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Electronic Theses, Treatises and Dissertations The Graduate School
2010 Political Priests: The Role of Religious Figures in Modern American Drama Leonard Troy Appling
Follow this and additional works at the FSU Digital Library. For more information, please contact [email protected] THE FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY
COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES
POLITICAL PRIESTS: THE ROLE OF RELIGIOUS FIGURES IN MODERN AMERICAN
DRAMA
By
LEONARD TROY APPLING
A Dissertation submitted to the Department of English in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy
Degree Awarded: Fall Semester, 2010 The members of the committee approve the dissertation of Troy Appling defended on August 5, 2010.
______S.E. Gontarski Professor Directing Dissertation
______Neil Jumonville University Representative
______John Fenstermaker Committee Member
______Karen Laughlin Committee Member
Approved:
______R.M. Berry, Chair, Department of English
The Graduate School has verified and approved the above‐named committee members.
ii
To my family, especially Marie,
whose encouragement and patience
made this possible.
iii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I am deeply indebted to the following people for their roles in making this project a reality:
To my committee members—Neil Jumonville, John Fenstermaker, and Karen Laughlin—who graciously allowed me to pelt them with questions, in some cases for half a decade. To Stan Gontarski, whose direction shows throughout, for convincing me that theory and performance studies can be fun.
To Carolyn, Dustin, Jared, Tiffany, and the rest of the English Department who listened and tweaked along the way.
To the faculty at the University of Memphis, especially Thomas Carlson, who convinced me to shift continents and countries, and Gene Plunka, who got me hooked on modern drama—even the Absurdists. To Ralph Warren and Robert Woods at ACC, who with one well‐used skull convinced me that the dramatic, not the digital, was the path for me.
To the church families in Covington, Keystone, Starke, Tallahassee, and Villa Rica, whose support and prayers were a source of constant encouragement. (And to Chris, Katie, Hank, Howard, Dustin, Don, and Jim, whose skillful combination of song and snark bolstered me through prelims and prospectus.)
To the playwrights in this study, whose works have provided inspiring, thought‐ provoking, and sometimes controversial discussions in both my own home and in the culture at large.
Finally, to my family, who kept me focused and sane throughout most of the process.
Thank you all. Your passion shows in every word.
iv
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Abstract ...... vi
1. INTRODUCTION ...... 1
2. PRIEST AS PRAGMATIST ...... 21
3. MINORITY MINISTERS ...... 45
4. PRESCRIPTIVE PREACHERS AND SEMANTIC SAINTS ...... 79
5. PARANOID PASTORS ...... 100
6. CONCLUSION ...... 121
Bibliography ...... 128
Biographical Sketch ...... 140
v
ABSTRACT
Understanding religious imagery and its uses on stage is essential to interpreting
drama, beginning as it did in the sacred rituals of ancient Greece. In post‐World‐War‐II
America, playwrights divested religious elements of their sacredness, using them as signifiers of secular humanism instead, in order to construct or critique ideological tenets central to the American consciousness. This study examines the relation on the modern stage between religion (both formal and civil) and the concept of “America” in the works of James Baldwin, Bill C. Davis, Christopher Durang, Diane Shaffer, and John
Patrick Shanley, who each used religion to create conformity with (or critique of) the sense of American exceptionalism that dominated the post‐WWII period. This study focuses on the characteristics of the clergy depicted by these playwrights: pragmatism, marginalization, prescription, and paranoia. While narrow in scope, the thematic concerns these characters represent echo other religious elements such as those of
Arthur Miller’s Crucible or Edward Albee’s Tiny Alice. Each of the playwrights in this study attempt to re‐code the religious signs—in this case, their characters—to effect an understanding in the audience that these people represent a larger social commentary.
Building on theatre anthropology and semiotics, especially the work of Victor Turner,
Peter Brook, and Keir Elam, as well as theorists of American civil religion such as
Robert Bellah, this study will demonstrate the ways religion has been used on stage to define American ideology, as well as establish the link between dramatic clergy and the larger societal figures they represent.
vi
CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION
When told that Jesus forgave the adulterous woman in the Gospels, the title nun of Christopher Durang’s Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All For You responds, “That was merely a political gesture. In private Christ stoned many women taken in adultery”
(400). The Sister’s suggestion that Jesus conflated religion and politics was not a new theme. Indeed, the historical Jesus was executed precisely because of his religious‐ political connection. In America, the study of religion’s influence on politics and vice versa had interested many scholars and practitioners in the years following World War
II. In fact, the intersection of these two social elements had been explored as early as
Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America. Robert Bellah posited in his defining article “Civil Religion in America” that:
Although matters of personal religious belief, worship, and association are
considered to be strictly private affairs, there are, at the same time, certain
common elements of religious orientation that the great majority of
Americans share. These have played a crucial role in the development of
American institutions and still provide a religious dimension for the
whole fabric of American life, including the political sphere. This public
religious dimension is expressed in a set of beliefs, symbols, and rituals
that I am calling the American civil religion. (171)
1 Arthur Miller, via such religiously‐themed works as The Creation of the World and Other
Business, its musical version Up from Paradise, Resurrection Blues, and especially The
Crucible, established himself as a master of this secular‐sacred interaction. He was one of the first to consistently critique the American social and political scene, with its conflation of secular and civil religious symbols. (Although a similar mode exists for
The Emperor Jones, Eugene O’Neill’s play emphasized the use of religion specifically for economic oppression, rather than political.) Miller’s plays problematized religious figures, divesting them of their sacred veneer and humanizing them into fallible characters. By pointing out the flaws in the characters and stories, such plays were subversively critiquing the cultural ideology which had in the past used these icons as a moral foundation or imperative. In so doing, Miller fundamentally altered sacred religion’s role on the American stage and left a legacy that echoed in the works of the next generation of socially‐conscious playwrights such as James Baldwin, Bill C. Davis,
Christopher Durang, Diane Shaffer, and John Patrick Shanley.
In America, art at the border of culture, politics, and religion culminated with
Joseph McCarthy and the House Committee on Un‐American Activities (HUAC). Any element that conflicted with the definition of “America” carefully constructed by the
Committee was seen as subversive and subject to censure and/or prosecution. Arthur
Miller, Lillian Hellman, and others—in an effort to protect the sanctity of art, or what
Walter Benjamin termed its “aura”—rebelled against this homogenization of ideology and expression. In order to avoid arousing suspicion (or in Miller’s case with The
Crucible, to highlight the futility thereof), these artists began reintegrating traditional images and ideas—especially of a religious or “patriotic” nature. One did not generally suspect Boris and Natasha to reside in between the Cleavers and the Hardy Boys, so it followed that popular media—including theatre—became not only entertainment, but a template of sorts defining the “gospel” of patriotism, as well as a badge of honor for their creators. Artists and writers who could speak the vernacular of American
2 exceptionalism were less likely to become targets of HUAC and other similar
movements. This thematic conformity resulted in increased religious symbolism even in plays otherwise distinctly irreligious or anti‐religious, such as the Eve symbolism in
Amiri Baraka’s Dutchman.
Beginning in the 1960s, as the furor of the Red Scare began to wane, playwrights
began to reevaluate the position that religious imagery had attained in their field. Few
embraced the stature accorded religion on the American stage by earlier playwrights
seeking conformity, such as temperance dramatists at the start of the century. British
theatre director Peter Brook notes that “We have lost all sense of ritual and ceremony—
whether it be connected with Christmas, birthdays or funerals—but the words remain
with us and old impulses stir in the marrow” (The Empty Space 45‐46). The words Brook
refers to become mere shadows, lacking the social and spiritual power that once defined
communal liturgies. Yet they are not completely abandoned; these rituals become
semantic and ideological placeholders in communication which rely on context, not
tradition, to define their meanings. Elsewhere Brook suggests that this shallowness is
characteristic of what he calls the “Deadly Theatre.”
This separation of ritual act and significance is exploited in modern and
contemporary American drama. Brook states, “I am calling it the Holy Theatre for short,
but it could be called The Theatre of the Invisible—Made—Visible” (The Empty Space
42). The appeal of drama in constructing and enforcing adherence to both secular and
sacred is explained by Brook’s concept of “making visible,” which allows the stage to
present the abstract in a more tangible form. Initially, religiously‐themed dramas such
as biblical retellings or mystery and morality plays were concerned with such doctrines
as salvation, free will, or original sin. With the disintegration of the Holy Theatre,
playwrights instead established freedom, patriotism, citizenship, and similar tenets as
the focus of religious plays. As Brook points out, the truly religious nature of ritual and
theatre had lamentably been diminished in the service of political propaganda in the
3 nineteenth and twentieth centuries, but “it is not the fault of the holy that it has become a middle‐class weapon to keep children good” (46). Miller and his successors such as
those in the present study might argue, though, that this theatrical weapon is the fault of both government and organized religion—and for all their respective constituents, not just children. Robert Bellah and his successors would likely agree. Although Bellah specifically notes that civil religion is a phenomenon distinct from formal religion, he acknowledges that much of the former’s structure and symbolism derives from the latter. Manifest Destiny, for instance, is linked to the Judeo‐Christian concept of the
New Jerusalem and the City on a Hill.
