Rod Dreher: July 2008 Archives

It's been many years since I read Anne Rice's "Interview with the Vampire" and "The Vampire Lestat," but I recall liking them very much (the movie of the first book, not -- nor any of Rice's subsequent fiction). Fr. Dwight Longenecker has a nice interview with Rice on the First Things site, in which the author talks about her reversion to the Catholic faith. Hard to believe the woman who wrote "Lasher" is now talking this way. Praise God! Excerpt:

How did your scholarly research affect your personal quest for Jesus the Lord?

My own biblical scholarship has drawn me closer to the Lord. I have found the gospels to be utterly convincing first-person witness to Jesus, and my studies have led me to conclude that the tradition regarding the writing of the gospels is in fact the truth.

John bar Zebedee wrote the books attributed to him; Matthew the tax collector did write Matthew; Luke is the physician who traveled with Paul; and Mark did transcribe Peter's sermons. My evaluation of this involved intense study of the Scripture itself for the "voice" of the person writing the document, and studies of the work of Bauchkham and Hengel and John A.T.Robinson as mentioned above.

The time I have spent reading Scripture has deepened my sense of obligation to our blessed Savior and my intense desire to write books for Him. He is alive for me in the pages of the Bible, far more than I ever dreamed he would be when I began my own quest in 2002.

I feel that my meditation on the gospels and my reading of ancient historians have all deepened my sense of the world in which Jesus likely moved from day to day. I feel myself drawing closer and closer to our Lord as I work, which is both a good thing and also a frightening and sometimes intimidating thing.

Daniel Larison says that most conservatives intuitively understand the importance of cultivating virtuous personal habits for the sake of the common good, and would even admit that maintaining an institution like the family meal serves an important purpose beyond the mere nourishment of our physical bodies:

Even so, to then say that it matters in some important way what they eat, where it comes from or how the animals and soil that provide them sustenance are treated is usually to lose much of their interest. Suddenly, as if out of nowhere, the language of unfettered desire and autonomy crops up: "I want what I want, and who are you to say otherwise?" At least with many libertarians, this is to be expected, but it is a strange reflex for those who are supposed to prize restraint and wisdom.

To say that eating is a political act worries conservatives because many seem to cling, oddly enough, to an old liberal conception of private, personal life that they wish to preserve free from outside interference, including ultimately the "interference" of neighbors, relatives and local community. Where social conservatives are often keenly aware of the effects that individual choices concerning marriage, child-bearing and child-rearing have on society as a whole, there often seems to be a strange disconnect when it comes to eating, as if an act that ties us into an elaborate web of economic relationships has no greater significance and no other implications other than providing nourishment. It is one kind of activity, perhaps the only kind, where many conservatives act as if the consequences of personal choices do not extend beyond the front door.[Emphasis added. -- RD]

Writing in Salon, physicist Karl Giberson identifies P.Z. Myers as a Torquemada in the Religion of Science:

As a fellow scientist (I have a Ph.D. in physics), I share Myers' enthusiasm for fresh eyes, questioning minds and the power of science. And I worry about dogmatism and the kind of zealotry that motivates the faithful to blow themselves up, shoot abortion doctors and persecute homosexuals. But I also worry about narrow exclusiveness that champions the scientific way of knowing to the exclusion of all else. I don't like to see science turned into a club to bash religious believers.

He goes on to talk about people like Myers and Myers' betters, who make science into a kind of religion:

Can a religion be built on nature and science, rather than God and sacred texts? And, if it could, would it be better than the old-fashioned religions it is replacing? If our present religions, like milk in our refrigerators, have all expired, we need a replacement to meet our mythopoeic needs. Can science do this for everyone, and not just the residents of ivory towers?

For starters, getting people to worship the new scientific creation story will be no easy task. A few dynamic speakers, like Brian Greene and, until recently, Stephen Hawking, can fill auditoriums with gee-whiz scientific stories of hidden dimensions and many universes. But most people prefer to watch sports and, perhaps not surprisingly, even more attend conventional religious services. Darwinism and big-bang cosmology have never been near and dear to human hearts, especially those filled with old-time religion. Sure, there are true believers who find these scientific ideas awesome in the most literal sense of that word. I am happy to place myself in this group. I can be moved to tears by the transcendent beauty of a math equation.

For science to become a true object of worship, it must elbow aside the reassuring and seductively simple belief that "God loves you." This deeply personal faith statement would have to be replaced with one that says something like: "The cosmos worked really long and hard to create you and you should be really appreciative."

But let's assume for the moment that this is possible -- that science can be canonized, moralized, transcendentalized and politicized into a replacement religion, with followers, codes of conduct, celebrated texts and sacred blogs, houses of worship, "saints" of some sort and inquisitors of another sort. And let's suppose that it's possible for this new religion to move out of the ivory towers of academia, where it lives now, to take its place alongside the other "world" religions, attracting hundreds of millions of adherents drawn from the main streets of the world and all walks of life. What would this new religion be like once it became institutionalized? After all, if religion fills a genuine human need, something has to fill the hole created by its passing -- something that appeals to billions of people.

Could we be sure, for example, that this new scientific religion would not give rise to the extremism and aberrant behavior that plague conventional religions?

Of course it would do precisely that. To paraphrase Solzhenitsyn, the line between good and evil does not run between science and religion, but rather through the human heart.

I had not realized how completely and utterly ridiculous this Episcopal Bishop Catherine Roskam was until a priest friend reminded me that she was the force behind the "Hip-Hop Eucharist" a few years back. Excerpt:

Picture this: an altar; an earth-shattering sound system; people of all ages "jamming to the groove"; and an Episcopal bishop rapping and feeling the beat. It's the revolutionary liturgical outreach unfolding in the Bronx and it's taking religion to the streets in the language of today -- Hip Hop!

"My sistas and brothas, all my homies and peeps, stay up -- keep your head up, holla back, and go forth and tell like it is." With this proclamation, Bishop Suffragan Cathy Roskam of New York sent people on their way at the Bronx's third Hip Hop Mass, held Friday, July 2 at Trinity Church of Morrisania.

Is there anything quite as excruciating as an elderly white lady trying to be hip? But wait, there's more! Here is the 23rd Psalm, as adapted for that liturgy:

The 23rd Psalm

The Lord is all that, I need
For nothing
He allows me to chill.
He keeps me from being heated
And allows me to breathe easy.
He guides my life so that
I can represent and give
Shouts out in his Name.
And even though I walk through
The Hood of death,
I don't back down
For you have my back.
The fact that you have me covered
Allows me to chill.
He provides me with back-up
In front of my player-haters
And I know that I am a baler
And life will be phat
I fall back in the Lord's crib
For the rest of my life

And the African Anglicans, who actually are serious Christians, are supposed to look to La Roskam as a guide? This is one reason why TEC is withering on the vine, while Anglicanism in Africa is bearing great fruit.

Kevin asked in a thread below if we could have a new thread devoted not to arguing over fat, but simply to sharing experiences and advice on how to cook healthy food for families on a budget. Great idea! Let this be that how-to thread.