Lady GaGa Prayer Candles (Because We Can, Part Three)

[Most of the images of prayer candles in this post are from the BrightGlowCandle.Com website. Check it out.]

I realize that Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta, in all probability, intends her new eponymous Prayer Candles to be viewed through the comfortably distancing lens of ironic detachment. But such self-conscious indifference is just an act. Literally.

In fact, homo religiosus longs to infuse every aspect of our lives, including the minutiae (and not-so-minutiae) of mundane daily existence, with spiritual significance and divine influences. Human beings have always chosen to adorn our homes, our bodies, our highways and byways and alleyways, our public spaces and private places, our shops and farms and government buildings, etc, with religious icons, idols, representations, logos, ornaments, signs, symbols and so forth. These representations range from the huge, elaborate and unimaginably costly: such as magnificent works of fine art made with gold and precious jewels; to the humble, almost unnoticeable, and downright cheap: such as the lowly Prayer Candle.

And if, in these modern times, we feel the need to feign coolness as we express this basic urge to surround ourselves with religious bricolage, well, I guess it's better than nothing.

One should not be too dismissive toward at least the idea of the Lady GaGa Prayer Candle. The Savage Mind of homo paganus recognizes no boundary, whatsoever, between religion and popular culture. They are one and the same.

Take, for example, a low budget Indian movie released in 1975. This was very loosely based on a little-known folk-cult among poor women in northern India centered around an obscure Goddess named Santoshi Maa. The film became a huge financial success, to everyone's amazement, but the response did not stop there. Showings of Jai Santoshi Maa became religious events. People took their shoes off before entering the theater, and burned incense once inside. While the film was in progress those in the audience bowed every time the Goddess Herself appeared, or her name was spoken, and even threw flowers at the screen.

Thirty-five years later, Santoshi Maa has gone from being an unknown Goddess worshipped by poor village women who spread her cult by word of mouth, to an international religious phenomenon with at least one Temple in the United States, multiple websites, the Goddess's own wikipedia entry, and other accoutrements of a modern religious success story. The Goddess Santoshi Maa, along with her movie and her devotees, have also become a focus of serious researchers. Devotees of the Goddess even use the film as a "how-to" video for the proper way to call upon the Goddess and receive Her blessings.

I thought about Jai Santoshi Maa after watching James Cameron's Avatar. That, too, is a film that depicts a benevolent Goddess who is called upon in a time of great need, and who answers the desperate prayers of her beloved children. And watching Cameron's movie was a genuinely moving spiritual experience for many people.

And yet in American society one can go just so far but no further in open expressions of religiosity in public. Why? Only because we impose that on ourselves. I'm not proposing that such a thing is possible or even advisable, but just consider this thought experiment: what if Americans had reacted to Avatar in a way similar to how Indians responded to Jai Santoshi Maa? Why not? Why not turn viewing a film about the victory of the Goddess Eywa over the malevolent forces of greed, hatred, and ignorance into an act of participatory religious devotion? Why not take one's shoes off before entering the theater out of respect? Why not bow and throw flowers at the screen every time the name of the Goddess is mentioned? Why is it so difficult for people to even imagine such a thing happening?

But when it comes to something safe, like Lady GaGa, people, some people anyway, take the opportunity to abandon all restraint and allow themselves to briefly experience some good old-fashioned Dionysian frenzy. People anxiously await a Lady GaGa concert (or Ke$ha or whoever....) the way others devotedly anticipate a Papal visit. And from the standpoint of event-planning, crowd-management, merchandising, etc, what's the difference really?

Now I know what some of you are thinking. You're thinking, well, you know, Santoshi Maa is, like, a Goddess and everything -- and Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta is just some 25 year old Italian-American art-school dropout turned megastar. Well, let us not forget that the world's leading religion, with twice as many followers as the one in second place, is a cult based on the worship of a dead guy. It's true that he has been dead for a very long time, but he was still alive when the whole thing started.

And especially when it comes to the lowly Prayer Candle, mere mortal status is really not, in itself, a barrier. Take, for example, Juan Soldado, a humble private in the Mexican Army who was arrested, tried, convicted and executed for the crime of raping and murdering an eight year old girl in 1938. His devotees claim that he was an innocent victim of Mexico's notoriously corrupt power structure. He is especially popular among Mexican immigrants coming to the United States "without documents", as they say. These newcomers to the Land of the Free pray: "Juan Soldado, ayúdame a cruzar" ("Soldier John, help me to cross"). For more on Juan Soldado check out Paul J. Vanderwood's Juan Soldado: Rapist, Murderer, Soldier, Saint.

More well known is the famous Mexican revolutionary hero Pancho Villa. Prayer Candles bearing his likeness can be found in any well apportioned Botanica in any major US city. These candles also bear the traditional prayer addressed to Pancho Villa by those in need:

Al espíritu mártir de Pancho Villa Gran General Revolucionario
En el nombre de Diós nuestro Señor invoco a los espíritus que te protejan para que me ayudes. Así como ayudaste en el mundo terrenal a los NECESITADOS. Así como venciste a los PODOROSOS. Así te pido tu protección espiritual, para que me libres de todo mal y me des el ánimo necesario y el valor suficiente para enfrentarme a lo más dificil que se me presente en la vida. Amén

PRAYER To the martyr spirit of Pancho Villa Great Revolutionary General
In the Name of God our Lord I invoke the spirits that they protect you so that you may help me. As well as you helped the NEEDY in the earthly world. As well as you conquered the POWERFUL. This I request of you your spiritual protection, so that may free me of all evil and you give me the necessary spirit and sufficient valor to confront the most difficult things that are presented to me present in this life. Amen

And if these examples don't impress as being sufficiently "spiritual", then perhaps I could interest you in some Allan Kardec Prayer Candles? Kardec was the founder (or, more correctly, "systematizer") of Spiritism. Kardec is an enormously popular occult figure in Latin America, where he is often referred to as the Divine Messenger. Born in Lyon, France, Kardec was well-educated and from a wealthy family. He devoted his life to science, education, and social reform. He did not become involved with Spiritism until he was already in his 50's, but when he did, he "transformed a fad into a movement, popularizing the messages of the spirits that taught that each soul could be reincarnated many times as it moved progressively along a path toward divinity." [From Lynne Sharpe's excellent book Secular Spirituality: Reincarnation and Spiritism in nineteenth century France.]

