A riff on an old holiday favorite:

Scene: Moments after being fooled into his annual place-kick attempt by Lucy, a depressed Charlie Brown shuffles over to Lucy’s psychiatric help booth. After paying his co-pay, the dialog ensues.

Lucy: Well, now, what seems to be the trouble?

Charlie Brown: I feel depressed. Every year it’s the same. It’s Halloween again, and I always get a bag full of rocks, I get made fun of and made a model for a pumpkin carving, I never get to share the fun with my best friend Linus because he’s always freezing out in the pumpkin patch, and I always worry about my baby sister, who misses all the fun.

Lucy: Well, the very fact that you realize you are feeling this way indicates you are not too far gone. We need to pinpoint your fears. Maybe you have wiccaphobia. This is fear of witches.

Charlie Brown: I don’t think that’s quite it.

Lucy: Or maybe you have phasmophobia, which is fear of ghosts.

Charlie Brown: Well, sort of, but I’m not sure.

Lucy: Or perhaps you have coimetrophobia. This is the fear of cemeteries.

Charlie Brown: No, that’s not it.

Lucy: Or maybe you have Samhainophobia. Do you think you have Samhainophobia?

Charlie Brown: What’s Samhainophobia?

Lucy: The fear of Halloween!

Charlie Brown: THAT’S IT!!!!!

End Scene

Ol’ Chuck isn’t alone. In fact, I would suggest even that the fear of Halloween itself is a strong part of contemporary Halloween lore.  Which is why we get reports like this and studies like this. It used to be mostly evangelical Christians who demonstrated such open disdain for Halloween, which I wrote about as part of my blog entry from exactly two years ago. In that post, I wrote

Instead of remembering the sacred aspect of Halloween, many Christians prefer to avoid it all together as a glorification of evil, a notion to which I’m kinda sympathetic, but when I start working with this as religious phenomena, I’m accused of trivializing evil rather than recognize the vestiges of anything sacred in it. So I’m trivializing evil here, but the same routine vis-a-vis Christmas leads to trivializing the sacred, and usually by the same crowd of critics.

The most frequent response among evangelicals has, historically, been to “domesticate” Halloween by keeping observance of it in the home on the one hand and to limit the activity to more of a celebration of autumn, change of season, and the beginning of harvest. Jack o Lantern’s are welcome, as long as they aren’t too scary looking (or gross, or completely inappropriate…). Churches, and now schools, sponsor costumed Harvest Festivals, complete with bonfires and cookouts, games, and, of course, candy.

I love this, because it’s so ironic, because this taming and domestication of Halloween (especially by Christians and churches concerned with the “playing with evil” and the emphasis on death, the grotesque, the monstrous, and the demonic) is a return to the origins of Halloween in the Celtic festival of Samhain. We don’t know much about Samhain; in fact, we know a lot less than many Halloween fanatics think we know. Certainly it is very old, and likely pre-dates Christianity; at the very least it pre-dates Christian missionary activity to Celtic peoples in Europe (who were not only located in Ireland). What we know comes from much later Irish sagas and legends that were not written until the 9th -12th centuries, many hundreds of years after the arrival of missionaries such as St. Patrick (5th century). By the time they were written, the Church was well-aware of the festival and did everything it could to figure out a way to incorporate it into its own calendar of liturgical feast days, starting with the Feast of All Saints on November 1, then All Souls’ Day on November 2. In Middle English, “All Saints” translated into “All Hallows”, which still means “sanctified” or “holy,” and the evening before became “All Hallow’s Even, or “Hallowe’en,” corresponding exactly with the celebration of ancient Samhain.

