Do As I Say, Not As They Did

One thing I didn't expect when I started blogging was that I'd receive offers of material from publicists whose clients had ideas to promote, or from artists inviting me to review their work.  It makes sense, and  I'm interested in hearing from these people, but until now I hadn't received anything I wanted to write about.

Yesterday I received a message from a publicist I've heard from before, on behalf of the work of Richard E. Kelly, "a self-described 'survivor' of Jehovah’s Witnesses" and the author of Growing Up in Mama’s Club and The Ghosts from Mama’s Club.  Kelly is concerned to warn against the danger of "cults," fringe religious groups with tight authoritarian structures.  This doesn't seem to be as hot an issue as it was thirty years ago, when such groups got a lot of hostile media attention, but Kelly is working in the same fields.  What caught my attention was Kelly's list of the signs that indicate a group might be a cult.  As I noticed during the last big wave of cult alarmism, these traits describe early Christianity very well.  The similarities help to explain why the early churches were regarded with suspicion and distrust, even hostility.

The following beliefs should be considered cult constructs, he says.

• Certainty that the world will end in one’s lifetime: This is a crucial pill to swallow for a subsequent list of cult beliefs, which keep followers in a perpetual state of fear. If only one holds true enough to a strict set of rules – like avoiding pledges of allegiance at school, for example – then they may be spared at Armageddon.

This one, especially, is a "construct" of early Christianity.  All the New Testament writers took for granted that the world would end within the lifetime of Jesus' first followers.  Jesus himself said so, according to the gospels, and the same belief turns up in almost all the New Testament writings: where it's not put at center stage, it's assumed.  The Apostle Paul often refers to the nearness of Jesus' return.

The early Christians also got into trouble for their refusal to participate in expected demonstrations of loyalty to the Roman Emperor, "like avoiding pledges of allegiance at school."  They refused to show reverence to the divine ruler of the empire; the US simply requires reverence to its flag, though it also is accorded divine significance ("under God").

• Social manipulation: For Jehovah’s Witnesses who are not observant of all rules, ostracism and shunning is used. How to handle someone who questions policy? Make sure their family ignores them!

This is also a trait of early Christianity.  Both Jesus and Paul enjoined believers to shun or expel their fellows who were "not observant of all rules."  Of course, family pressure was a normal way to enforce social conformity in antiquity, as it is to this day.  (In Pray the Gay Away Bernadette Barton shows not only contemporary fundamentalist Protestants disowning their gay children, but Roman Catholics as well.)  The early Christians reacted as modern cults do: by declaring themselves the new family of converts, and requiring them to break with their blood relations.  One follower asked Jesus' permission to go home for his father's funeral, for example, and Jesus told him curtly to leave the dead to bury the dead.  When Jesus' mother and brothers came to remonstrate with him, he simply refused to see them, designating his obedient followers as his true mother and brothers. 

• Cripple half of the members (women): For Jehovah’s Witnesses, women are seen as creatures trapped somewhere between men and animals in God’s hierarchy. No woman can have a position of authority, which means it's men only for preaching, teaching and praying. If there’s an official meeting and a woman prays she must cover her head out of respect for the angels who might be there.

This is true not only of much of early Christianity, but of modern churches.  The apostle Paul forbade his churches to allow women to preach or occupy any position over men, which is used by the Roman Catholic church today to rationalize its refusal to ordain women as priests.  This wasn't true of all early churches -- there was at least one woman apostle in the first Christian generation, mentioned by Paul in his letter to the Romans -- but eventually the male supremacists won out.  Outsiders in the second and third centuries accused the Christians of letting their women run wild, a charge they answered by insisting that they kept their women as subservient as any good Roman did.  

• Scorning education: Who needs advanced learning when the world is sure to end in a few short years? Kelly’s sister, Marilyn, had very little education, so when she was finally able to leave home, she had few coping skills. She ultimately met an abusive third husband, who later murdered her.

The early churches were ambivalent about book learning.  Jesus rejoiced that his heavenly father had revealed the deep secrets of the universe to the poor and unlettered, and Paul exulted that the cult of Jesus, built around his crucifixion, was offensive to Jew and Gentile alike.  Later on, some early Christians found it expedient to acquire good Greek educations, and to work as tutors to children, and some early Christians distinguished themselves as scholars, but in general they were dismissive of such pursuits.  Only after Christianity took over the running of the empire did learning gain more status.

• Sexually repressive: Jehovah’s Witnesses are thoroughly indoctrinated in how to harness the power of the sex drive to please God. It’s obsessive compulsive when it comes to creating rules about sexual do's and don’ts, from masturbation to the role of women; from conception to sexual pleasure. Sex before marriage is an onerous crime, punishable by shunning and death at Armageddon.

The whole Bible is sexually repressive, but the New Testament reflects trends toward asceticism that were current when it was written.  Jesus warned his followers that even feeling sexual desire was worthy of damnation, and held up those who became eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven as examples to all.  Paul permitted but discouraged marriage, since the end was near and marriage was a distraction from devotion to the Lord.  In the book of Revelation, a group of 144,000 "who were redeemed from the earth" sang a new praise song in front of the throne of Christ: "These are they which were not defiled with women, for they are virgins" (14:3-4; King James Version).  Though some branches were less strict than others, mainstream Christianity kept this strain of hostility to women and the flesh throughout its history; and why not?  It is thoroughly biblical and supported by Jesus' own teaching.