Following the work of the Prague School, theatre semiotician Keir Elam suggests that all objects on a stage, including actors, acquire “quotation marks” (7). He notes that
“the very fact of their appearance on stage suppresses the practical function of phenomena in favour of a symbolic or signifying role” (6) and that “the audience starts with the assumption that every detail is an intentional sign” (8). Thus an object or action
“inevitably acquires secondary meanings for an audience, relating it to the social, moral and ideological values operative in the community of which performers and spectators are a part” (8). In this light, then, clergy become more than mere representatives of their respective orthodoxies, and a church more than a mere house of worship. Thus, for example, Miller’s critique of Puritan ministers is not an indictment of protestant
Christianity per se. Rather, he critiques the paranoid society for which they stood. By the same logic, the unorthodox behavior of the faithful in Christopher Durang or John
Patrick Shanley do not primarily reflect the Catholic Church itself, but the secular political culture in which it operates and of which it has become a part.
As a case in point, the political connection in Durang between American drama and American government, which echoes techniques found in much of Miller’s oeuvre, is explicitly demonstrated in “The Doctor Will See You Now,” a one‐act play which recounts Mr. Nelson’s unfortunate visit to Dr. Mergatroyd for some allergy relief. The
4 Doctor becomes convinced that his patient’s ailment is the dreaded “VD,” and he
requires the monogamous Nelson, despite the latter’s repeated denials and protests, to
“give me a list of all recent contacts you’ve had. By state law we have to inform them
that they may be infected. There’s room for 80 names and phone numbers” (244). In the
Author’s Note to the play, Durang reveals that this sketch was written during the
Reagan years, when “there was a lot of talk about […‘]notification’” (250). He explains that this play was written specifically as a reaction to the absurdity of parental notification—requiring minors seeking birth control or abortion information—as underpinned by the religious right and championed first by Ronald Reagan, then
George H.W. Bush.
Except for the enthusiasm with which Dr. Mergatroyd follows orders, this play is not generally read as an indictment of medical professionals or of medicine as a whole.
Instead, this play clearly critiques the religiously‐driven health policies of the American government in the 1980s. Similarly, religious professionals in modern American drama should be viewed first as non‐religious vehicles rather than as critiques of orthodoxy.
Miller used the Puritans as a metaphor to object to the overstepping of political power among anti‐Communist crusaders. Durang, following Miller’s template, used Catholics in a similar fashion, objecting to the overstepping of power by the religious right, especially with regard to human sexuality. Neither playwright was particularly concerned with the religious aspects of the characters as much as with the dogmatic intensity with which they carried out their convictions in spite of opposing evidence.
Sister Mary Ignatius notes in answer to an index‐card question about birth control:
Let me explain this one more time. Birth control is wrong because
God, whatever you may think about the wisdom involved, created
sex for the purpose of procreation, not recreation. Everything in
this world has a purpose. We eat food to feed our bodies. We don’t
eat and then make ourselves throw up immediately afterward, do
5 we? So it should be with sex. Either it is done for its proper
purpose, or it is just so much throwing up morally speaking. Next
question. (385)
Critics such as the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights have discussed Sister
Mary Ignatius’ critical portrayal of modern Catholicism; indeed, boycotts generally
followed major stagings of the play. However, closer examination reveals a deeper synecdoche. Durang uses religious figures to critique Catholicism to an extent, but it is more germane to this discussion that he follows Miller in using them to critique
American civil religion and politics.
While other playwrights of the postwar era began to shift focus on clergy from
didactic to comic modes, and to use them to reexamine religion itself (for example, the
greedy Reverend Tooker from Cat on a Hot Tin Roof), with Miller religion first
systematically became a weapon of ideological destruction, rather than of construction,
on the American stage. Arthur Miller had established religious zeal as a critique of anti‐
Communism and American exceptionalism, and others at the end of the twentieth
century would follow this path. Yet Miller and his successors recognized the power of
theatrical symbols to go beyond Elam’s idea of “acquiring secondary meanings” and
“relating” to cultural values. Miller’s plays not only relate to American values, but they
construct and critique them as well. Observers of American culture have long known
the power of the theater to shape social values. Early Puritan and Methodist tracts such
as Charles Andrews’s On the Incompatibility of Theater‐going and Dancing with Membership
in the Christian Church or Josiah W. Leeds’s The Theatre: An Essay upon the Non‐accordancy
of Stage‐plays with the Christian Profession1 decried the immorality of the theatre.
Temperance dramas of the late nineteenth century used the stage to equate political
obedience with personal morality, for example, in the National Temperance Society and
1 For a comprehensive listing of these and other such works, see Robert Silvester’s excellent United States Theatre: A Bibliography to 1990. New York: G.K. Hall, 1993.
6 Publishing House’s children’s play A Temperance Play with the Old Woman Who Lived in a
Shoe, which “advocated the vote as the remedy for intemperance and stressed the importance of exerting political pressure upon legislators” (Frick 164). However, both
Miller and his successors acknowledge the ability of religion, government, and the theatre to remap semantic space and construct meaning. The difference between post‐
Miller playwrights and their prewar counterparts is that the postwar playwrights
caution against the political, social, and religious dangers inherent in allowing these
remappings to proceed unchecked.
Midway through the opening act of The Crucible, Miller interrupts the play’s
action to spend over 1,400 words in a narrative note explaining the entrance of
Reverend John Hale. Miller suggests that, “Ours is a divided empire in which certain ideas and emotions and actions are of God, and their opposites are of Lucifer” (33). By creating a false binary, this statement illustrates religion’s role in the surge of exceptionalism in post‐World‐War‐II America, while clearly referencing the polarizing nature of the Red Scare as embodied by the House Un‐American Activities Committee and other government investigations.
From the outset of The Crucible, Miller depicts Reverend Hale as a master of political and theological hubris. During the Reverend’s initial examination of the catatonic Betty, he is questioned about the stack of books he consults. He explains that
“Here is all the invisible world, caught, defined, and calculated. In these books the
Devil stands stripped of all his brute disguises” (39). By definition, “the invisible world” in question is beyond empirical observation, so the presumption of an exhaustive taxonomy highlights the absurdity of Hale’s position. This “catalogue” would later bring to mind Joseph McCarthy’s “I have in my hand fifty‐seven cases of individuals who would appear to be either card carrying members or certainly loyal to the
Communist Party” (J. McCarthy 240). Christopher Durang’s Sister Mary Ignatius had a comparable list, perhaps established in a similarly authoritarian fashion. During her
7 opening “lecture,” she defines the various levels of sin, emphasizing that those who
commit a mortal sin without an intervening act of contrition “will go straight to hell”
(386). She then orders her student, Thomas, to read “this partial list of those who are
going to burn in hell,” which includes Zsa Zsa Gabor, Brooke Shields, Mick Jagger,
David Bowie, and the editors of After Dark magazine (386). As with Reverend Hale’s
register of evil, the fact that the Sister’s list is read by a seven‐year‐old boy suggests
Durang’s opinion of such a presumptive cataloguing, as does the Sister’s later order for
Thomas to add to the list “after Comden and Greene” (399) the name of Diane, her
former student who has had two abortions yet refuses to go to confession.
This list of the hell‐bound demonstrates another example of Miller’s influence on
the playwrights that are the focus of this work. Since theatre semiotics posits symbolic
meaning for any object on stage, determining the extra‐literal role of the clergy at hand
becomes essential to interpreting these plays. The playwrights under consideration
used religious figures to represent members of the American political system. In each
case, the particular targets of religious symbolism were portrayed as single‐issued,
closed‐minded caricatures with philosophies along the lines of “I know what I believe; don’t confuse me with the facts.” Such narrow focus meant that both the McCarthy‐era
and Reagan‐era politicians, according to Miller and Durang respectively, tended to
disregard any evidence that contradicted preconceptions. Thus the McCarthy practice
of imputing guilt upon anyone who invoked the Fifth Amendment becomes
represented in the third act of The Crucible when Elizabeth Proctor lies about her
husband’s sexual improprieties, yet Deputy Governor Danforth and his men take this as
proof that John Proctor is guilty not of adultery but of perjury and consorting with the
devil (114). The ultimate fate of the two Proctors at play’s end merely serves to
emphasize the dangers of such dogmatically narrow outlooks.