So much for the church’s efforts there; but what did Samhain entail, and what carryovers are there now in today’s “domestication” of Halloween? Samhain was the first day of the new year in the Celtic calendar and was the first day of winter, marking the end of the farmer’s year. Everything had to be harvested, stored, and eaten, and it was a time for partying and big bonfires. It was also the beginning of the darkest season of the year, and when vegetation dies. In the Irish sagas, everything revolved around Samhain; wars fought, journeys started, and heroes are born. We find in the sagas tales of heros going door-to-door, begging for treats and food on Samhain, an ancestor of our own trick-or-treating tradition. It is also on Samhain that the doors of the underworld are open, just as it they are now for horror flicks at the theatres. In another saga, a race of supernatural creatures demand tribute from the new harvest from humans on Samhain, who leave out food at the entrance to their homes by hanging the harvest on the doors, thresholds, and crossings for their supernatural overlords.

What about dear old Jack? Jack was a blacksmith who, the story goes, was too evil to get into heaven but too smart to remain in hell; he tricks the devil into kicking him out of hell, and on his way out the door, grabs a handful of burning coal (or straw, according to various traditions) and puts it into the pumpkin he’s been eating, using this as his lantern as he wanders the world between the world above and the underworld, and on Samhain’s Eve, when all the doors are open, he comes and goes at will.

Anyhow. I could go all Bakhtin here and go into the importance of masquerading, transitional spaces, and carnivale and so forth, which is so important as well. I’m happy to do so in the comments, if there are any. But I just wanted to point out that the Samhainophobia that is now part of the Halloween experience has ironically led to a return to Halloween’s pagan origins more than it has “tamed” or even “Christianized” the holiday. So go out and enjoy it tonight!

It has come to my attention that there is, apparently, a new reason to stay with a church that doesn’t fulfill any real need in your spiritual, emotional, religious, psychological, of family life, and that may even harm those by staying on: guilt-psychology.

One thing that churches have always made a special mission of is assistance to parishioners and community members in need. I myself have benefited from this in the past; many churches have special funds for this, or collect “deacon’s offerings” specifically for helping out families in financial trouble, and so on. It’s commendable, and biblical besides.

But the church is not a bank, and neither is it a “social service agency,” although there’s nothing wrong with it filling those roles. And the church MUST KNOW that it absolutely cannot expect anything in return when it dispenses this kind of assistance to anyone, whether they attend the church or not. When the church fails to realize this, there’s trouble. When the church expects certain things from you in return, it is no longer a church.

Admittedly, it’s natural to feel some sense of obligation to a church or anyone else who helps you out when you’re hard up. But when a church fails to meet spiritual and emotional and religious needs, one should not feel obligated to “stick it out” simply because it gave you some help at some point. And just as importantly, the church should understand that, for any number of reasons, as people grow and mature in their spirituality, in their religious needs, in Scripture, in Christ, and so on, many will find that the church they go to (and received help from) no longer meets the needs of their spirit. It goes without saying here that not all churches recognize this last observation, believing themselves to be either just as good as anyone else on the one hand, or among those churches (usually fundamentalist in some way, shape, or form) who believe that if your needs are not being met, the fault lies with YOU, and not with them.  To prevent people from leaving, these kinds of churches will go on the power/authority trip and lay on a thick layer of guilt about “everything we’ve done for you, and this is how you show your gratitude, by leaving us.”  There’s no chance to even discuss the real issues when this kind of crap comes out.

As I see it, there are two options. The first is the easiest; just say “screw it,” wash your hands of the place, and move on, no matter how many phone calls you get or requests for a “meeting.”

The second option is the more difficult, and that’s to actually try to address all the reasons why you are in the process of leaving the parish you’ve been going to. It is difficult because it requires honest introspection on your part about all the reasons why you leave a place, and you may find that some of those reasons may not be very good. It is also difficult because you are putting yourself at risk of being taken advantage of by an “expert” (like the bent-out-of-shape pastor of the church) who is trained to make people feel guilty as part of his theological and psychological vocation. He’ll have an answer for every legitimate point you make about why you are leaving, and not many of us will be able to rebut him (or her), and even if we could, they would not take the rebuttals seriously because “they KNOW they know more” than you do. Big on theology, big on doctrine, small on sense, small on sensitivity, understanding, and compassion.

