It’s a topic that jumped up like a stunned ferret from God’s own hot plate three separate times recently ”” indicating, I think, that I’d better pay some sort of attention to it ”” the topic being the obvious but still desperately under-discussed idea that perhaps the most dangerous problem facing man in this modern age of radical technology and dazzling scientific conundrum and otherworldly raspberry vodka and ever-expanding notions of love and sex and human interconnection is the sad and treacherous fact that, well, religion and belief as we know them in America are, by and large, far too horribly stuck, limited, fixed in time and place and stiff karmic cement.
Put another way: We as a culture just might be suffering a slow, painful death by spiritual stagnation, by ideological stasis, by cosmic rigor mortis. It has become painfully, lethally obvious in the age of George W. Bush and authoritarian groupthink that our major religious systems and foundations don’t know how to move. They don’t learn, adjust, evolve, see things anew. They don’t know how to dance. And what’s more, this little problem might just be the death of us all.
The idea is everywhere, and not just in the obvious, sour religious outhouses of evangelical Christianity and fundamentalist Islam and rigid Catholicism. It even popped up while I was in conversation with tattooed Buddhist and author of “Dharma Punx” Noah Levine at the Roxie theater during LitQuake ’07, he and I chatting about the dangers of dogma and the problem of trying to adhere too closely, too severely, to classical Buddhist rules of behavior, concluding that even Buddhism has its dangers, its limits and its issues and general theological potholes.
Goodness me. An author who manages to get let the spirit, the flesh, the id truly breathe all in one phrase … now that’s a broad canvas. Genesis, St Paul, Freud, all in one … it reminds me of a comment about Sartre’s book Being and Nothingness that it was the most comprehensive book title ever – and also the emptiest.
Morford is certifiable. One of his recent columns decried the legions of idiots being churned out by America’s public schools, as evidenced by a pal of his who teaches in the Oakland public school system. The villains, you won’t be shocked to learn, are the usual susects: drooling Christian fundamentalists and KKKorporate plutocrats who want a lobotomized consumer base. As if either of these groups could get within ten miles of a bay-area school…
Are you going to post excerpts from the Communist Manifesto next? Morford leaves nothing in his wake but a deeper sense of the possibility of human fatuity and condescending contempt.
I suppose this post is condescending and contemptuous too, but I come from a tradition that has an ideal of the summum bonum that goes past novelty in the stimulation of sensory nerve endings.
They let this guy walk around loose?
I don’t think that he wants his banker, his plumber, or his lawyer to be as free and creative as he thinks religious people should be. Somewhere he has ideas of things that are and must be unchangeable, even if he does not admit it.
He has it exactly turned around, of course. It’s his agenda for meaninglessness that has already robbed our time of religion and its genuine ecstasy.
Morford has a column Monday and Wednesday in the entertainment section of the SF Chronicle. He is a hysterical hater of Christianity, America, and of course Bush and his crowd. He has it in more much of American culture. I must say that like others who poison the atmosphere here he comes from somewhere else, in the case Spokane Wash.
Actualy, the more apt folowup to Morford would be James Wolcott. 🙁
For Heaven’s sake, Kendall, whywould you post this? And you did not closeTHIS to comments! This is sloppy, careless, incompetent writing of the worst sort. There is neither a trace of intellection nor of perceptiveness. It is without merit, wholly without merit. And it is here for what reason? LM
I think the one of the strongest proofs of the piece’s unsuitability is the temperate nature of the comments. This man’s writing is so far removed from sensibilty that we aren’t even angry with him.
dear brother Kendall –
Are you going to next post untranslated articles from the Süddeutscher Zeitung or untranslated sermons of St Chrysostom?
Their idiom is no less incomprehensible than Morford’s around here, apparently.
FWIW, the education article referenced in the comments here was a downright *conservative rant, if one read it with understanding, but, unsurprisingly, noone here did. If it’s any consolation, I doubt any of those who *should have got it did, either.
Might as well post Rilke in German.
Nobody listens.
Mainstream Christianity has been dancing. It’s the danse macabre.
The reason for posting may be that there are lots of people who believe this stuff. My daughter works at Barnes & Noble, and hears anti-religious talk ad nauseum from both staff and customers.
The last line was the punch line and Feuerbach would have smiled and introduced us to his friend, Karl.
Hey, rob k ! Ease up of Spokane.
Hakkatan , I need to clean my keyboard, I had a mouthfull of coffee when I read your post!
I rise in defense of Kendall, our gracious host.
This is a piece which does not require questioning of its value to post, but requires each of us to pose a proper defense of Christianity. These are times where people of many origins are questioning the validity of the truth claims of Jesus and our duty, just as Paul did at the Areopagus, it to proclaim the unknown God (acts 17) so that he can be known.
“22Paul then stood up in the meeting of the Areopagus and said: “Men of Athens! I see that in every way you are very religious. 23For as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: TO AN UNKNOWN GOD. Now what you worship as something unknown I am going to proclaim to you.
Regardless of this guy’s belief or non belief, his testimony, which declares an unknown God, can be used for the glory of the God that we know (Rom 8:28). He declares that all is hopeless, we declare the Hope of Glory that is in Christ Jesus. Rather than shoot at Kendall for finding this writing, let’s use this blog to hone our skills so that our words are ready when we are confronted with this philosophy.
Oh, yeah, we dance all of the time – for Joy and in the hope of the power of the resurrection.
No. 13 – Sorry, Jeff. I like Spokane, though.
no. 9 – Ed – You’re right that we should not take Morford seriously. He is such an ass. I’ve tried to tell myself something like what you have said here, rather than getting too irate when I read his column. I wish the paper would have a regular columnist who would make fun of the solemnities of the faithless and new age people that are so current everywhere. It would be fun to hear their indignant squealing.