Then there is El Niño Fidencio, a Mexican Curandero born in 1898. Fidencio spent most of his life in the town of Espinazo, where tens of thousands of fidencistas still come to pay homage every year at the time of Fidencio's birth and death (in March and October). Many of these devotees come not just to receive healing, but to become healers themselves, for they believe that they are able to assume El Niño's divinely endowed healing powers. Here is how the cult of El Niño was described in a 1997 article that appeared in the National Catholic Reporter (the author is James Burbank -- his fascinating piece was the cover story for the February 7 issue of the NRC that year):

ESPINAZO, Mexico -- Twice a year this sleepy northeast Mexican hamlet, two hours' drive from Monterrey, comes alive. Tens of thousands of Hispanic Catholics from south Texas and Mexico conduct annual pilgrimages here to venerate their curandero folk saint, El Nino Fidencio. Despite repeated warnings by Monterrey Archbishop Adolfo Rivera to avoid the heretical festivals, crowds of the faithful continue to come.

These crowds know no heresy in their veneration. For many Catholic Mexicans on both sides of the border, religion is anything but pure, and naturally so. It is the product of a synthesis of Indian and European cultures that has evolved since the Spanish conquest of the Americas. This explains why a curandero, or shaman-healer, is also called a saint . . . .

Born in 1898, Jose Fidencio Sintora Constantino came from the state of Guanajuato as a young boy to Espinazo, where he served as housekeeper for Enrique Lopez de la Fuente. The boy showed a gift for healing, a knowledge of medicinal plants and concoctions and an affinity with the supernatural. As a young man, his reputation as a curandero spread. Hundreds seeking cures camped out in Espinazo.

In 1928 Mexican President Plutarco Elias Calles' suppression of the Catholic priesthood had resulted in the Cristero Revolt. Calles, who organized Mexico's dominant political party -- the PRI -- the following year, came to Espinazo to arrest the curandero faith healer for practicing medicine without a license. After El Nino cured the politician and his ailing daughter, thousands descended on Espinazo. By the time of his death, El Nino was the most famous Mexican curandero.

In 1938, Fidencistas say, El Nino was murdered by jealous physicians. Before he died he made a prediction. He said he would come back three days after his death. El Nino would return by inhabiting various spirit mediums called cajitas (little boxes) or materials (literally matter, applied to persons who believe they embody a sacred personage) through whom he would speak, act and heal the sick.

Another popular Curandero with his own Prayer Candle is Don Pedrito Amarillo. Below is an excerpt from the description of Don Pedrito from Dr. Eliseo Torres' Curanderismo website at the University of New Mexico:

Don Pedrito Jaramillo is perhaps the most famous curandero of all time. Known as "The Saint of Falfurrias (Texas)," Don Pedrito was a great folk saint -- a personage to whom people pray to combat their illness, change their luck, or as a simple expression of faith, who is not a canonical saint of the church but is neverthless acknowledged as one by the people.

Don Pedrito was born in 1829 in Mexico. Nothing is known of his childhood, but he was aeither a shepherd or a laborer; in either case, he was poor. When he was 52 years old, Don Pedrito is said to have asked God to heal his sick mother, pledging that, if his mother were not healed, he would leave Mexico. Thus, when his mother died, Don Pedrito crossed into Texas. This was in 1881. Don Pedrito is said to have been familiar with the Texas territory he entered from previous experience partly because he had helped run booze illegally into the area when he was younger.

Don Pedrito is said to have learned of his healing gift when he suffered a fall from a horse (he was, apparently, a mediocre horseman at best). In the fall, he injured his nose badly, and the pain was excruciating. Then something led him to a nearby wallow where, for no reason he could name, he dabbed mud all over the injured spot. This assuaged the pain and he was finally able to sleep after several sleepless days and nights. Don Pedrito later said that during that sleep, God spoke to him, commanding him to spend the rest of his life healing the sick and injured. From then on, Don Pedrito was a healer.

There are also Prayer Candles specifically devoted to the Orixas, as well as Candles with such wonderful names as Easy Street, Law Stay Away, and Shut Up, and also more profoundly dubbed Candles: The Omnipresence of God, Ecce Homo, and King Solomon.

Interestingly, especially from the standpoint of religious syncretism, it turns out that the Prayer Candle itself is a relatively recent innovation in spiritual technology. Peter Doan Reed, an Irish immigrant who owned a grocery store in San Antonio, Texas, decided to start making his own devotional candles in 1937, and this eventually led to the now iconic "seven-day candle". The tradition was carried on by his son, Peter Nathan Reed, who died in 2009.

I will end with an excerpt from a 2005 Chicago Tribune article, by Monica Eng, on Prayer Candles and their inventor (the article identifies the elder Reed as "Mexican born". I think that's a mistake. But he did live in Mexico first after emigrating from Ireland before settling in San Antonio.):

Prayer candles are popular, even with non-believers

Chicago Tribune, June 25, 2005, Monica Eng

Known as prayer candles, seven-day candles or, in Spanish, veladoras, they come in 81/2-inch glass jars filled with about 71/2 inches of paraffin and usually bear an image and a prayer.

Scholars and candle industry folks find their origin hard to pinpoint. According to Sister Schodts Reed, chief executive officer of the Reed Candle Factory in San Antonio, her Mexican-born father-in-law, Peter Doan Reed, invented the prayer candle in the late 1940s.