In his essay “Ring Around the Collar: American Comedy and the Clergy,”
communications professor Larry A. Brown presents a productive analysis of the ways
8 in which American dramatists have used religious figures as comic relief, and he
convincingly connects the clergy’s fall from grace with a secularizing shift in cultural
views of religion. According to Brown, Protestant ministers especially were “no longer the fire‐breathing demagogues” they once were, having instead “found their new calling in the social sphere” (398). Americans during the twentieth century began to
value a clergyman’s influence on the social rather than the sacred level, an idea that
recent work by scholars in civil religion confirms. Conrad Ostwalt, for example, notes
that “popular cultural forms, including literature [. . .] are becoming increasingly more
visible vehicles of religious images, symbols, and categories” (29), in part because “even
[though] religious institutions lose authority, the power of religion does not diminish in
scope—the location of that power [. . . ] shift[s] in focus” (5).
Before this power shift occurred, religious figures were generally positive,
edifying the viewer and reinforcing the values considered part of American culture and
civil religion, such as temperance and devotion to duty. Brown’s analysis falls short,
however, by not taking his argument to its logical conclusion. After (and in Arthur
Miller’s case, during) the time of the House Committee on Un‐American Activities,
representations of religion in American drama began a significant alteration. Before the
1940s, clergy were most often represented as well‐meaning, theologically‐inclined
shepherds of the flock, such as in Marc Connelly’s The Green Pastures. After World War
II, however, these men and women of the cloth turned their attention to more secular
concerns and began to exhibit less‐than‐holy motives, as was the case of the arrogant
and materialistic Cardinal from Edward Albee’s Tiny Alice. Brown identifies this shift in
representation, citing such examples as Reverend Dupas of the First Existential Church
in Jules Feiffer’s Little Murders (403), but does not take his analysis of the causes and
effects far enough. Clergy were not just reflections of existing trends or flat comic relief.
Instead, these religious figures became indictments of those such as Joseph McCarthy
who had set themselves up as members of a new “theocracy” of secular humanism and
9 exceptionalism which formed American civil religion’s foundation. Thus the ultimate target of the plays’ critique is not the clergy or even organized religion itself, but rather
the secular leadership—specifically the American national government—of which these
religious professionals are a representative type.
A few dramatists saw an opportunity to subvert the era’s pseudo‐religious fervor
as a way to evaluate the society that had embraced it. Playwrights such as those at the
focus of this study began using clergy, biblical narratives, theological allusions, and
other imagery as foundational elements of their works. While ostensibly religious in
nature, this imagery was disconnected from its original sacred role. The function was
not to draw the viewer closer to a deity or other transcendent element, but to provide
convenient semiotic shorthand that allowed for social critique. Such images, clergy in
particular, became hyper‐attenuated caricatures or theological straw men, designed
specifically to call into question the position granted formal religion as the cultural
bedrock of American society, civil religion, and politics.
According to Walter Benjamin, art shifts from ritual to political use in the age of
mechanical reproduction: “[The] instant the criterion of authenticity ceases to be
applicable to artistic production, the total function of art is reversed. Instead of being
based on ritual, it begins to be based on another practice—politics” (1172). American
drama after World War II became increasingly focused not on theatre’s ritual or
performative aspects, but on the political ramifications of various elements of American
life. This played out on the stage as American society struggled to come to terms with
the threats, both real and perceived, to its exceptionalist way of life: war, economic
depression, and the growing concern over Communism (and later, terrorism). Benjamin
also notes that “In 1932 Rudolf Arnheim saw that ‘the latest trend . . . [was] in treating
the actor as a stage prop chosen for its characteristics and . . . inserted at the proper
place” (1176). By applying Keir Elam’s semiotic approach to American drama since
World War II, ”religious symbol” could replace “actor” as a stage prop in the above
10 sentence and have an equally valid statement. This insertion of a religious symbol at
“the proper place” occurs in the twentieth century when liturgical language and
imagery are displaced from their original sacred definitions and become “remapped”
onto a secular landscape. In Edward Albee’s Zoo Story, for instance, the character of
Jerry, while imbued with Biblical allusions (“I came unto you and you have comforted
me” [48]), is less messianic or apostolic than nihilistic—the antithesis of Biblical
hopefulness which had been echoed in the sense of exceptionalism that had dominated
American consciousness to that point.
In the second half of the twentieth century, a new wave of secular humanism arose in the United States which co‐opted religious tales, especially Judeo‐Christian ones, in order to bolster and enforce a secular ideal of American exceptionalism.
Margaret Miles notes in her article “How Should We Live?” that theater and religion
“both seek to create community and to provide the images and languages that attract,
maybe even compel, thought” (19, emphasis added). Peter Civetta points out that
churches have long “turned to theatre for its potential to effectively disseminate
religious ideology and build community bonding” (194), so it is not surprising that
secular culture would turn to drama for similar ideological propagation. Several
examples, for instance, can be seen in John W. Frick’s excellent study on the uses of the
theater in support of the temperance movement in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
The present study applies the theories of theatre anthropologist Victor Turner to this
period’s dramas and their connection with religious elements. Thus the evolution of
American ideology as constructed through these dramas can be traced and studied.
While both sides of this ideological divide (that is, World War II) use religion to
examine the nature of the American experience, their methods and results were
drastically different. Before the war, religious characters served to reintegrate the plays’
plots, and thus the audience, into conformity with the ideals of the American civil
religion. After the war, playwrights consistently used the same religious figures to
11 break from this conformity. The postwar religious elements thus performed a schismic critique of the status quo and allowed the audience to reevaluate such concepts as duty,
patriotism, and exceptionalism.
Semiotics defines communication “in general terms as the transmission of a signal from a source to a destination” (Elam 31) via a code, which is “the ensemble of rules—known to both transmitter and destination—which assigns a certain content (or meaning) to a certain signal” (31). Keir Elam’s theatrical analysis proceeds from the assumption that all dramatic discourse is defined by a certain “semiotic thickness” (40).
That is, the performance text communicates on multiple levels simultaneously as “a highly ambiguous text, being at every point semantically ‘over‐determined’” (41). He further contends that this information density stems in part from the fact that
the theatrical frame is never [. . .] ‘pure,’ since the performance is liable to
draw upon any number of cultural, topical, and popular references
assuming various kinds of extra‐theatrical competence on the part of the
spectator. (84)
Some of these extra‐theatrical coding elements “constitute canonical cultural references
and are thus virtually inescapable” (84). In the case of the present study, the canon used
by an American decoder would include elements of both secular and sacred religion as
filtered through popular culture.
Difficulties occasionally arise as a result of semiotic density and constantly‐ shifting interpretive codes, though. In some cases, elements that ought to be seen as
vehicles for the message are incorrectly decoded as the message itself. Regarding the frequent boycotts of Christopher Durang’s Sister Mary Ignatius Explains it All For You, for example, the absurd behaviors of the title nun are misinterpreted as anti‐Catholic rhetoric, rather than as a metaphor for a larger socio‐political critique of authoritarianism which supersedes orthodoxy. Another element complicating proper
12 communication involves what Elam calls isotopies, or contexts in which a discourse is situated. As he explains,
[T]he sentence “I love English runners” will be taken to refer (a) to athletes
or (b) to green beans, depending on whether the isotopy of “sport” or
“food” is at work. [. . . .] Where there is more than one possible level of
consistent interpretation (e.g. in Middleton’s A Game at Chess where the
isotopies of “game” and “political system” are simultaneously operative),
the text is said to be pluriisotopic. (167)
Again Sister Mary Ignatius explains this phenomenon; while the isotopy of “anti‐
Catholic performance” has been frequently applied to Durang’s works, this study
proposes the alternative isotopy of “cultural critique.”
At the end of his chapter on theatre communication, Elam examines the various
levels of interaction inherent in a dramatic performance: Performer‐performer,
spectator‐performer, and spectator‐spectator. Regarding the last category, which he
acknowledges is “usually ignored as a semiotic factor,” he notes three effects that occur
among an audience:
stimulation (laughter in one part of the auditorium provokes a similar
reaction elsewhere), confirmation (spectators find their own responses
reinforced by others) and integration (the single audience member is
encouraged, in consequence, to surrender his individual function in
favour of the larger unit of which he is a part). (87)
What Elam describes moves out of the realm of semiotics and into the second field
which directly informs the current study: theatre anthropology, and specifically Victor
Turner’s concept of communitas. Turner defines the concept as a “transient condition”
that “liberates [identities] from conformity to general norms” (Dramas 274). In From
Ritual to Theatre, he differentiates and more fully develops this concept into several
types, including spontaneous and normative. The first is “a direct, immediate and total
13 confrontation of human identities” (47) in which “compatible people [. . .] obtain a flash
of lucid mutual understanding on the existential level, when they feel that all problems,
not just their problems, could be resolved” (48). Spontaneous communitas is the sense of solidarity that an audience experiences during a performance such as a sporting
event or a theatrical production. This group solidarity is significant in that it abolishes
social structures and statuses, allowing interaction “not as role players [. . .] but as [. . .]
integral beings who recognizantly share the same humanity” (Dramas 269).