It’s a sad situation. But it’s time to go for sure. And hopefully the reasons for it are clear.

So, I just finished the final evaluations for the course I just taught on Jesus and Muhammad, which was an intensive month-long course that (I hope) accomplished two primary things: (1) provide the students with the primary biographical sources of Jesus (gospels) and Muhammad (Sirah) in order to (2) give the students a yardstick to assess the ways in which both Jesus and Muhammad are represented and used for different rhetorical and political purposes both in the past and in the present. I was lucky to have a group of seven excellent students who took the course seriously (most of the time).

In short courses like this, it can be a challenge to provide evaluations and assessments that really provide students with an idea of “where they’re at”. There is only so much reading, and so much class participation, and so much essaying or reviewing students can do in a month’s time.  In the end, I feel like most of the class came to realize to various degrees that when it comes to Jesus and Muhammad (and the Buddha or any other significant religious figure) what we are dealing with is not with the  historical figure, but with the constructions created by either friends or foes to the traditions they represent. 

Rather than assess on information, it is important to realize that we need to assess on knowledge and understanding, even if the store of “facts” and “information” is not what we might want it to be.

As a homeschooling family, every year we’re confronted with the  task of buying curricula for various subjects; math, reading, grammar, and… science. As a homeschooling family involved in the local coop, there are, um, certain expectations revolving around the science curriculum. If you do it with the coop group, for example, it is a pretty standard, “creationist” science orientation. (And yes, I’m fully aware of the problem placing “creationist” and “science” right next to each other in the same sentence.) If you DON’T have your kid do their science with the coop, it’s assumed that you’re doing  creationism at home. At the very least, something Intelligent Design-ish.  But to actually teach evolution? If you’re going to do that, you might as well forget homeschooling altogether and just stick your kid into your local secular, democrat, hegemonic public school.

The Gorge Trail runs at the base of the glen.

An anecdote: a few weekends back I spent a spectacular day at Robert Treman State Park in New York, which houses two glacial glens and some breathtaking gorges and waterfalls. You cannot but be stunned by the power of water and time and what it can do to rock.  I commented something to this effect; my 8 year old gets my drift and asks “how old is all this daddy?” Before being able to answer, the wife cuts in “oh, sometime between Adam and Noah, honey.” Well, yeah, that puts it in a context that the kid can understand and is still sufficiently vague enough to allow for a LOT of time. Fine, but when I pointed out that the glens were formed over a number of ice ages over two million years, well before “Adam,” I got the cynical “well, who knows if the earth is even that old anyway.”

Sigh.

Look, having been brought up fundamental Christian and who yet still is somehow wired to find elements of the sacred in the natural world, I have had a long struggle with evolution. But I can say this; I’m more unimpressed by religious responses to Darwin and evolution than I am by  evolution itself. Let me be clear: I take Darwin’s understanding to be a reasonably close approximation of how life has developed, and natural geological physics to be an equally fair approximation of the formation of planet earth as we now live in and experience it. In my own religious and academic development, I have gone from the combative creationist to the reluctant Intelligent Designist to a rather apathetic “science is science, and Bible is Bible, and ne’er shall the twain meet” approach. Now, not only do I find all three of these standard Christian “reactions” wide of the mark, but in reality irresponsible theologically as well as scientifically.

Part of the reason I’ve turned my back on these three so-called Christian/religious opposing positions is that I’ve come to realize that these, in fact, all give assent to the materialist skepticism promoted by the leading lights of neo-Darwinian evolutionary thought (namely Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, and Stephen Jay Gould) who have argued that religion, theology, and evolutionary science are fundamentally irreconcilable with each other. On this, Creationism, Intelligent Design, and “separatists” agree with their hostile critics, thus ceding the defining terms of the debate to their opponents. I no longer believe this starting point is even true, and as a result, I have to pull the rug out from under pseudo-scientific Creationism, Intelligent Design, and the separatist wall between church and scientia.