The elder Reed started making votive candles — which are always burned in glass and are so named for their use when making a vow or petition — in 1938. But after about a decade of making standard votives, Reed, in 1947, came up with a tall jar model that could burn for seven days and bore a picture of a spiritual figure along with a prayer.

“His goal was to allow people to have their particular patron saint with the image on the candle so that they could light it and have their prayer on it,” Reed said. "That way, they have a silent prayer that is continuing even after they are done praying."

Reed said her father-in-law’s company started out selling just a few types of silk-screened prayer candles, and now it produces 350 saint varieties alone, many with paper labels. And this doesn’t count the mystical varieties made by a subsidiary, Mission Candles.

The popular candles can be bought in herbal/spiritual shops called botanicas, often found in Hispanic neighborhoods and from Web sites or supermarkets.

The usage of these candles has evolved far outside of a religious context. On the same Web site and even on the same store shelf, you can find Virgin Mary candles not far from "D.U.M.E. Black List" candles that are purported to help you, well, kill your enemies.

More common uses include attracting a specific mate with a "Come to Me" candle while simultaneously sabotaging the mate’s current relationship with a "Break Up" [Separar] candle. According to Carlos Soto, manager at Indio Products, a chain of botanicas in Southern California, the combo is his No. 1 seller.

The target market for seven-day candles is primarily female, according to botanica representatives across the nation. Jorge Diaz says most of the customers at his Texas store are Hispanic, but on the Chango Web site they are "almost all Anglo or African-American. More and more of them are getting into this."

This is the third post of a series titled
"Because We Can: Syncretism from a Pagan perspective"
The other posts so far are:
"When you enter a village, swear by its Gods."
"African Traditional Religion Allows Syncretism"

"When you enter a village, swear by its Gods." (Because We Can, Part Two)

[This is the second in a planned series of posts on the topic of syncretism from a Pagan perspective, under the general title "Because We Can". The first post was "African Traditional Religion Allows Syncretism".]

Religion, properly understood, has much more to do with play than with work. It also has much more to do with dancing than with walking (and even less to do with marching or standing in line), more to do with songs than with speeches, more to do with poetry than with prose.

And religion also has far more to do with ambiguity than with certainty, and with liminality than with boundaries. Although, if you think about it, there would be no liminality without boundaries. Or even if you don't.

Which brings me to today's question: what will archaeologists think five thousand years from now when and if they dig up Lady GaGa Prayer Candles (just announced today as part of the Lady Gaga Alejandro Digital Bundle)??

And what will they think if they ever dig up my house and find an assortment of Hindu and Buddhist religious items along with Celtic, Greek, and Roman idols, Santeria candles, drums, rattles, masks, feathers, Tarot cards, Runes, and empty bottles of Golden Monkey Beer?

But seriously. To the modern mind, the issue of religious syncretism is framed with reference to concepts of religious "purity" versus religious "mixing", whether such terms are explicitly used or not. But the idea of "pure" versus "mixed" (or "degenerate" or even "polluted") religion is an invention, or, more accurately, a fantasy, of the monotheists. You see, there are no "pure" religions, and this is true of Christianity, Islam and Judaism just as it is true of all other religions.

If (1) syncretism refers to a state of "impurity" and, (2) no currently or previously existing religions are or have ever been "pure", then (3) syncretism is a general feature of Religion itself, rather than something, by it's mere presence or absence, distinguishing a class of non-syncretic religions from a class of syncretic religions. But while all religions may be syncretic, not all syncretisms are created equal.

The publisher's blurb for Eric Maroney's 2006 book Religious Syncretism characterizes syncretism as "the opposite" of fundamentalism. In the opening chapter of that book, Maroney defines syncretism as follows: "Syncretism occurs when one religion adopts, absorbs or otherwise accepts elements of another religion." To this definition Maroney adds an important qualification: "the categories we use to separate religions are not as fixed as they appear."

Maroney also highlights the stark contrast between how syncretism is viewed by monotheistic religions, that is, with hostility ("often" as "the sworn enemy"), versus how syncretism is viewed by the rest of humanity's religions: "other religious traditions often openly adopt the practices, customs, styles of worship and the deities of other religions." Maroney also correctly points out that despite this difference in attitude, monotheistic religions nevertheless also engage in syncretism, although they have "infrequently acknowledged" it. [All these quotes are from page 6 of Maroney's book.]

Maroney has the distinct advantage of not being a professional academic, and, therefore, enjoying the freedom to speak plainly. If you prefer a jargon enriched version of someone saying essentially the same thing, you might try Anita Maria Leopold's General Introduction to Syncretism in Religion: A Reader (2004), edited by her and Jeppe Sinding Jensen. Despite the more obtuse academese, Leopold's treatment of the complexities and obscurities of syncretism is quite good.

Which brings us to the first of two longish excerpts. This one is an oldie but goodie from Ramsay MacMullen's Paganism in the Roman Empire (1983). I think it is fair to say that professor MacMullen "makes few concessions to the reader", as the old saying goes. Therefore I will take the liberty of outlining his main points immediately below his own words:

Plutarch's friend Clea, herself a priestess at Olympia, was also initiate in the rites of Osiris. She, then, could hardly have objected to the accommodation of a second loyalty; no more the priestess of the Sun at Philippi, initiate into the mysteries of Cybele and of Dionysus. A cult association of Hercules set up a dedication to its own God in the temple of Jupiter Dolichenus in Rome, and "the votaries of Sarapis," another guild, built a meeting room for Isis and Cybele in Rome's port. Examples abound of ministrants of one sort or another erecting an altar or a plaque or themselves signing some honorific inscription, in worship of a God other than the one they served. The practice can be observed without distinction of honorand, whether Roman, traditional Greek, Oriental, or Celtic; without distinction of area; and only circumscribed in time, perhaps. It may be that such actions are more often attested in the period after A.D. 150 than before. But even that is not sure.