Spontaneous communitas differs from the second type, normative communitas,
which according to Turner occurs when a group “attempts to foster and maintain
relationships or spontaneous communitas on a more or less permanent basis” (From
Ritual to Theatre 49). This preservation often occurs by means of “religious and ethical
codes and legal and political statues and regulations” (Dramas 169). Examples of
normative communitas include participants in religious pilgrimages, or members of a
grassroots political party that has later become mainstream. Richard Schechner offers
the Roman Catholic Mass as a model: “The congregation is united ‘in Christ’ by the
Eucharist. However, not every congregant may feel ‘in Christ’ at that moment. The
communitas is ‘official,’ ‘ordained,’ [and] ‘imposed’” (Performance Studies 62). In
Turner’s schema, all forms of communitas arise from ritual, be it sacred (Mass) or
secular (sporting events). However, normative communitas is concerned with the
structure of the ritual itself, whereas spontaneous communitas focuses on the responses
of the participants to the ritual.
The essential difference between the spontaneous and normative communitas
that concerns this study is the former’s abolition of social status. As Turner explains in
Process, Performance, and Pilgrimage, in normal social interaction, group members are
forced “into roles, statuses, classes, cultural sexes, conventional age‐divisions, ethnic
affiliations, etc. In different types of social situations they have been conditioned to play
specific social roles” (43). He argues that, “It does not matter how well or badly [they
14 play these roles] as long as they ‘make like’ they are obedient to the norm‐sets that control” the dominant social structure (43). As this study will demonstrate, dramas written before World War II tend to be predicated on normative communitas and the
reinforcement of these social roles. (Some works, such as Clifford Odets’s Waiting for
Lefty do instead focus on spontaneous communitas, but they tend to be the exception.)
On the other hand, dramas written after the war consistently become more
spontaneously focused, and use the sense of solidarity to affect opinions.
In addition to communitas, Victor Turner’s concept that most directly informs
this examination is the idea that every social drama progresses through four distinct
stages. The initial conflict occurs as a breach of “a norm, the infraction of a rule of
morality, law, custom or etiquette in some public arena. This breach may be
deliberately, even calculatedly, contrived [. . .] to demonstrate or challenge entrenched
authority” (From Ritual to Theatre 70). During the crisis stage, the breach widens,
becoming more public and more polarized. According to Turner, “Sides are taken,
factions are formed, and unless the conflict can be sealed off quickly within a limited
area of social interaction, there is a tendency for the breach to widen and spread” (70).
To avoid this split requires some form of the third stage, redress, ranging from private
arbitration or religious ritual to full‐scale war. These redressive actions are “brought
into operation by leading or structurally representative members of the disturbed social
system” (Dramas 39). Critics of the crisis are generally the members of the society most
concerned with maintaining the status quo, such as tribal or religious leaders,
matriarchs, or other influential elements.
This attempt at redress ultimately leads to one of two possible fourth‐stage
outcomes. The first is that all the disparate factions experience reintegration into a
cohesive and peaceful, albeit changed, whole. The second outcome is that an irreparable
schism is identified, with the former unity irrevocably severed. In Turner’s
15 anthropological studies of tribal culture, such a schism often results in a physical
separation of the two groups.
Turner’s stages of social drama translate quite well onto the modern stage, even
with experimental or alternative theatre. The goal of Brechtian theater, for example, is to
walk the audience through Turner’s stages, first illustrating breach and crisis, then
using verfremdungseffekt to end not with reintegration, but with schism—to defamiliarize
in such a way as to call into question any previously unhindered acceptance of the
status quo. Alienation forces the audience out of a state of normative communitas. By
breaking from purely mimetic theatricality, Brecht urges his audiences to become part of a meta‐social act whereby the play functions as a liminal space enacting social change. Thus Turner applies to these situations precisely because these plays disrupt communitas by using the very language generally invoked through mimesis to create conformity. Brecht and Artaud used violence as a primary method of alienation, and wanted spectacle to jolt the audience into a different state of awareness and
understanding. American playwrights in the twentieth century used religion for similar
reasons.
This study is primarily concerned with representations of the final two of
Turner’s stages of social drama, however. In this model, the plays under consideration are themselves the agents of redressive action. The difference is that before World War
II, this redress was aimed at reintegration. Any sentiment that was contrary to
American ideals such as exceptionalism or civil religion, if portrayed onstage at all, was
quickly reinscribed into the dominant ideology, leading to a reintegration of the
audience into the ideological status quo. A telling example is Dion Boucicault’s The
Octoroon. In order to succeed on the American stage, the playwright reinforced the
dominant racial hierarchy by having the title character, Zoe, commit suicide rather than
wed the villainous M’Closky. When the play toured Europe, however, where abolitionist sympathies were stronger, Zoe was able to wed her beloved George and
16 live as equal citizens (Matlaw 205). Plays after World War II, on the other hand, began to advocate a more schismic result—critiquing and subverting these ideological tenets, and encouraging the audience to reevaluate its definitions of American culture.
Richard Schechner correctly points out that Turner’s theory “reduces and flattens out events” and that “any conflict can be analyzed ‘as’ social drama” (Performance
Studies 67). Yet he questions the value of such an analysis and too readily dismisses the power of Turner’s organizational schema. He laments that the theory “makes closure appear inevitable [and that] such framing is always arbitrary” (67), making it unsuitable for such non‐traditional dramas such as Beckett’s Waiting for Godot or performance art
(Performance Studies 67). This seems to be an interesting shift on Schechner’s part; in
Performance Theory (1988), he correctly points out that the redressive action of Beckett’s play is inversely “negative”: “the doing of various bits of ‘nothing’—talk that has no effect on the dramatic action, [and] vaudeville routines that fill up time but achieve nothing” (188). He then goes on to conclude that “in Godot there’s no reintegration, nor is there a schism. The play simply stops” (188). Schechner supposes that “the way
[Turner’s social drama schema] is distorted gives an insight into the dramatic structure”
(188). This study argues, by extension, that this distortion of Turner is the essence of what Beckett was trying to accomplish and the defamiliarizing context he was trying to create.
While it is possible to use Turner (as with any theorist) to oversimplify complex subjects, this four‐stage outline does have its advantages, as even Schechner readily admits: “One advantage to the theory is that it is helpful in distilling very complicated circumstances into manageable units” (67). As to the supposition that Turner cannot be applied to the Theater of the Absurd, this non‐traditional form is inseparably linked to the idea of breach and crisis. Such plays become metalinguistic commentaries on the nature of language in a fractured society. Thus the “plot” of an Absurdist play—of
Kennedy or some Albee, for example—exhibits characteristics of Turner’s social drama
17 only as ancillary; the true expression of social breach goes beyond traditional plotting and stems from the more universal arena of language, communication, and even meaning itself.
Having established a connection via Keir Elam that religious figures in the dramas are symbols for something larger, and by examining several broad characteristics that religious professionals embody on stage, this study proposes to connect these figures to a critique of American politicians and the ideologies they represent. The first category of clergy plays connects the clergy not with piety, but with pragmatism. These pragmatic priests are seemingly unconcerned with the spiritual needs of their flocks. Their focus is decidedly more materialistic. The primary example will be Father Tim Farley from Bill C. Davis’s 1980 play Mass Appeal. This conceit was dominant in the 1970s and 1980s, but echoes can also be seen with the Cardinal in
Edward Albee’s Tiny Alice in 1964, and Sister Aloysius in John Patrick Shanley’s 2004 play Doubt. This sense of pragmatism also incorporates the concept of priest as performer, as with the title character of Sinclair Lewis’s 1927 novel Elmer Gantry, which opened on Broadway at the Playhouse Theatre on 7 August 1928 and ran for only 48 performances (“Elmer Gantry”).
The second reason playwrights used religious professionals was to critique treatment of American minorities, including racial and gender‐based groups. These plays represent the complications that stemmed from the changing roles of minorities and women in American society and politics, especially during the 1960s and later. This study establishes a connection between the clergy in these plays and sociopolitical events such as the Civil Rights Movement and the Equal Rights Amendment. To this end, a section will be devoted to representations of minority and gender in The Amen
Corner by James Baldwin and Sacrilege by Diane Shaffer.
