(Display Name not set)May 2006 Archives

Once upon a time, the Indianapolis 500 was as American as, well, as NASCAR and Bible Belt Christianity. This weekend's 500 is as loud, fast, and potentially lethal as any stock-car event, but the open-wheel racers of the Indy Racing League circuit are an elite, relatively cosmopolitan set--equestrians to NASCAR's rodeo cowpokes—and the top qualifiers include a Brazilian Catholic, and a Brit about whose denomination this week's Christian Science Monitor's story on faith at the 500 is suspiciously silent.

But the Monitor makes clear that NASCAR doesn't hold a monopoly on monotheism. Though pit-side prayer meetings are not common, the circuit does have an official chaplain who arranges for services for the racers in their venues around the world. And where three dozen cars go into a turn at 180 m.p.h., there are guaranteed to be few aetheists. "I find myself really leaning hard on my relationship with God," one competitor tells the Monitor. Sam Hornish, who holds the pole position for Sunday's race, says that as a child he considered becoming a minister.

For parents who strive to get to church on time each week, however, the best insight into Hornish's calling comes when he also notes that his family attended a church 30 miles away from their home. That, ladies and gentlemen, is how race-car drivers are made.

It's generally a sign of a rock star's age--and fading relevance--when her fans are called "the faithful," even when the artist in question is the renegade Roman Catholic-turned-Kabbalist Madonna. At 47, the singer kicked off her latest world tour this week with an act patently designed to appeal to her die-hards, who like their irreverence adminstered with a little glitz. Halfway through her accustomed set of costume changes and simulated sex acts, Mrs. Ritchie performed her '80s hit "Live to Tell" while affixed to a mirrored cross and wearing a crown of thorns. "Just another day at the office for Madonna," yawned her hometown paper, London's Daily Mail.

Madonna once earned herself great notoriety, of course, by hashing out her none-too-original but flashily expressed feelings about Catholicism in her videos and stage shows. Once upon a time, before "The DaVinci Code," the Vatican condemned her "Like a Prayer" video, in which singer frolicked amid burning crosses and danced with a black Jesus. But in a time when the church is fending off claims that Jesus was married with children, and Christ is spurting blood like a geyser from the cross in Mel's "Passion," neither Jesus' sexuality nor his death retains much power to shock.

Her mock crucifixion's impact is doubtless diluted, too, by Madonna's own abandonment of Catholicism for Jewish mysticism. (Last night's show also included a shofar, the ritual ram's horn blown at the Jewish New Year.) Surely, one benefit of adopting Kabbalah is being rid one's lapsed-Catholic hangups--unless, as we begin to suspect, Madonna's martyrdom complex never had much to do with the church or Jesus. In an odd complement to her "Like a Virgin" number, slides of Madonna's broken bones, suffered in a fall from a horse, flashed behind her on a mammoth screen, like the relics of St. Madge. When you attain the rarified stratosphere Madonna operates in, who but Jesus can really feel your pain?

So while the Catholic League and Madonna's hometown state religion, the Church of England, have made their usual protests to her new show, their defense of the traditional cross feels off point. Asked an Anglican spokesman, "Is Madonna prepared to take on everything else that goes with wearing a crown of thorns?" Duh, dude, she totally already has!

Thank heaven for little girls, goes the old song. Thank Sonny Sandoval, of the Christian heavy-metal group P.O.D., for the most popular new name for little girls: Nevaeh--or "heaven" written backwards. Since Sandoval revealed his then-new daughter's name during an MTV appearance in 2000, the incidence of Neveah has rocketed from just eight girls to 70th, by far the fastest rise in that period. Before Sandoval, the only inspiration for the name, according to research by Cleveland Evans, author of "The Great Big Book of Baby Names," were the novels of V.C. Andrews, whose teenage heroine was nicknamed Heaven.

Though the New York Times says evangelical Christians are prone to naming their children Nevaeh, Evans says the popularity of the name has less to do with religious fervor than the association—as in the old song—with little girls and heaven, or angels.

The name almost necessarily presumes an admirable lack of superstition as well, given the traditional connection of backward-spelled words, especially holy ones, with mayhem, or Satan himself. From ancient Egypt to Stanley Kubrick's "redrum," reversing the letters of a word has been a means of summoning evil--"live" spelled backwards.

John Travolta and Tom Cruise aren't the only Scientology fans in Tinsel Town. In an article titled "Why Scientology is Good For Hollywood," design writer Alissa Walker praises the organization for sustaining architectural landmarks in the area's seedy downtown. "With seemingly little self-awareness, Scientology has become the unofficial pioneer of Hollywood’s gentrification movement," Walker writes. The old Guaranty Building, above, a 1920s Beaux Arts gem where gossip columnist Hedda Hopper had her office, houses Scientology's headquarters, while nearby the historic Hotel Christie sports a half-block-long SC-I-E-N-T-O-L-O-G-Y sign. But, says Walker, " The crown jewel of Scientology’s heirlooms is the Chateau Elysee, a 1929 replica of a 17th century French chateau now known as the Celebrity Centre International.

To get a glimpse of the chateau's interior, Walker hazards a tour of the Celebrity Centre, even allowing her e-meter readings to be taken for a chance to see the building's fabled garden. "Maybe, I thought, in Scientology speak, architectural renovation serves as a stirring metaphor for spiritual rebirth. As students of Scientology ascend the Bridge towards total self-determinism, maybe they also climb the architectural ranks," she says, "the penthouse of the Chateau Elysee tantalizing them along with their dreams of becoming level-seven Operating Thetans."

Alvin the Chipmunk; Geddy Lee of Rush; Polyphonic Spree; The Violent Femmes' Gordon Gano... Daniel Smith, the leader of the indie-gospel band Danielson Famile (sic), has been compared to any number of musical masters. The Famile's new album, "Ships," shows both why critics reach for familiar anchors to try to make sense of Smith's music, and why all comparisons are useless. The album, which The Philadelphia Inquirer saluted as "difficult but compelling," is a clattering, upbeat and nearly indechiperable collection, inspired by a love of Jesus.

The Danielson Famile grew from a real set of Smith brothers and sisters raised by a Pentecostal father in rural New Jersey (and you thought "indie-gospel" was an oxymoron). Though they don't witness on stage, group members do commonly wear nurse and doctor togs (to symbolize the healing of their music) or perform from inside a papier-mache tree (bearing the good fruit), and Smith unabashedly proclaims their faith in interviews. First recorded by the geniuses at Tooth & Nail, the decidedly non-Nashville Christian label, Danielson has become a cult favorite, providing songs for the recent indie film "Thumbsucker" and becoming the subject of a documentary film which showed recently at the South By Southwest festival.

One more sign that the Christian musical ghetto is crumbling? Well, maybe: Though Danielson is accepted within Christian circles, they are too off-kilter and oblique in their lyrics to set off alarm bells with secular audiences. All the same, their faith has operated, says Smith, "as a wonderful monkey wrench." Isn't that precisely what Christ intended? Click here and scroll down to hear some of the new CD.

Rick Ross--head of the Rick A. Ross Institute for the Study of Destructive Cults, Controversial Groups and Movements--tracks benign as well as malignant para-religious groups on his site Cult News. Ross reports that the influence of nontraditional religion has been...

For the group we might call "Graham Green Catholics," the flap generated by the upcoming release of "The Da Vinci Code" is another arrow in the side. The Catholic intellectual of the 20th century saw culture and art as another...

The Church of England has a surfeit of organs, but the ranks of organists to play them on Sunday morning is thinning. The dilemma has led to the runaway success of the HT 300 Hymnal-Plus, a machine that can play...