These apparent betrayals of one's God were of course no only open, else never known to the present; they were divinely authorized. "By the interpretation of the rites of Sol," a worshiper honors Liber and Libera. Obviously the priest himself had overseen whatever was done; or a village honors "Zeus Galactinos according to Apollo's command"; a "priest of Sol invictus saw to the dedication of holy Silvanus, from a vision"; and so on, by a direct order from Hercules or Men or Apollo. It can only have been priests who guided these acts, seeing in them no betrayal at all. No one but priests can have permitted the placing in the temple of Dolichenus, in Rome, a relief that shows the God sitting next to his consort and holding busts of Sarapis and Isis: he had welcomed his friends from Egypt into his house. Priests directed that the feasts of Iarhibol and Aglibol in Palmyra should fall on the same day. The accommodation, fraternal welcome, courteous referral, or punctilious deference shown in one or another part of the surviving testimony seems to an unbeliever merely the interaction of worshipers and priests. But the worshipers and priests naturally saw it as the reflection here below of relations existing in the world above. Tolerance in paganism operated at both levels, until Christianity introduced its own ideas. Only then, from Constantine on, were Gods to be found at war with other Gods.
[Ramsay MacMullen, Paganism in the Roman Empire, p. 93]

1. MacMullen begins with a reference to Plutarch's famous essay "On Isis and Osiris", which is in the form of a letter to Clea: "herself a priestess at Olympia [and] also an initiate in the rites of Osiris."
2. In the remainder of the first paragraph, MacMullen goes on to produce a long list of other examples of persons or groups dedicated to one deity who also demonstrate some form of piety toward another deity.
3. MacMullen then points out that "these apparent betrayals of one's God" were all done openly and without any apparent embarrassment or anticipation of disapproval from others.
4. MacMullen makes the above point even more pointed by specifically pointing out that cult officials not only knew of, but approved and even participated in "these apparent betrayals of one's God." And to drive the point home even further, MacMullen states that, as a matter of fact, it must be the case that in all of these acts, the religious officials in question saw in them "no betrayal at all."
5. The participation of priestesses and priests not only demonstrates that these acts were officially approved, but that they were "divinely authorized," at least in the eyes of the pious at that time and place.
6. As far as the ancient world is concerned, therefore, "tolerance in Paganism operated at both levels," that is both on earth, where the acts are performed, and "in the world above," where the acts are not merely authorized, but where their "reflection" is found in the harmonious relations among the Gods in Heaven.
7. At this point MacMullen does a little plain speaking of his own: religious tolerance, both above and below, ruled the day "until Christianity introduced it's own ideas. Only then, from Constantine on, were Gods to be found at war with other Gods."

And now here is the second excerpt, from which the title of this post on syncretism has been lifted. It is from Robert G. Hoyland's 2001 (Routledge) Arabia and the Arabs: From the Bronze Age to the Coming of Islam (here is a BMCR review of the book).

In monotheism the sacred is concentrated in one omnipotent and omniscient entity, whereas in polytheism it is diffused over a wide range of beings, places, objects, practices and human personnel. In reality there is both seepage in most monotheisms, with saints and shrines and the like tending to proliferate, and some telescoping on the part of many polytheisms, with one God often being preferred over the others. But the difference between the two is real and substantial.

Firstly, in pre-modern societies that had not secularised public life and relegated religion to the private domain, monotheism is by nature intolerant and intransigent. For there to be only one true God all the other must be impotent frauds, and those who worship them are not just in error, but damned, and should be fought or at the very least shunned. If you believe in many Gods however, there is no reason to be hostile to Gods not your own, nor any bar to paying them and their faithful your respects. "When you enter a village, swear by its Gods" as the old Arabian proverb goes.

Second, the words of a unique omnipotent God must needs be the absolute Truth, in the light of which its recipients should therefore regulate their lives and interpret their world. Polytheism, on the other hand, is neither so unitary nor so coherent. It is rather a variegated worldview, one capable of eliciting a rich and subtle range of meanings from a multi-faceted reality, one desirous of understanding and influencing the many and varied ways the natural world impinges upon us . . . .

[T]he sophisticated civilization of south Arabia had the most developed pantheon in Arabia with the names of over one hundred deities featuring in the surviving inscriptions, though many of these probably represent different aspects of manifestations of the same God. 'Athtar almost always occupies first place in lists and his cult was spread throughout the region. Moreover, in one text we find a worshipper thanking another God for "interceding on his behalf with 'Athtar", confirming that he enjoyed a certain primacy . . . .
The patron diety (shym) of a people was of more immediate significance in south Arabia than the remoter figure of 'Athtar. The four principle peoples had as their patrons Almaqah (Sabeans), Wadd (Minaeans), 'Amm (Qatabanians) and Sayin (Hadramites), and each people was collectively termed the "children" of their respective patron deity. The last would be characterised as the "lord" of the shrine that served as the cultic centre for his people (e.g. "Almaqah lord of Awwam", the principle temple in Marib) . . . .

In less complex societies than south Arabia the pantheon might be much smaller and the patron deity might assume a particularly prominent place. Thus the inhabitants of the fertile oasis of Dedan turned to Dhu Ghaba, "the master of the grove", for their needs and rarely to any other. The Minaean God Wadd appears in a few inscriptions, but these are presumably attributable to the Minaean colony that ran trade operations in the oasis. Then there is Kutba (or Aktab), God of writing, who is probably related to a Babylonian scribal deity, perhaps brought to northwest Arabia by the Babylonian monarch Nabonidus. But other Gods are mentioned no more than once or twice, probably invoked by travellers passing through rather than native worshippers.
The Nabataeans were similarly loyal to Dushara, "the master of the Shara", the mountain range encompassing their capital Petra, and "the God of our lord ... the king of the Nabataeans". At Petra itself the only very popular deity was al-'Uzza, "the mighty Goddess", who is celebrated both in texts and and in artistic representations. However the Nabataeans were rulers of a kingdom, and in the territories they controlled many other deities were worshipped, such as Hubal and Manat in Hijaz, and Allat in the Hawran and the Syrian desert.