Antonin Artaud believed in subjugating the text to the vision of the director and, to a lesser extent, to the actor himself. This reevaluation of the primacy of the text
18 becomes a central issue in the religious satires of Christopher Durang, and echo the
social tension that Turner’s analysis would suggest. In a modern world no longer hindered by absolutes, the infallibility of dogma (whether religious or political)
becomes a target for ridicule by Durang. Choosing to focus on characters who
ostensibly would be at home in Artaud’s “Theatre of Idiots,” Durang creates hyperbolic
caricatures of Catholicism in such plays as Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All For You
and “The Book of Leviticus Show.” Christopher Durang’s priests and nuns (and one
West Virginia cable‐access host) provide the texts illustrating the third motif:
prescriptive preachers and semantic saints, whose only concern is imposing their self‐
defined moral code and rules of behavior on those under their purview. Thus Sister
Mary Ignatius decrees damnation for her homosexual student, yet absolves the wife‐
abusing alcoholic, choosing to define the latter student’s sins as merely venial ones. Just
as political figures have often been accused of imposing legal sanctions in an effort to
force certain moral values on their constituents, such as in the realm of sexuality or
scientific theory, Cardinal O’Connor decries the use of prophylactics as sinful, and
Lettie Lu imposes Levitical sentences on live television. These clergy believe that the
Church is divinely authorized to define (even create) truth merely by speaking from the
papal throne. Such epistemological acts of creation, for Durang and others, overstep the
semantic authority of the Church in a modern, relativistic society. Furthermore, these
characters and American civil religion exhibit a parallel relationship. They are not solely
a synecdoche for the Church, but for “orthodox America” as well.
The final category this study will investigate brings the argument back to its
beginnings. A close reading of John Patrick Shanley’s Doubt will hearken back to Arthur
Miller’s The Crucible with regard to a pastorate driven by paranoia. A canonical reading
which parallels the Salem witch hunts with the Red Scare and the House Committee on
Un‐American Activities will segue into a similar reading of Sister Aloysius and Father
Flynn. Doubt will be revealed to be less about the pedophilia scandal in the Roman
19 Catholic Church than it is with the paranoid response of the American government in
the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks and the subsequent War on Terror. While
Christianity and other religions were frequently being invoked on both sides of the war on terror, playwrights such as Shanley were using those very same religions and their adherents to question the motives of the politicians behind the campaign.
Religious plays in the United States, as with other forms of social commentary, generally begin with elements of Turner’s first two states—breach and crisis. This is unsurprising, since dramatic theory as far back as Aristotle relies on conflict between two or more parties to provide a play’s momentum. The essential difference between the two periods under consideration—before and after World War II—is in the results of Turner’s third stage of redressive action. Before World War II, religious imagery was used almost universally to facilitate reintegration. Through the revival meeting, the alcoholic sees the error of his ways and fervently embraces the gospel of Prohibition in numerous nineteenth‐century temperance dramas, such as Ten Nights in a Bar‐Room or
The Drunkard. Beginning in the second half of the twentieth century, though, religious elements more frequently led to what Turner identified as schism rather than reintegration. Pastoral figures become defamiliarized, to use Brecht’s term, and serve to
disrupt rather than facilitate communitas. Thus Sister Margaret, the protagonist
minister of James Baldwin’s The Amen Corner, is not a positive role model intended for
emulation. Her clear inability to shepherd her flock during their times of suffering instead urges the audience to reexamine the connections among faith, family, and culture.
Most dramas in this category operate within the breach stage of Turner’s schema
for social drama. That is, these plays use stories well‐known to audiences in order to
create a foundational idiom with which to illustrate a burgeoning problem in American
society. By using an existing familiarity, playwrights were able to establish a baseline of
understanding with the audiences. Then, in an almost Brechtian fashion, the alterations
20 the playwrights made to such familiar narratives prompted audiences to consider the magnitude and significance of the problems under consideration. As Archibald
MacLeish noted in the foreword to J.B., “A man may be forgiven for dramatizing an incident from the bible and even for modernizing it” since “when you are dealing with questions too large for you which, nevertheless, will not leave you alone, you are obliged to house them somewhere—and an old wall helps” (6).
21
CHAPTER 2
PRIEST AS PRAGMATIST
Tim: Do you want to be a priest? Mark: Yes. Tim: Then shut up and do what I tell you (Davis 25).
Religion and politics are tightly interwoven in the United States; at least four
distinct references to deity appear in the “Declaration of Independence,” for example.
This relationship was discussed as a paradox by Alexis de Tocqueville in Democracy in
America, and most notably developed by Robert N. Bellah in his seminal 1967 essay
“Civil Religion in America,” the ideas of which he would expand and refine in many of
his later works. In his 1980 essay “Religion and the Legitimation of the American
Republic,” Bellah suggests that human societies are in “constant flux” and have “a
tendency toward degeneration” (9). Thus one of the defining characteristics of civil
religion was its attempt to “nurture” its citizens, “root out corruption[, and] encourage
virtue” (9). Bellah posits that the basis for civil religion is “very securely institutionalized” yet “has no official support in the legal and constitutional order” (12).
This unofficial expression of civic virtue can be seen in the pantheon of American
“saints”—George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King, Jr.—as well as the regular observance of civic holidays such as Thanksgiving or Independence Day.
Since its stated goal is to “elicit the ethical commitment of its citizens” to the republic’s ideals, civil religion thus “pushes toward the symbolism of an ultimate order of
22 existence in which republican values and virtues make sense” (12). The “symbolism” and specific images that religion makes may vary from period to period, but the underlying patriotic appeals remain relatively constant. (Bellah examines such appeals
in “Civil Religion in America,” citing both John F. Kennedy and George Washington’s inaugural addresses, as well as Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address.) Jonathan Edwards’s sermon “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” HUAC’s pamphlet “One Hundred
Things You Should Know About Communism and Religion,” and George W. Bush’s
First Inaugural Address (which promised that “Church and charity, synagogue and
mosque [. . .] will have an honored place in our plans and in our laws,”) all seek to
reinforce the dominant political ideals through a deliberately pragmatic two‐fold
approach encompassing both civic and spiritual aspects of the American citizen.
One of the earliest motifs in modern American drama that demonstrated this
dual approach regarding religious and political figures was the idea of the pastoral
pragmatist—a person concerned more with practicality than with piety. This pragmatic
impulse is abundantly reflected in the drama of the past few decades. The prosecutors
in Arthur Miller’s The Crucible ignore contradictory evidence in order to protect the
“greater good,” and Christopher Durang’s Sister Mary Ignatius rationalizes gunning
down a former student by suggesting that the victim would no longer have to worry
about sinning. Most recently, Sister Aloysius refuses to drop her accusations against
Father Flynn in John Patrick Shanley’s Doubt despite an overwhelming lack of evidence.
One of the best known representations of this “priest as pragmatist” motif is the
Cardinal in Edward Albee’s Tiny Alice. In the opening scene, the Cardinal tells the
Lawyer, “Come. Let us talk business. You are a businessman,” to which the Lawyer
responds, “As are you” (12). After a lengthy discussion about the proposed bequest to
the church, the Cardinal excitedly asks, “Shall I just go to the house and pick it up in a
truck?” (17) The Lawyer pounces on this statement. As the Cardinal had earlier lectured
him on the use of the royal plural, and to this point has solely referred to himself this
23 way, the Lawyer correctly points out the reason for the clergyman’s sudden shift to the singular pronoun: “We have come down off our plural . . . when the stakes are high enough . . . and the hand, the kissed hand palsies out . . . FOR THE LOOT!!” (18). The desire for material gain—in this case the substantial bequest from the mysterious Miss
Alice—supersedes any hierarchical or liturgical pretense on the part of the clergyman.
Similarly, each of the plays in this chapter either institutionalizes pragmatism or abandons religious protocol in favor of a pragmatic impulse.
While Albee’s Cardinal and Lawyer illustrate the rising cynicism associated with religious figures during the 20th Century, a more fully developed example of this pragmatic impulse is found in Father Tim Farley, the older priest in Bill C. Davis’s Mass
Appeal. The play follows the interactions of Tim Farley, priest of a large, suburban,
Catholic church, and Mark Dolson, an idealistic young seminarian assigned by the seminary’s Monsignor to Tim for (cons)training. The resulting conflict between realism and idealism changes each of the two characters as Tim ultimately risks his parish and his career to save Mark from expulsion.
