Religion Dispatches
Mark D. Jordan’s recent RD op-ed garnered a response from Peter Steinfels, whose final New York Times column was referenced in the article. Here are both Steinfels’ letter, and Jordan’s response.
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I have limited expectations of reality TV and so maybe my bar was too low, but I actually enjoyed All-American Muslim. That is until about fifteen minutes into the show when I looked at my Facebook and Twitter feeds.
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People love to stay immune from the connections between the sacred and the profane, holy space and “regular” space, tented space and the well-appointed space of a mansion. They try to tell us that politics and religion never meet. Or that money is “dirty” and therefore can get away with its meanness. Deliverance from these false dichotomies is our greatest need as a country. Money is holy and just and good when used for holy and just and good purposes. It is not “dirty” and therefore the property of those naughty boys of Wall Street.
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Makana weighed, in an instant, the pros and cons of pissing off the president and possibly torpedoing a flourishing career. Sure, he’s unlikely to be invited to entertain Obama and friends anytime soon, but no one’s dragged him by the hair to the ground, “nudged” him with a nightstick, or pepper sprayed him at close range. He’s certainly mindful of the difference between his stage and that of the protesters, but Makana sees the same spirit of aloha—a spirituality lost, like so many Hawai’ian protest songs, on many outsiders—as animating even angry dissent with love.
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The first time I went to the American Academy of Religion conference it really got my hopes up. This was the fall of 2006 and, with only a summer in between, I’d just finished college and begun my first year of a PhD program in religious studies…
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For Jeff Sharlet, the weird is out there: lost in the Wild West; hidden behind suburban fences and Hell Houses; on scratchy 1920s blues recordings and Mennonite funerals. His rare gift has been to make friends with the weird and almost make peace with it—which doesn’t mean he’s not skeptical.
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In the last couple of weeks we have been rocked with scandals rooted in some of the worst offenses imaginable: the profanation of sacred trust placed in the protection of children and the disposition of the military dead.
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Besides the weighty matters of truth, justice and protection, Coach Brown prayed for something much less obviously connected to the alleged sexual abuse: a restoration of masculinity to the game of football.
“There are a lot of little boys around the country, today, who are watching this game. And they’re trying to figure out what the definition of manhood is all about. Father, this is it right here. I pray that this game will be a training ground of what manhood looks like.”
When I heard that prayer I couldn’t help but ask, why here and why now? What is it exactly about this scandal that relates to little boys trying to learn what manhood looks like?
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In order to restore meaning to the ideas of freedom and community, Rev. Billy exposes their current bankruptcy through a “religious” performance drawn from institutional, theatrical, and cultural realms. But make no mistake, it is real.
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Even with all its imperfections “All-American Muslim” will open a conversation. The question is: what kind of conversation and where will it take us?
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