Moreover, as international merchants, they were exposed to many foreign influences, and it is not therefore surprising top find that the cult of the Egyptian Goddess Isis was widespread in Nabataea . . . .
Palmyra was a special case, for it possessed a very cosmopolitan population, many members of which had brought their Gods with them, and by virtue of its location had long been exposed to a number of different cultures, which had left their mark on its religious life. Hence a great diversity of deities jostle for position in the city's epigraphic record. The best documented cult, since AD 32 at least, was that of the divine triad Bel, Yahribol and Aglibol. Bel emerged as a supreme God, while Yahribol, an ancestral deity of the oasis, and Aglibol, a deity of a north Syrian immigrant community, became his acolytes. However, Bel continued to associate with other divinities, such as the sun God Shamash and in particular his female partner Herta. We also hear of the ancient Canannite/Phoenician deity Ba'alshamin, the Arab Goddess Allat, the Mesopotamian deity Nergal and so on.[Robert G. Hoyland, Arabia and the Arabs, pp. 139-142]

Because We Can: Syncretism from a Pagan perspective

.
"African Traditional Religion Allows Syncretism"

While looking for information on the indigenous religious traditions of Tanzania I ran across a fascinating and revealing paper written by Richard Cox, a missionary who works for the Summer Institute of Linguistics.

Tanzania is a nation of about 40 million people (the seventh most populous in Africa), and is one of the places in which African Traditional Religion (ATR) has been the most resilient. The Summer Institute of Linguistics (SIL) is one of the most active and aggressive Christian missionary groups in the world. SIL has faced persistent accusations of working closely with US based multinational corporations, American right-wing politicians, and even the CIA, especially in Latin America.

The paper in question is titled "Why Rangi Christians Continue to Practice Traditional African Religions". (The Rangi people are an ethnic/linguistic group in central Tanzania with a total population numbering about 350,000.) Richard Cox, an American based missionary who, as per SIL protocol, conducts his missionary work in the guise of "linguistic field work" wrote this article (which is available online here) after an incident which he describes as follows:

The Uganda/Tanzania Branch of SIL conducts an orientation course for new members coming to work in East Africa. One of the components of the course is a scheduled lecture about African Traditional Religion (ATR). In 2006, ten expatriates attended the course. There were also five Tanzanian nationals present. The Tanzanians fulfilled various roles such as interpreters, Swahili language teachers and cultural guides. I was asked by the branch administrators to present a lecture concerning ATR. During the course of the lecture, I emphasized the fact that most Tanzanian Christians were still involved at some level in ATR. After mentioning some of the ATR practices I was aware of, I asked the Tanzanians if they could verify my assertions. One of the Swahili language teachers, a man in is mid-thirties, stated that my assertions were true. Then to everyone’s surprise, he stated that after returning to his home village the previous year for the first time after being in the capital city for more than ten years, he and his relatives sacrificed a goat to the ancestral spirits. Why did the young man admit this and feel that, even though he was a Christian, it was necessary to make such a sacrifice?

Please note that Cox cannot help himself from wondering aloud not only how a Christian could participate in a Traditional/Pagan religious ceremony, but why he would admit to it! Everything that needs to be said about how monotheists and Pagans approach syncretism in completely different ways is packed, if very densely, into this question.

The obvious answer to Cox's question is that obviously his African associate saw nothing wrong with what he did, and, therefore, it did not occur to him to not "admit" to it. And it is equally obvious from Cox's question itself just how taboo syncretism is to the average superstitious Christian savage.

(I guess Christians, with their pathetically impoverished theology of only one lousy god, view participation in Pagan rituals the same way they view receiving daily nude massages from the Rentboy they brought with them on vacation: even if you are found out, at least have the Christian decency to deny it! I mean act like you have some shame, for chrissake.)

Cox then proceeds to provide a long list of reasons why "Rangi Christians" continue to practice African Traditional Religions. Predictably, many of the reasons that Cox gives are just standard issue pot-shots at the Catholics, who were the first cultural imperialists to stake a claim on the Rangi's immortal souls. You see, the way the Wycliffeans see things, if the Rangi had ever been properly dunked for Jeebus, instead of merely being sprinkled with the holy water of the Papists, they would have severed all ties with Devil Worship from the get-go.

Anyway, Cox eventually gets around to the real reason "Rangi Christians" still sacrifice goats to their ancestors, utilize traditional healers, refuse to cut down their ancient sacred groves where the old initiation rituals are still held, and so forth: because "African Traditional Religion allows syncretism":

Finally, ATR allows a person to ‘be a Christian’ while still practicing ATR. ATR, which is not a systematic system as practiced by the Rangi, doesn’t have to exclude Christians. In ATR, one can attend church services, be baptized, partake of the sacraments, and still practice ATR. It is not necessary for people to hold a tightly structured and logical belief system in order to function in their everyday life. A person’s theology is what they act out, not what they profess to believe. Many Rangi do not see a problem with holding on to both ATR and Christian beliefs. For many in the West this is a logical inconsistency, but for the Rangi this is a practical outworking of their lives and cultures. This syncretistic mixture is what has been modeled for them in the past and it seems to work for them practically. Indeed, it could be said about most believers in a particular religious tradition that the belief espoused and the practices adhered to are not logically consistent. Therefore this syncretistic amalgamation is acceptable among the Rangi. It is simply a matter of fact that Rangi Christians do not understand the majority of the implications that Biblical teaching has for their daily lives; thus the reason for the continued syncretism.

The arrogance really is breathtaking. Africans only "hold a tightly structured and logical belief system" to the extent that they are Christian! And their traditional religion is not "systematic". Why? Because it "doesn't have to exclude" other religions. This bullshit is only to be expected from Christians, especially missionaries, and most especially the disarmingly uncomplicated Christian soldier types of the SIL. All too often, though, one finds the same crap being spewed by supposedly objective scholars, and even supposedly Pagan scholars.