This brief two‐act play, Davis’s first, opened Off Broadway 22 April 1980 at the
Manhattan Theatre Club Downstage under the directorial debut of Geraldine Fitzgerald
(Davis 5). Due to the positive critical and popular response (an Outer Critics Circle
Award, as well as a Lucille Lortel Award for Best New Director), the play’s original one‐month run was extended until July 1980, for a total of 104 performances (Lortel
Archives “Mass Appeal”). New York Times theater critic Walter Kerr praised the Off‐
Broadway production as “a beautiful job” which “begins by amusing us as an idea, goes on to compel our more serious attention, [and] winds up sending a chill through the house. The author has a knack for surprising and unnerving us” (“Strong Drama” 5).
When the play moved to Broadway at the Booth Theatre in November 1981, critic Frank
Rich noted that Milo O’Shea’s reprisal of his role as Father Farley was “the finest performance of his New York career” (“‘Mass Appeal’ Comes to Broadway” C5).
24 Indeed, accolades listed on the Internet Broadway Database include O’Shea’s nominations for both a Tony Award and a Drama Desk Award.
Father Tim is a practical individual, even in matters of faith. Ecumenism and evangelism give way to expediency. Even grammar must give way to pragmatic
concerns; when Mark asks why sermons should not be grammatically correct, Tim
remarks, “They should be understood. Proper grammar doesn’t necessarily help
understanding” (29). However, he and Mark are often at odds regarding what exactly
needs to be understood from a homily. After Mark’s first sermon, Tim characterizes it as
a disaster for several reasons. First, the phone continually interrupts the priest
throughout the scene as parishioners call to voice their complaints. Also, he notes that
“the parish poll is in and eighty percent of those interviewed, after having seen the
spirit move you, feel that you and the spirit should move each other” far away to the
mountains (39). However, the most damning statistic in Tim’s view is the result of the
day’s offerings: “The collection went down thirty percent. It’s no accident that the
collection comes after the sermon. That’s like the Nielsen rating” (42). This statement
prompted Frank Rich to call Tim “an agile parish politician” solely concerned with
“preserv[ing] his popularity” (“‘Mass Appeal’ Comes to Broadway” C5).
Tim is a politician, always concerned with people’s opinions of him. He is thus
much more likely to speak in platitudes rather than parables, and to emphasize style
over substance. Walter Kerr describes the priest as “cozily adaptable as a chameleon,
delivering sermons composed entirely of what his listeners devoutly wish to hear”
(“Strong Drama” 1). Likewise, in an interview with the author, Bill C. Davis noted that
he recommends an actor playing Father Farley focus on this defining element of his
character: namely, that he “fears alienation above all else—he desires the approval and
love” of his congregation and “does not want to alienate anyone or lose their affection.”
On the other hand, Mark views the purpose of the pulpit, and the priesthood as a
whole, in a much different light. The very first exchange between the seminarian and
25 the man who becomes his mentor illustrates how differently the two see the priest’s role. Tim, having opened up his “dialogue sermon” on women in the priesthood, turns the floor over to Mark:
MARK: What do you think of women becoming priests?
TIM: What do I think? Well . . . I don’t like to sway people’s
viewpoints so I’ll plead the fifth on that one.
MARK: Yes—but this is a dialogue sermon.
TIM: I know it’s a dialogue sermon.
MARK: And dialogue means . . .
TIM: I know what dialogue means. (10‐11)
Tim practically admits that he is a self‐serving pragmatist, motivated by what most benefits him. Kerr notes that Tim “is a performer, a genial and accommodating one.
[Yet] catch him away from the altar and you’ll discover the realist in him” (5). He is a constant moderate, unwilling to “make waves”1 among those whose approval he seeks.
Davis suggests that Tim “is afraid of being perceived in any kind of dangerous way” (“Interview”), so he treats his position in the pulpit the same way he treats being the rector’s advisor at the seminary. As he tells Mark, “The only purpose of the rector’s advisor is to find out what the rector really wants to do and then advise him to do that”
(18). His dialog sermon is of the same mold, consisting of no real debate about the merits of women or the tenability of the traditional Catholic view in the modern age.
Tim’s goal is to reinforce what the congregation already believes, as determined by his
“Nielsen ratings,” under the guise of open discussion.
1 The 1984 movie version of the play, starring John Lemmon as Tim, adds the following exchange between the priest and Mark’s mother. The mother reminisces that Mark used to like waterskiing at the lake with his family, to which Tim jokingly suggests, “He must’ve liked the feeling of walking on water?” The mother, not catching the reference, replies, “No, I think it was the speed and the wind, and he liked making waves.” Tim remarks, “He has a history of that, then.”
26 Tim’s “Nielsen ratings” or comment cards brings to mind politicians’ use of polling data. Each method of data collection is used specifically to ascertain public opinion—whether congregational or national—in order to determine and possibly alter
the publically presented message. For Father Tim to base his messages and actions on
offering statistics is evidence of his pragmatic impulse rather than adherence to Church
policy, and this shift parallels a similar evolution in American political practice. The
authors of the Federalist Papers, for example, cautioned against relying on public
opinion in order to shape governmental action. James Madison argued that, except in
times of extreme national duress, “the passions, [. . .] not the reason of the public [sits] in
judgment)” (315). In Federalist Paper Number 71, Alexander Hamilton contends that
consent of the governed “does not require an unqualified complaisance to every sudden
breeze of passion, or to every transient impulse which the people may receive from the
arts of men” (409‐410). In contrast, twentieth‐century politicians saw awareness of
public opinion as an essential component of establishing and maintaining power. In The
Evolution of Political Polling, Robert M. Eisinger argues that presidents since Franklin D.
Roosevelt have viewed polls as “indispensable tools to learn about what would sway
the electorate” (4). Michael J. Towle points out that “White House attention to polls has
grown steadily during the modern presidency to the point where presidents now have
an official pollster who measures public opinion” (10). Even supposedly unscripted
events, such as presidential election debates, are shaped by public opinion and polling
data. Ronald Reagan’s famous question in the 1980 debate with then‐President Jimmy
Carter, “Are you better off now than you were four years ago?” had actually been
“scripted by speechwriter David Gergen [. . .] directly from polling data: by a two‐to‐
one margin, Americans considered themselves in worse shape than they had been at the
beginning of Carter’s presidency” (Schroeder 40). Tim’s sermons are similarly scripted
and dynamically changed according to audience response. In the event of coughing or
27 (even worse) dropped missals, Father Farley encourages his apprentice to alter a message midstream, effectively “switching to Plan B.”
Conversely, Mark’s accusation that Tim is pandering to public opinion stands in
stark contrast to traditional orthodoxy, such as that expressed by Sister Virgilia in Diane
Shaffer’s Sacrilege. In that play, the elderly nun quotes the motto of the Carthusian
monastic order: “‘Stat crux dum volvitur orbis.’ The cross remains constant while the
world turns” (Shaffer 73). Christopher Durang’s Sister Mary Ignatius is even more
resistant to change, going as far as to argue against some of the reforms enacted by the
Vatican II and Pope John XXIII as a profane acquiescence to public sentiment. Whereas
the Pope had declared the story of St. Christopher to be merely a legend, for example,
Sister Mary Ignatius observes that “I am not convinced that when we get to heaven we
may not find that St. Christopher does indeed exist and that he dislikes Pope John
XXIII” (389). Both Mary Ignatius and Virgilia are opposites in this regard. The nuns
refuse to change doctrine in spite of overwhelming public disapproval, whereas such
discontent almost immediately influences Father Tim’s message and actions.
Mark calls Tim to task—not only because of the priest’s disqualification of
women, but because he does so under the guise of a “dialogue,” a supposed free
exchange of ideas. In Father Tim’s case, true dialogue and debate are not the order of
the day. When Mark attempts to elicit a specific stance from the priest, the latter refuses
outright, not even taking the expected stand for orthodox dogma. Instead, Tim
equivocates by invoking the United States Constitution. This is a symbolically
significant reversal, since the Roman Catholic Church has historically considered itself
as representing a higher law. It is usually the secular government that invokes sacred
law—for example, the concept of the “City on a Hill” or Manifest Destiny—and not vice
versa. Furthermore, the priest’s reason for pleading the Fifth Amendment is especially
important. He says that he does not “like to sway other people’s viewpoints” (10), an
ironic position since traditionally the role of a clergyman is to guide his flock and
28 provide moral guidance. As Mark later points out, “there are serious moral and social
conditions that can be tended to from the pulpit” (31). This abdication of the shepherd’s
role, in fact, is for Davis a pivotal element of Tim’s behavior, and is another of the
aspects that he emphasizes to potential actors when describing the role (“Interview”).