Of course I'm not a supporter of the Jehovah's Witnesses, any more than I am of any other sect.  What I want to draw attention to here is the ignorance of many right-thinking people today, who condemn sects today for behaving and teaching pretty much what the biblical Jesus and the early Christians taught and did.  That's not surprising, because Jesus and the early Christians were religious fanatics whose extreme teachings and conduct would have gotten them in trouble in just about any time or place.  But most people today -- even many atheists, to my ongoing surprise -- want to see Jesus and the early church as good guys, even as exemplars for our troubled times.  I think it's much more likely that they would have despised them, even if they didn't condone overt persecution, for the same reasons they despise and attack modern groups which follow in the early Christians' footsteps.  It's clear, at least, that they have no idea what early Christianity was like.  Most of what Kelly (and most other anti-cult writers) see as characteristic of certain small cranky sects is really characteristic of mainstream Christianity, historically and sometimes down to the present.

Something similar: my liberal law-professor friend recently shared on Facebook an announcement of an upcoming event showcasing Islam at her university, probably run by campus Muslims groups.  The poster touted the Koran as providing "guidance" for humanity.  I'm all for religious education, though I expect Muslims to be as honest and accurate about their faith as Christians are -- which isn't very.   I don't agree that the Koran is a guide for humanity, any more than the Bible is.  I can oppose and criticize the widespread demonization of Islam in the US, without endorsing it or any other religion.

Struggling With Christianity

I guess I stopped posting yesterday after all. Some things came up.

I've begun reading Recruiting Young Love: How Christians Talk about Homosexuality (Chicago, 2011) by Mark D. Jordan, the gay Catholic scholar and theologian I've mentioned before. Even when I disagree with him, as I often do, I find interesting ideas in his work. And so it is here, on the first page. He recalls the 2005 story of Zach, a gay teenager in Tennessee who was being forced to enroll in a "treatment" program called Refuge, which aimed at "affirming his correct gender identity" (ix).

Refuge was then a program aimed by Memphis-based Love in Action International at thirteen- to seventeen-year-olds. It advertised itself as "the most developed ... intensive program in America for youth struggling with homosexuality." According to published reports, participants spent their days at Refuge studying the Bible, undergoing counseling, and confessing their temptations. They were forbidden to watch television or read anything unapproved. Throughout the day, they monitored each other for campy actions or "gay/lesbian behavior or talk." Because these adolescent "clients" spent nights at home, Refuge reportedly searched them each morning for smuggled "False Images" -- signs of gender-bending or a taste for queer culture.

While Zach was still in the program, his father defended the decision to enroll him by denouncing the homosexual "lifestyle" on Christian television and appealing to parental authority. He told Pat Robertson's CBN, "Until he turns eighteen and he's an adult in the state of Tennessee, I'm responsible for him. And I'm going to see to it that he has all options available to him." The state of Tennessee had other worries: media complaints led it to investigate Love in Action for operating an unlicensed medical facility [ibid.].

I don't disagree with anything Jordan wrote here, I just want to add some comments. I was struck by Zach's father's claim that he was "going to see to it that he has all options available to him." That was just rhetorical grandstanding, of course: if he really wanted Zach to have all options available to him, he'd also have enrolled him in a gay Christian group, a gay Allies group at a secular high school, and encouraged him to date other boys, perhaps requiring him to join a True Love Waits group for gay teens. What his father really wanted was to restrict Zach's options. (I keep getting mental flashes of a Roman judge telling a Christian to burn incense to the Emperor [on pain of martyrdom], just to keep all options available to him. Or an Inquisitor showing the instruments of torture to Galileo, just to make sure he knew all his options.) But it's always important to sound reasonable, especially when you're not.

The other part that grabbed me was "signs of gender-bending or a taste for queer culture." It might be, and probably is the case that the kids' Bible study at Refuge was carefully limited to avoid confusing passages. As Jordan knows, and has discussed at length in The Silence of Sodom, the Bible and historical Christianity contain a lot of gender-bending. I'm not talking about the standard infidels' homophobic cliche about clergy in dresses, though it shouldn't be dismissed altogether. The standard image of Jesus in religious art today is not that of a man with a normal, healthy gender identity according to American Protestant standards: the long hair, the flowing garment. These elements can't be explained away as dictated by historical accuracy, since we don't know what Jesus looked like, but it's not likely that he wore long hair. Christians have always invented their images of Jesus to suit their prejudices and expectations: in antiquity, he was generally depicted as a beardless youth with short hair, following Roman custom.