Bottom line: Syncretism is what people naturally do when left to their own devices: when it is allowed. All genuine religions, that is, religions that are legitimate expressions of the inherent spiritual impulses of homo religiosus, not only allow, but thrive on and naturally express themselves through syncretism. Any "religion" that is incompatible with syncretism, as Protestant Christianity is, at least when properly understood, is something else again.

[If you are interested in African Traditional Religion, then check out this other post, and links found therein: "What exactly is it about traditional religion that we fear?"]

Related posts from this blog:

• Christian Demographics Fun Facts (Nov 2, 2009)
  
• Because We Can: Syncretism from a Pagan perspective (May 25, 2010)
• "When you enter a village, swear by its Gods." (Because We Can, pt. 2) (May 26, 2010)
• Lady GaGa Prayer Candles (Because We Can, pt. 3) (May 27, 2010)
  
• Angelique Kidjo on Voodoo and Catholicism (May 29, 2010)
• More Prayer Candles, Please! (Jun 2, 2010)
  
• "On the permanent validity of the Church's missionary mandate" (What they mean by "dialogue", pt. 1) (Jul 27, 2010)
• Banding together in the Cretan fashion (Aug 20, 2010)
• "Playing the Fish" (What they mean by "dialogue", pt. 2) (Dec 27, 2010)
• The true story of how the Yaqui people were conquered and converted to Christianity (Jan 19, 2011)
• Did the Yaquis Convert to Christianity? (Jan 21, 2011)
• "We had no choice." Strategic syncretism in the face of Christianization.
• On the Non-Ineluctability of Christianization: Notes Toward a Grand Unified Theory of Pagan Resistance, Survival, and Revival (Mar 29, 2011)
• "You are ignorant of the very thing you worship" (What they mean by "dialogue", pt. 3) (Jun 30, 2011)
• Confessions of a Christian Missionary: "The old religion used to hold their life together. Now there is a void." (Nov. 28, 2011)
• An Orthodox theologian explains what he means by "Inclusivism" and "Tolerance" (Jan. 28, 2012)
• What they mean by "religious diplomacy" (May 4, 2012)
  

Kalinka

Warning: If you watch these you will get "Kalinka" stuck in your head. My advice is to rinse your ears out with "Kiss Me" cover versions afterwards. Steve Earle's Copperhead Road has also been found to be a highly effective psychic palate cleanser.

VIOLINS:



RED ARMY CHOIR:



GROOVY RETRO SOVIET-ESQUE VERSION FROM ITALIAN TV:



HELMUT LOTTI:

Martin Gardner 1914-2010

I went through my phase of militant scientism back when I was in my 20's and early 30's, first as a convinced atheist leftist, and then as a convinced atheist scientist. Back then I loved to read books and articles by Stephen Jay Gould, Carl Sagan, Isaac Asimov, Martin Gardner and James Randi.

Asimov died in '92, then Sagan in '96, then Gould in 2002, and now Gardner has left us in 2010. It is fitting that as the news of Gardner's death is spreading, many people are referring to the beautiful, heartfelt remembrance of him that has been written by Gardner's friend and comrade in arms, James Randi, under the title "My World Is A Little Darker."

I parted company with the atheist activist crowd long ago. But I am sorry to see the "old" atheists go (and in truth they are not all strict atheists), because they were intelligent, humorous and always interesting.

Good Fences Make Good Religions? On Stephen Prothero's New Theory of Religious Hygiene

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"There is no Method of Reasoning more Common, and yet none more blameable, than in philosophical Debates, to endeavor the Refutation of any Hypothesis, by a Pretext of its dangerous Consequences."
[David Hume, Of Liberty and Necessity]

In simpler, more innocent times, religion scholars who fancied themselves as having things weighty and wise to impart to a wider audience churned out middlebrow coffee table books on World Religions.

If the author was lucky, and/or well-connected, and if the product was deemed sufficiently marketable (with one of the primary criteria for determining the commercial prospects for any book on religion being its inoffensiveness) the book might be picked up by a Major Publisher. In the most fortunate of cases, the Major Publisher would even deign to promote the book in such a manner that people (well, some people, anyway) would come to know of its existence, and perhaps even purchase it -- perchance to read it.

But things change. Please try to keep up.

In these 21st century times of ours, inoffensive coffee table books on World Religions are quickly going the way of all flesh, or at least the way of the cassette tape and the floppy disk. What Major Publishers want today in middlebrow books on religion is, instead, polemics and controversy.

And the important thing for all would-be religious controversialists and polemicists is not how one stakes out a positive position and defends it. The new business model demands that all authors, regardless of what position they are promoting, must shock and horrify the reader with the presentation of dangerous, irrational enemies who must be vanquished, else we are all doomed. In a word: it is not enough to be right: others must be wrong. Very, very wrong.

Enter Stephen Prothero, professor of Religion at Boston University, and his new book with the ludicrous subtitle: God Is Not One: The Eight Rival Religions That Run The World.

Prothero's book is actually in many (in fact, most) ways really just another middlebrow popular survey of World Religions. And if that were all it aspired to be, then it's great wealth of distortions and factual inaccuracies could hardly be held against it, since these are no more out of place in the World Religions genre than are straight-faced interviews with Nostradamus "scholars" on the History Channel.

But Prothero takes the usual admixture of information and misinformation and frames it within a polemical narrative against the "dangerous" and "seductive" idea that -- horror of horrors! -- "all religions are beautiful and true."

To be sure, few are able, on their own, to discern the dark menace lurking behind this seemingly innocuous sentiment, but, fortunately for us all, Stephen Prothero has been able to decode and expose the diabolical machinations of Mahatma Gandhi, the Dalai Lama, Huston Smith, Joseph Campbell, and their kumbaya-ist co-conspirators!