From the beginning, Mark cares more about people than popularity, and is
driven by forceful and passionate conviction. When Tim allows him to give his
“unswayed viewpoint” (11) during the opening dialogue sermon, the younger man gets straight to the point: “I think women should be priests” (11). Sensing trouble, perhaps
in the form of the coughs or dropped missals that the priest later admits are barometers
of audience interest, Tim tries to get things back on point and avoid agitating his
parishioners. Yet Mark is determined: “Don’t you want to know why I think women
should be priests?” (11). Reluctantly, after playing it off with sarcastic humor (“By all
means—don’t be shy”), Tim again yields the floor to the young seminarian:
MARK: Well—you said that priests should be in the image of
Christ.
TIM: I didn’t say that. The pope did.
MARK: Whoever. But when Christ was crucified, only three
people stayed with him to the very end and two of
the three were women. At the foot of the cross was his
youngest apostle . . . his mother, and an ex‐hooker.
All of the men either denied him or were hiding out.
On the way to being crucified—it was a woman who
pushed through a very hostile crowd and wiped all
the blood and “male” spit off his face. The first person
he appeared to after his resurrection was Mary
Magdalene. I really feel that the courage and loyalty
these women showed to the actual person Jesus is in
29 his image, and I think it’s foolish to continue
depriving ourselves of the beautiful qualities a
woman could bring to the priesthood. (11‐12)
The two men clearly have conflicting views regarding the basis for religious and moral authority. This theological divide between the two characters is suggested in the original Manhattan Theatre Club production by having the characters stand across the stage from one another—Milo O’Shea’s Tim behind the pulpit stage right, and Eric
Roberts as Mark standing stage left. The two, each illuminated by an individual spotlight, are separated by an entire black stage—the only time such distance is seen in the production. Tim is quick to interject that the Pope, not he, was responsible for the dogma in question, and this is not a mere factual correction. Tim attempts to remind the congregation that the official position of the Church is much older than the young man before them, and that as a seminarian Mark should be well aware of the Pope’s words and divine right to say them.
Tim’s actions place him firmly within Victor Turner’s definition of the redress stage of social drama. The breach in this case is the perceived disjunction between the
Church and modern American culture as represented by the controversy over women in the priesthood. Mark personifies the crisis moment when he publicly repudiates the
Roman Catholic doctrine and seemingly dismisses the head of the Apostolic See with his immediate rebuttal of “Whoever.” Tim attempts to constrain and reintegrate Mark’s heterodoxy, first by deflection and avoidance, then later by focusing his mentorship on maintaining the seminary’s status quo.
Yet with that one word, “Whoever,” Mark dismisses Tim’s redressive attempts, as well as centuries of apostolic tradition and authority. In its place he puts examples of good works from scripture, arguing via inductive logic that the status quo is outdated and discriminatory. And what is Tim’s response? In the spirit of true dialogue and debate in the marketplace of ideas, he shuts Mark down with another sarcastically
30 humorous statement before moving on: “You really should invest in a portable pulpit.
Now—Mr. Quinn” (12). (The fact that Tim himself owns a portable pulpit, and requires
Mark to use it a few minutes later, is an irony that should not be overlooked.)
This use of humorous deflection to avoid answering difficult questions not only illustrates the priest’s pragmatic motivations, but also connects him with political figures who use the same deflective technique. Modern American presidential election debates render representative cases, such as the 1980 Carter‐Reagan debate, during which Ronald Reagan deflected President Jimmy Carter’s critiques of the governor’s
Medicare policy with the now‐famous dismissal “There you go again . . . .” Such was
Reagan’s skill at this particular rhetorical maneuver that one of his biographers, Lou
Cannon, called him “The Great Deflector” (491).
Tim is funny, personable, and generally poised, yet he is more concerned with trivialities and arcane doctrinal concerns than social gospel or philanthropy. He avoids public discussion with Mark about women in the priesthood in favor of
two announcements […:] bingo this Tuesday night in Mother
Cabrini Hall—or Cabrini’s Casino as I prefer to call it. And
whoever has a blue Seville, license number DU‐947—please move
it—you’re blocking the exit. I’d strongly advise whoever you are to
move the car as soon as possible, because after mass a church exit is
the most dangerous passage in the world. Let us pray. (12)
Although Davis states that the tag derived from a Connecticut license plate and someone’s birthday (“Interview”), the announcement from Tim at the end of the play’s first sermon can be read allusively as a reference to the King James Version of
Deuteronomy 9:4‐7:
After the LORD your God has driven [your enemies] out
before you, do not say to yourself, The LORD has brought me here
to take possession of this land because of my righteousness. No, it
31 is on account of the wickedness of these nations that the LORD is
going to drive them out before you. It is not because of your
righteousness or your integrity that you are going in to take
possession of their land; but on account of the wickedness of these
nations, the LORD your God will drive them out before you, to
accomplish what he swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac and
Jacob. Understand, then, that it is not because of your righteousness
that the LORD your God is giving you this good land to possess, for
you are a stiff‐necked people.
Remember this and never forget how you provoked the
LORD your God to anger in the desert. From the day you left Egypt
until you arrived here, you have been rebellious against the LORD.
(emphasis added)
The stubbornly dogmatic or pragmatic priest recurs frequently in modern American drama; surely “stiff‐necked” is an apt description of the trope represented by Albee’s
Cardinal or Williams’s Reverend Tooker. Although Father Tim himself seems to escape this moniker by play’s end, it does apply to the Monsignor and the rest of the Catholic hierarchy which would drive Mark out of the priesthood (as well as Frank and Alfred, the two seminarians the Monsignor suspects of having a homosexual relationship). Yet the connection must not stop merely with a critique of orthodox religion. The biblical warning against arrogance (“The LORD has brought me here . . . because of my righteousness”) has clear echoes in the New Jerusalem and Manifest Destiny rhetoric of
American politics.
Despite significantly different approaches in Milo O’Shea’s stage and Jack
Lemmon’s film portrayals, each actor emphasizes the self‐serving and calculating aspects of the Father’s character above all else. Tim’s pragmatism lends itself to a
32 business‐model view of church organization, and in each case, Mass ceases to be an example of transcendent liturgy and becomes more like a stockholders’ meeting.
In Act II, although Tim does suggest that a second sermon for Mark would allow the younger man to “redeem” himself, he suggests that this redemption will come via a majority vote accounted for through reaction sheets handed out after the sermon. This will be in addition to the already existing “Nielsen rating” that is the post‐sermon
offering. Similarly, even during what is arguably the holiest part of the Catholic week— the Mass—the priest is glib, even irreverent. A solemn “Let us pray” (12) (delivered by
O’Shea with immediately folded hands, higher‐pitched voice, and tacky smile) is abruptly juxtaposed against the flippancy of casinos and mass exits, which suggests that even the benedictory prayer has lost its sacredness. If, as Tim suggests, the offering is the equivalent of a television program’s Nielsen ratings, then the closing announcements and benediction represent nothing more sacred than the last commercial break and closing credits.
This image of priest as pragmatist also expresses itself through Tim’s relationship to his parish. His sense of pragmatism and his political prowess allow him a certain standard of living to which he has become quite accustomed. Thus Tim is very
possessive of his parish, or at least their approval and the material “blessings” they can
provide. He tells Mark in their first office meeting, “I wanted to tell you how much I
admired the things you were saying during my mass, and don’t ever do anything like
that again” (14). When Mark asks why, Tim replies, “You were challenging me in front
of my congregation. I don’t like that” (15). He cherishes appearances and the
maintenance of the status quo. Note the repeated use of the first person singular in his
objections, especially the reference to “my mass.” Although he instructs Mark always to
use the plural pronoun (28), that construction seems to be merely for public displays. In
private, the true focus comes out. It was not a challenge to Church or Catholic dogma
that bothered Tim. The attack on his theology was not as offensive to the Father as the
33 potential damage to his reputation in the eyes of his devoted flock. These shifting
pronouns no doubt recall the similarly pragmatic Cardinal from Tiny Alice, whose lapse
into first‐person singular allows the Lawyer correctly to accuse him of base materialism
and self‐serving interests. These theatrical and political examples each illustrate that the
controversies in question were often less about right and wrong than they were about
how given events affected the existing power structures.
Under Turner’s methodology, Tim’s semi‐formal appeal from superior to
subordinate is a typical first attempt at redressive action, which escalates as the
situation deteriorates. However, Tim is not speaking to Mark solely from a superior
position. Toward the end of the play, after Mark’s second sermon, Monsignor Burke calls the inebriated Tim to rebuke him. Tim responds, “Now just slow down, Tom—I can do whatever I want in my parish. Don’t presume more authority than you . . .” (69).