By gender-bending, I mean options like "becoming eunuchs for the Kingdom of Heaven" (Matthew 19:12), but also the popular trope of the (male) prophet as a woman in labor, groaning to be delivered of Yahweh's Word, or Israel as the Bride of Yahweh, and later the Church as the Bride of Christ. Early Christians were mocked as unmanly for refusing to fight back when struck, but they quickly got rid of that requirement. Most contemporary Christians have chosen to ignore New Testament teaching (and Christian tradition) that exalts sexual abstinence over marriage, but this too was troublesome for early Christian men: for one thing, masculinity required men to have women to rule over. Modern evangelicals have always had trouble reconciling submission to the Lord with normative masculinity; it doesn't help that the Bible says they are to submit to Christ as a woman submits to her husband, and that Christ is their head as they are heads to their wives.

I don't approve of teenagers being forced into "treatment" for their homosexuality or gender expression, but that's not exclusively a Christian problem: until very recently, secular psychiatry was happy to mess with young people's minds in those areas. Still, Zach's father has a point: Zach is a minor, and parents have the authority to mold and coerce minor children in many ways. Zach's father can also control his heterosexual life if he had one, or his religious choices. Liberal parents become upset if their kids get involved in reactionary churches, for example, even if they're college-aged. It's not at all unheard of for freshmen to go home for Thanksgiving break and deny that their parents are real Christians, because of new ideas they've imbibed in churches they explored while at school. That's different, of course, but how different is it?

Thinking about this reminded me of a trend from the 1970s and 1980s: deprogramming. At that time there was a lot of concern about "cults," that is, fringe religious groups with tight authoritarian structures, like the Unification Church, known as "Moonie" after its South Korean founder Sun Myung Moon. But there were others. In true Christian fashion, these sects encouraged new converts to cut off ties with their families and make the church their family. As we read in the gospel of Mark:

²⁰ Then Jesus entered a house, and again a crowd gathered, so that he and his disciples were not even able to eat. ²¹ When his family heard about this, they went to take charge of him, for they said, “He is out of his mind.” ...

³¹ Then Jesus’ mother and brothers arrived. Standing outside, they sent someone in to call him. ³² A crowd was sitting around him, and they told him, “Your mother and brothers are outside looking for you.”

³³ “Who are my mother and my brothers?” he asked.

³⁴ Then he looked at those seated in a circle around him and said, “Here are my mother and my brothers! ³⁵ Whoever does God’s will is my brother and sister and mother.”

Say what you will about these groups, they were following in the Master's Footsteps. Some families reacted as Jesus' family did in verse 21, some going as far as to hire private agents to kidnap their kids and "deprogram" them -- which meant in practice keeping them in isolation for long periods, sometimes verbally, physically and even sexually abusing them until they recanted. The rationale was that they had been "brainwashed" by the "cults" and had to be brainwashed back to normal; the techniques were standard psychological torture, designed to break the will of the subject. The media had a field day with both sides, doing alarmist stories about the threat of cults and questioning the ethics of kidnapping religious believers, especially when they were not minors but legal adults. In the end the fuss blew over, partly because (if I remember correctly) some of the subjects of deprogramming sued their captors.

Fundamentalists were just as hostile to "cults" as mainline Christians; I have read books attacking "new religious movements" from a variety of positions, from fundamentalist to liberal to sociological. And true, there's a lot to attack, just as there is with mainstream Christianity. None of these critics liked to be reminded that Christianity had begun as a "new religious movement" or cult, with the same characteristics as the groups its modern adherents reviled.  I don't recall one that admitted it.

If I had to counsel a gay teenager under his or her parents' roof, I wouldn't encourage them to come out until they were old enough to support themselves, especially if they belonged to a very conservative church. Even with liberal parents in the picture I'd remind the teen that parents have a lot of power over them. Where a strongly gender-nonconformist kid is involved, of course, the closet may not be a viable option. We really need to rethink the powers and responsibilities of parents (and adults in general) over children; the potential for abuse is just too great.

If I counseled a gay person of any age who was struggling with Christianity (and I've done so), I'd be a lot more open-minded than most people who think they know me would expect. I once had a long online correspondence with such a person, who was gay and very attached to his conservative, antigay church. I reminded him that Christians disagreed among themselves, so he couldn't really look to other Christians to tell him what to feel or think or do; I also reminded him that he could come out, live a gay life, and still be a Christian, though perhaps not in the church he attended. I advised him to do what his own pastor should (by their standards) have advised: think about it, pray. I wasn't being inconsistent in my own assumptions there, because I know that prayer is often a way of talking to oneself, thinking through issues privately. If this guy prayed and thought matters through and decided that being gay was wrong for him, then he'd have worked it through by himself, not under pressure from me or anyone else. If he prayed and thought things through and decided that being gay was good for him (or, in his terms, that his God approved of it), then he would also have made his own decision. Later he told me that after doing what I'd suggested, he'd concluded that he should come out more, and was distancing himself from his church. If he'd decided to stay closeted for longer, though, that would have been all right too: he needed to come out when he needed to and was ready to, not when I or someone else thought he should.

Whether you see this as a "struggle with homosexuality" (the current bigots' buzzword) or as a "struggle with Christianity" (which I intend to make my buzzword), the struggle isn't going to be resolved soon. Instead of yowling about people who call being gay a "choice," I think we need to stress that Christianity in all its varieties is a choice, and to insist that people have the right to make choices. We also need to deprivilege Christianity and other religious choices -- but that's a topic for another post, I think.