And just in time. Who knows what horrors might await humankind if this "well-intentioned" but "ethically irresponsible" "all religions are one meme" were allowed to continue to daze and confuse the tender hearts and minds of our impressionable youth and to further sap and impurify our precious bodily fluids.

Dear Surfer, as you can by now plainly discern, I, too, alas, have succumbed to the newfangled fashion for religious polemics and controversy. For I claim nothing less than that Stephen Prothero is promoting an idea that is indeed dangerous, although I cannot honestly claim to see any way in which it could ever be thought of as seductive, except to the extent that the American upper-middle class serious non-fiction hardback-book-buying readership has seldom, if ever, encountered a simplistic ahistorical hyperbolic confabulation, presented by a Noted Academic complete with footnotes and ideologically stereophonic pimpage by NPR and the WSJ, that it did not like.

However, before going further, in order to explain why Prothero's idea is so dangerous I need to first tell you a little about my grandfather.

"They're just different."

I loved my grandfather -- he was a good man whom I respected and still admire. He was a deeply religious Christian, and he applied himself with enthusiasm to living a moral life, and to being compassionate and generous to others. And he did this without the arid grimness that one might (unfairly) expect from deeply religious people, but rather with an easygoing amiability that was both completely sincere and downright charming.

But my grandfather didn't like Jews. "They're just different," he would say. He also didn't much like African-Americans, whom he referred to as "coons." They were different, too.

Grandpa never finished high school, fought (and was wounded) in WWI, and (except for his military service) lived his whole life in the small factory town in Indiana where he was born and is now buried.

When he came back from the war he was still a very young man, and for most of the next decade the state of Indiana was dominated by the Ku Klux Klan. The Klan's grip on the state (they even controlled the Indiana delegation to Congress) ended by the late 20's, but that was due to sex and money scandals, not because of any disenchantment with the racist, anti-Semitic, anti-Catholic, and anti-immigrant message of the KKK, a message which continued to be very popular and continued to be championed by Republican and Democratic politicians of the Hoosier state (who were often the very same politicians previously backed by the Klan).

To me it seems overly harsh to label my grandfather a racist and an anti-Semite, but factually speaking that's what he was. It is, however, also a fact that he was a product of the time and place that he lived. And it's also a fact that he wasn't all that different from Barack Obama's grandmother, whom President Obama once characterized as a "typical white person."

A very great deal of what comes under the headings of racism, sexism, homophobia, anti-Semitism -- and bigotry generally -- can be summed up in those words of my grandfather: "they're just different." And this emphasis on differentness continues to be at the heart of the often more subtle (although not always so) forms of bigotry that are still alive and well in America in the 21st century.

The closest present-day equivalent to the KKK is the infamous CCC, the Council of Conservative Citizens. These fine citizens claim that they are not racists, but, instead, their Statement of Principles says that they advocate "cultural, national, and racial integrity", and also that "the United States is a European country." Interestingly, the very first principle of the CCC is that "the United States is a Christian country."

Sam Francis, the author of the CCC's Statement of Principles, has been called "the philosopher king of the American radical right". Francis edited Pat Buchanan's 2002 book The Death of the West. Far from trying to distance himself from Francis, Buchanan literally eulogized him upon his death in 2005 with these words: "When God created him, He endowed Sam with a great gift—one of the finest minds of his generation."

Francis, although proud to call himself a "paleoconservative", was actually very typical of the new approach to race among radical rightists generally: emphasis is placed not on the inferiority or superiority of races, but only on the essential differentness of races. Of course this is very little, if at all, different from the typical racism of the Old South, which emphasized segregation while demonizing "race-mixing", all the while proclaiming a benevolent, loving, Christian attitude toward "the negro".

"As all men are alike (tho' infinitely various)"

By this point you might be asking: what in blue blazes do my grandfather, the Klan and the CCC have to do with Stephen Prothero and his new book God is not One??

Well, Prothero has taken his title from William Blake's very first illustrated book: All Religions Are One. Blake's "book" was in fact a little poem with only about 250 words altogether, so we can look at the whole thing before proceeding further:

The Voice of one crying in the Wilderness

The Argument.
As the true method of knowledge is experiment, the true faculty of knowing must be the faculty which experiences.

This faculty I treat of.

Principle I. That the Poetic Genius is the true Man, and that the body or outward form of Man is derived from the Poetic Genius. Likewise that the forms of all things are derived from their Genius, which by the Ancients was call'd an Angel & Spirit & Demon.

Principle II. As all men are alike in outward form, So (and with the same infinite variety) all are alike in the Poetic Genius.

Principle III. No man can think, write or speak from his heart, but he must intend truth. thus all sects of Philosophy are from the Poetic Genius adapted to the weaknesses of every individual.

Principle IV. As none by travelling over known lands can find out the unknown, So from already acquired knowledge Man could not acquire more; therefore an universal Poetic genius exists.

Principle V. The Religions of all Nations are derived from each Nation's different reception of the Poetic Genius, which is every where call'd the Spirit of Prophecy.

Principle VI. The Jewish & Christian Testaments are An original derivation from the Poetic Genius. This is necessary from the confined nature of bodily sensation.

Principle VII. As all men are alike (tho' infinitely various), So all Religions , &, as all similars, have one source. The true Man is the source, he being the Poetic Genius.

With Blake's words in front of us, it is now much easier to make clear the reason I have brought up the unpleasant subject of racism: because racism is, in its essence, the denial of human equality. And human equality is the underlying theme of Blake's All Religions Are One!

Prothero is completely clueless about the implications of his insistence on the essential differences between religions, and in particular the way that he frames his argument with respect to William Blake. To see just how potentially dangerous this is, it is first necessary to recognize that Prothero insists on denying (or at least minimizing to the point of exclusion from any serious consideration) any essential unity to Religion itself, while being equally insistent that religions, plural, each possess a great degree of internal coherence, and that this internal coherence within each religion creates fixed, neatly separated, mutually exclusive religious identities.

