incomplete, necessarily. (Some newer Christian theologies assert that Jews have no need of what the New Testament and Christian theology reveal about the Jewish scriptures, but that's still a Christian inclusivist reading.)

It's harder to say this (or think this) in a synagogue than in a classroom, which is why I'm very glad I'm attending this lecture series, for all its frustration. In a synagogue, every sentence about Christianity sounds different. Not just unfamiliar but potentially foolish, self-important and dangerous. I'm not sure what the mostly Jewish audience gets out of this experience, but for me as a Christian this is surely a good exercise.

SoHo

SoHo's stainless steel's structures are certainly something special!

Lincolndarwin day

Today's the 200th anniversary of the birth of two giants: Charles Darwin and Abraham Lincoln. I wonder if anyone celebrated the two together fifty or a hundred years ago? The accident of their coincident birthdays has tempted some to discren some other, more substantive link - were they both empiricists, both moved by a sense of the unity of human kind, both path-breaking nonfiction writers? - but that would be just silly (indeed, an instance of the kind of thinking which Darwin discredited). Let's just enjoy the celebration - a new penny for the great emancipator, and a somewhat naughty set of stamps for the great naturalist. Not that we'll get away with just a day. The bookstores are full of Lincoln books, and the web is overflowing with announcements of Darwin conferences, symposia, etc.

A Marxist in the Vatican?

In Exploring Religious Ethics today, we discussed the first sections of Evangelium Vitae, the 1995 Papal Encyclical defining the "gospel of life" threatened by modern secular society's "culture of death." (Text available here.) Predictably, this was the first Catholic theology most of the students had read: "How does he get off saying what's a just punishment," asked one student, who was justly punished by a long explanation from me of the authority thought by Catholics to inhere in the Holy See - not an authority we need to recognize (though she's Catholic), but which it's important to understand, especially in connection to its sacramental role. (I'm still praying over what balance of justice and mercy is called for by this comment : "However eloquent and passionate he may be, I cannot get past his biblical shenanigans.")

It was also their first exposure to Catholic social teachings. To several, the critique of the alleged amoral "individualism" of modern society sounded like critiques they had encountered before - by Marxists. John Paul II must have been turning in his grave! But it was a revealing observation. The public voice of Catholic social teaching has been eclipsed by the single-minded attention to abortion by a religious right uncommitted to the rest of the gospel of life (for them, as some wag said for the first President Bush, "human life is sacred until the moment of birth"), and then undermined by the moral failure of the hierarchy's collusion with the sexual abuse of children.

I hope it was refreshing and edifying for them to encounter words like these, quoted approvingly from Vatican II:

"Whatever is opposed to life itself, such as any type of murder, genocide, abortion, euthanasia, or wilful self-destruction, whatever violates the integrity of the human person, such as mutilation, torments inflicted on body or mind, attempts to coerce the will itself; whatever insults human dignity, such as subhuman living conditions, arbitrary imprisonment, deportation, slavery, prostitution, the selling of women and children; as well as disgraceful working conditions, where people are treated as mere instruments of gain rather than as free and responsible persons; all these things and others like them are infamies indeed. They poison human society, and they do more harm to those who practise them than to those who suffer from the injury. Moreover, they are a supreme dishonour to the Creator."

(Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World Gaudium et Spes, 27)

View from my window at dusk... no frying, no fat, no oil!