What this means is that I’m not signing off on a classically Christian fundamentalist oppostion curriculum for my school to teach (as homeschooling principal and Chair of the School Board) and I’m not signing off on my kids getting pseudo-science from the local coop (as the concerned, diligent parent). For the purposes of basic elementary education of my two kids, though, separatism is probably the best approach; teach Bible, teach science, and teach them both right and on their own disciplinary terms. In the meantime, during expeditions such as we love going on, I need to work on an evolutionary theology to make room for science in the concept of the sacred, and make room for the sacred in natural, scientific, evolutionary history. As a result, I’ve started a most fascinating powder-keg of a book by John F. Haught entitled God After Darwin. Highly, HIGHLY recommended. I’ll report back with some results as I make some headway.

I’m amazed at how much the process of finding gainful employment has utterly destroyed my desire to do things I used to love doing.

Like blog, for example.

Back in the day, I’d be contributing all kinds of thoughts about the recent US and, especially Iranian elections, about the inherent issues in picking a homeschool science curriculum in a cooperative network of (more-or-less) Christian fundamentalists on such matters, my own work and interesting issues that pop up in the classroom, and my own reading, like I used to.

But the reality is this: I’m. Wiped. Out.

Emotionally drained Physically tired. And, truth be told, scared witless out of the possibility that after 3+ graduate degrees, 14+ years of schooling beyond my BA, and abandoning an unfulfilling career that nevertheless paid for the expenses of my family, I’m no better off than when I graduated from high school, because that’s what I’m facing at the moment, only now with a wife of almost 15 years and an almost 7 and almost 9 year old to complete the package.

Counting my “unfinished” blogs stored in the “drafts” area of WordPress, I see a baker’s dozen. And that doesn’t include the notebook of “blog topics” I keep that never goes anywhere.

I guess I’m amazed at how much “uncertainty” can affect me. I’m wondering if maybe going back to blogging might somehow by psychologically advantageous, if I can find the time, between conference paper preparations, dissertation writing, class preparation, and job-searching.

Sorry, gang. I have a lot of good stuff in the mind. But I just cant get it out.

Stan, Reg, Francis, and Judith discuss Stan's right to have babies.

“I’m not oppressing you, Stan, you haven’t got a womb!”

So says Reg, the apparent leader of the PFJ in Monty Python’s Life of Brian, to Stan, who wants to be a woman so that he can have babies.  Confronted with the reality of biological reproduction, Stan feels that anyone who disagrees with his “right as a man to want to have babies” is oppressing him; Reg, of course (played by John Cleese) thinks that this is just as ridiculous as the idea of Stan (Eric Idle) wanting babies in the first place.

I recently had some conversations with a few of the evangelical student leaders on campus over the weekend that reminded me of this scene. One guy was commenting on how he expects the College “is counting the days until [the evangelical campus chaplain] retires,” seeing as how when he does the Chapel won’t have any “real Christians” to minister to the students.  Another, one of the leaders of InterVarsity here, told me that he would never counsel “his students” to take any courses in religion here, and especially not any in Bible or Christianity, and he was shocked when I told him that, actually, our main Bible scholar is in fact a very active Presbyterian who has an M.Div from Southern in Louisville, and that I have taught this course for the School a few times as well.  “Still, it’s just really dangerous.” A third individual, a friend of mine in fact, gave a talk to the InterVarsity group that revolved around various “dangers and pitfalls” for “Christian students” to be on their guard against in their classes, especially classes on the Bible and the History of Christianity.

In all these conversations, I got the sense that these Evangelicals think of themselves as being oppressed, and that they like it that way. And the students (who I don’t think believe that they are under any form of oppression) are being taught and encouraged to think that they are.

As Reg says to Stan later on in that same scene: “What’s the point?”