In other words, Prothero is conceptualizing religions in exactly the same way that 17th, 18th and 19th century Europeans conceptualized races. And Prothero's theory of Religious Hygiene (that is, that the separate religions should be kept separate for everyone's good) can be deconstructed in exactly the same way that so-called "scientific racism" was finally debunked conclusively following WWII.

Whence the urge to create fixed, neatly separated, mutually exclusive religious identities?

Before I go any further let me be clear: I don't believe that Stephen Prothero is an evil man who has intentionally written a book with a racist subtext. But I do believe that he is a stupid man who has unintentionally written a book with a racist subtext.

The theory of race starts from really existing, easily observed variations in human biology. But from there "scientific racism" imposes sharp boundaries separating a few distinct "races" from each other. It bears emphasizing that these "races" are not invented from scratch. In fact, they correspond closely to popularly imagined boundaries separating humans into different groups. The groupings themselves are real enough, to an extent, but in practice, the lines separating these groups, especially when examined closely, are blurred, and all too easily crossed. The essence of scientific racism is that it provided a "scientific" validation and a much needed reinforcement to a popular belief based in part on objective observation, in part on social conventions, and in part on a myriad of psychological and other factors, many of them far from ennobling. In this way, "race theory" provided an objective-sounding pretext for using the belief in separate races as the basis for social and political policy and also as a guide for individual behavior.

It is essential to be able to distinguish between (a) casual observations of human variability, and (b) the positing of immutable "differences" that unalterably separate groups of human beings from one another. In my opinion, the insights gained from the spectacle of "racial science" and its eventual downfall can be applied to better understanding Stephen Prothero's proposed scheme for a scholarly sounding reification of religious identities.

To be honest, prior to encountering Prothero's new book, I had not looked all that closely at the relationship between racial identity and religious identity. But others had:

[I]n the United States and throughout the Americas, from the fifteenth century through the twenty-first -- religion has been inextricably woven into both racial and national identities, to such an extent that "race," "nation," and "religion" have each defined the others. These seemingly distinct discourses of difference have at times borrowed and at times contested each other's rhetorical authority, reinforcing and undercutting each other's social hierarchies, mixing and mingling in unresolved dialectics irreducible to any one term. If we fail to appreciate the relationships among these categories of collective identity, we will be unable to grasp the contours of our own histories -- that of the United States, and those of the Americas more broadly.
[Henry Goldschmidt, Introduction to Race, Nation, and Religion in the Americas, p. 5]

What Henry Goldschmidt has to say above is further elaborated upon below by Daniel B. Lee, who contributed a chapter (in Goldschmidt's book, co-edited with Elizabeth McAlister) on A Great Racial Commission: Religion and the Construction of White America:

For the development of an enduring racial self-description, the late nineteenth century was a particularly innovative period for White people in America. The decade after the Civil War significantly changed the racial and religious landscape of the country. For the first time, Native Americans, emancipated Blacks, and new immigrants from all over the world challenged the cultural hegemony of Anglo-Saxon Christians with their undeniable presence. In the midst of an increasingly diverse population, many White Americans turned to religion as a source of racial and national unity . . . .

My analysis ... begins with the theoretical assumption that there is no natural way to be White, act White, or communicate as a White person. There is no a priori metaphysical bond or primordial solidarity between Whites or between the people of any other racial or religious group. White society first emerges when people communicate about sharing "Whiteness." Communities of people construct themselves and their others as they communicate. A society, such as Whites exchanging race talk, for itself and its environment in an entirely self-referential, autological manner.
[Daniel B. Lee, Chapter 3 in Religion, Nation, and Race in the Americas, pp. 85-86]

In my opinion it is far from coincidental that in the early 21st century Prothero has come along with a simplistic narrative reifying the boundaries that reassuringly separate "the rival religions that run the world." Indeed, this is a time when America is facing a crisis of identity of far greater, and far more complex, proportions than anything it faced in the late 19th century.

Up until the Voting Rights Act of 1965, America as a nation still accepted as legitimate the idea that Whites should enjoy de jure political superiority, at least in a large part of the US (the South). Even after 1965, though, White Americans still continue, to this day, to enjoy de facto political and socio-economic superiority. Even if that continues into the future, at least in terms of raw demographics Whites will be a minority in the US by 2050. According to projections by The Pew Research Center, 40 years from now the combined Latino, Black and Asian population of the US will be 51%, while the total White population will be 47%.

Race has become, thank the Gods, completely discredited as a "discourse of difference." But Prothero is now trying to promote a mode of religious discourse primarily based on difference in a way that very closely mirrors the now discarded concept of "race". By (1) emphasizing and exaggerating the differences between religions, (2) denying any spiritual common ground between religions, and (3) ignoring the often vast differences within religions, Prothero is engaging in exactly the same kind of psycho-social engineering as the race theorists of the past.

Because it really is quite fitting, I will end with Robert Frost's poem "Mending Walls." Frost did not himself coin the phrase "good fences makes good neighbors," but it was from him that I learned of it. And it was my 7th grade English teacher, Mr. Mann, a conservative southerner and a Mormon, who was teaching during the early 1970's in a very liberal suburb of Washington DC, who taught me to appreciate this poem. Thanks, Mr. Mann!! [Scroll down below the poem for links to other posts on Stephen Prothero.]

Mending Walls
by Robert Frost

Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun,
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
'Stay where you are until our backs are turned!'
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of out-door game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, 'Good fences make good neighbors'.
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
'Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it
Where there are cows?
But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That wants it down.' I could say 'Elves' to him,
But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather
He said it for himself. I see him there
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me~
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father's saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, "Good fences make good neighbors."

Previous posts from this blog on Stephen Prothero:
Who, if anyone, is Stephen Prothero arguing with, other than himself?
How Stephen Prothero mangles the economics-politics-religion analogy
The basis of universal spirituality
Contra Prothero