It would seem that on college and university campuses evangelical students are being told by their mentors that everyone outside of “our” way of thinking about Christians and Christianity and, in fact religion in general are oppressing “us.” Come on. There’s no oppression here. When Professor X discusses the Documentary Hypothesis, students raised on the conservative (both Jewish and Evangelical Christian) belief of single, Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch are not being oppressed, persecuted, or anything of the sort. Why cultivate this?

“What’s the point of fighting for his right to have babies when he can’t have babies?!”

So the question is put to me, what’s so wrong with a denomination establishing criteria of doctrinal consent that are required for official ordained ministry within the denomination? It came up during a documentary that included discussion of the 5 fundamentals of early 20^th century Presbyterianism and the resulting division in the church (and which paved the way for mid-twentieth century evangelical-liberal fear of each other in general).

My answer is that there’s basically nothing wrong with doing this, so long as it is recognized that this is not a universal absolute that has to be adhered to by everyone. In other words, if the denomination recognizes that this is essentially the “membership standard” in order to be part of the club of Denomination X and not membership requirements for determining who is “Christian” and who isn’t, fine.

More specifically, some denominations (such as the PCUSA) have historically been at the forefront of “updating” the Christian mission to reflect the needs of the age it finds itself in. 100 years ago, it was science and modernity, and the 5 fundamentals reflect the issues the church was faced with in how to do Christian work. In particular, colonialism, Darwinism, historical criticism, “progress,” scientific and psychoanalytic analysis, and so on, all hallmarks of modernity, were the major issues confronting the churches, and the Fundamentals themselves were completely modernist answers to a very modernist slate of issues. Absolute certainty in religion was the mirror image of absolute certainty in science and historical factuality.

As seminaries now are very clear that their mission is no longer “conversion” to Christianity, many conservatives and fundamentalists, I think, misunderstand what is going on with current Christian training. If it is truly Christian, as I’ve written on this blog in the past, there is but one essential, and that is the confession of Christ as Lord and Master. If a church’s work and mission stems from this, it is doing Christian work, Kingdom work, as I call it. Conversion may or may not be a part of this. What is happening with Seminaries and Churches and other institutions that are in the field of Christian vocations is they are cognizant of the fact that “conversion” is virtually synonymous with Colonialism, and specifically western colonialism. It recognizes that doing Kingdom work does not mean “making everyone a Christian.” But many conservatives and fundamentalists think this is exactly what it means to save the world: convert every last person to Christianity.

God save us, no!

The Church should have standards for its own governance, and it needs ways and means and an ethic of not being of the world even while it is in it. And those should be determined through much critical thought and excruciating prayer. But our mission is not to make everyone in the world “like us.” Confessing Christ’s lordship means not turning the world into a planet of Christians, let alone Presbyterians or Baptists or Methodists or Adventists or what-have-yous. Our mission is simply to bring the Kingdom of God to places where it is needed most. And these days, I daresay that the places it is most needed is in the institutional churches themselves. Getting all caught up in absolutes and certainties and doctrines and issues of “who’s in and who’s out” distracts us from our real work: to love our neighbors as ourselves, to love God with all our heart, strength, soul, and mind, to act justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with God; and to preach Christ crucified, using words only when necessary.

Leaving the commentary on President Obama’s speech to more qualified individuals, I thought that the President fully recognized the trickle effect of the economic situation right now into the three areas of domestic affairs most desperately in need of reform. Obama realistically described the nasty circle between the need for credit and the success of small business, home owners, and so on, but he also, I think, seemed to tacitly acknowledge that an economy that depends on credit more than any other factor is unsustainable and offered us ways to keep money in the nation and local communities. Obama also laid out what some of us have known for years but what needs to be repeated ad nauseum, which is the connection between the economy and the energy industry; an unsustainable industry of energy consumption is the harbinger to a failed economy. And  correcting this starts with education, which starts – end ends! – at home, welcome words to those who homeschool.

It’s nice to take a break from the dissertation and the job search.

1 Thessalonians 4.13-18

Isaiah 2.12-22