He ends the call by saying, “I will not be threatened. If I decide Mark gives another
sermon, then he’ll give a sermon. If I decided to give a sermon about Mark, then that’s
what I’ll do” (69). Yet this stance is perhaps little more than drunken bravado. After
realizing that Burke is going to expel Mark, Tim offers to let the deacon preach a
“redemption sermon.” The younger man objects that “Burke won’t let you do that,” to
which the priest responds, “He hasn’t told me you can’t give any more sermons and if I
avoid him for the next week, which is an appealing prospect, I could get away with it”
(61, emphasis added). The movie version’s Monsignor Burke notes that in order to
avoid giving the rector the opportunity to circumvent a defense, the priest goes as far as
breaking another dinner engagement, which in both versions is what got Tim into
trouble with the rector in the first place. This is Tim’s pragmatic streak at work again, as
it was in his opening sermon. For him, the maintenance of order requires him to avoid
being backed into a corner, whether theologically or procedurally. Thus as long as he
can avoid the rector, he can maintain plausible deniability.
34 Nonetheless, the nature of Tim’s relationship with his flock, and his tight hold thereon, is not a divine calling or sacred desire; his desires are rather more physical. He confesses to Mark after his failed sermon on the younger man’s behalf, “I have a lot at stake. Not just the Mercedes or this office” (72‐73). He later admits
This is my home. The people know me. They know my favorite
colors—the kind of sweaters I like—my favorite wine—Do you
know what a town in Iowa is like? There might be a Main Street. If
there is a movie theatre, it only shows family movies. The people
would not understand my humor. They wouldn’t talk to me. I have
to talk to people. (73)
Tim’s motivation is strictly internal. As he puts it early in the play, “I like being liked. It gives me a warm feeling. That and wine are the only warmth I get. I’m not about to give up either” (30).
Mark’s motivation, on the other hand, is external—a passion to help others and to spread a social gospel to a world in need. As a case in point, after revealing that Mark has been assigned to him, Tim attempts to set up a regular meeting time with his new charge:
TIM: Before we begin—as a rule—is this day good for you?
Friday?
MARK: No.
TIM: All right—what about Thursday?
MARK: No good either.
TIM: Why not?
MARK: The senior citizen center has a dance every Thursday
afternoon and I play the piano for them.
TIM: I see. Wednesday?
MARK: No.
35 TIM: What happens on Wednesday?
MARK: Meals on wheels.
TIM: What on earth is “meals on wheels”?
MARK: It’s a program for shut‐ins. People in the community
bring dinners to people who can’t get out.
TIM: How about Tuesday?
MARK: Prison.
TIM: So Tuesday’s no good either. (25‐26)
Mark’s calendar is filled with philanthropy; the difference between the two men’s schedules is one that Tim himself sarcastically acknowledges: “Well Monday is no good
for me. I go to the races. I go to the races on Monday to get over the masses on Sunday.
So that leaves today. Now tell me I’m keeping you from a leper colony” (26). Tim is
driven by the pragmatic elements of vocational ministry; for him the priesthood has
become merely a job, rather than the calling Mark sees it to be. This is especially evident
in the escapist nature of the elder man’s Monday activities. Furthermore, the fact that
“masses” is not capitalized suggests that he is trying to escape not only the ritual
service, but also the congregants that inhabit it. This avoidance of church members is
immediately repeated in the scene. Tim phones his assistant Margaret and the following
conversation ensues:
I have one appointment this afternoon I will have to cancel . . .
Never mind why. Mr. and Mrs. Koyn—they’re worried because
they haven’t had a fight in twenty‐three years. Margaret—listen. I
made the appointment with Mrs. Koyn so tell Mr. Koyn that she
mixed up the date. See if that gets anything started . . . It’s not a lie,
Margaret. It’s creative counseling . . . Now Margaret—we’ve talked
about your scruples before . . . . (26)
36 As a part of his pragmatism, Tim seems to possess a predilection for shifting the semantic landscape to suit his needs. Obvious to everyone—perhaps even Tim himself—as hopelessly one‐sided, this ad hoc redefinition of lying as “creative counseling” exemplifies a recurring criticism of both organized religions and politicians. Whether it is calling taxes “revenue enhancements” or some other form of doublespeak, politicians are often similarly accused of “creative” redefinitions in order to further their own aims.2 In his essay “Politics and the English Language,” George
Orwell states that “In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defence of the indefensible” (172‐173) and that, as a result, “political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question‐begging, and sheer cloudy vagueness” (173). As he later points out, “the great enemy of clear language is insincerity[,] when there is a gap between one’s real and one’s declared aims” (173).
Mark questions this semantic disparity several times throughout the play.
During their first meeting, Mark calls Tim to task for cancelling a dinner with the
Monsignor:
MARK: Do you cancel dinners with him often?
TIM: Is that any of your business?
MARK: You just said—it is my problem [. . . . W]hy did you
cancel?
TIM: Someone from the parish was having a problem. I
couldn’t get away.
MARK: Really?
TIM: You don’t believe that.
MARK: No.
TIM: Very good. You shouldn’t. (16)
2 For a full discussion of doublespeak and the legacy of George Orwell, see William Lutz’s Doublespeak and The New Doublespeak.
37 The willingness to redefine religious and social terms, or even to lie outright, has another negative effect. The person in question begins to distrust the words of others,
and becomes unable to take statements at face value. Act II begins with Mark back in
Tim’s study, recounting the meeting with Monsignor Burke. Upon hearing that Mark admitted to sexual relations with both genders during his past, Tim becomes agitated, despite assurances from the younger man that “Everything’s fine” (58). Pressed further,
Mark reveals that the Monsignor’s response was a simple “Thank you for being so honest—good‐day” (59). Tim, stunned, repeats this statement twice, which initially bothers Mark until the latter man begins to understand the implications of the
Monsignor’s statement:
Why are you repeating what he said? Now don’t start reading into
it. I mean—why would he thank me for being honest if he didn’t
. . . No—I’m not going to dissect it . . . You interpret it your way
and I’ll . . . I’ll . . . “Thank you for being so honest—good‐day.” I’m
in trouble. God—I am so deaf. He sent me to your dialogue sermon
and it all seemed very innocent. He expelled Frank and Alfred and
called it “taking a leave of absence.” And now—“Thank you for
being so honest—good‐day,” which means he’s going to get rid of
me—isn’t he? Isn’t he? (59)
Mark, with his penchant for straightforward discourse, is initially unable to comprehend the shifting meanings and subtexts which Davis and others portray as the clergy’s stock in trade.
During the initial office visit, Tim interrogates and chastises Mark as a disruptive and undisciplined rebel who should attend Mass at the seminary. He discovers that while Mark prefers doing so, the rector himself had sent the seminarian to Tim’s parish.
In the Manhattan Theatre Club production, O’Shea’s demeanor instantly changes—he pauses mid‐stride, slowly turns, and addresses Mark face to face, warily suspicious:
38 TIM: Did he say why he was sending you?
MARK: He said that you were the most tactful priest in the
diocese, and that tact was something I needed to
learn.
TIM: [Laughs] He is really something.
MARK: You’re not the most tactful priest in the diocese?
TIM: I might be—but that’s not why he sent you.
MARK: It’s not?
TIM: No.
MARK: Well—why do you think he sent me?
TIM: Because he wanted to get back at me for cancelling a
dinner engagement with him. (15‐16)
The priest sees Burke and others as adversaries with ulterior motives rather than as colleagues with common beliefs and goals. This presumption of pettiness over piety, in essence a disjunction between intent and action, is a telling commentary on the older man’s view of the priesthood. When Mark objects to being “used as a pawn” (16), Tim acknowledges the ulterior or secular motives inherent in the Church’s hierarchy: “If you want to be a priest in the same church as the players, it is your problem” (16).
In light of the play’s later events, Tim’s misgivings are justified and reinforce the idea that church leaders are not to be trusted. Mark reluctantly accepts Tim’s interpretation precisely because the younger man acknowledges such verbal obfuscation as more than merely a symptom of Tim’s individual pragmatism. Mark presumes that such doublespeak is normal for Church hierarchy, perhaps even expected.
The central conflict of the play, whether or not Mark will be allowed to continue in the seminary, hinges on the theological and pragmatic differences between the younger man and his more orthodox superiors. Mark is driven by social gospel; Tim is
39 driven by social standing. When Mark is asked if he knows fellow seminarians Frank
Kearney and Alfred Virasi, he immediately focuses on their benevolent activities: “They work with the emotionally disturbed children every Tuesday and Thursday. I watch them—they’re good” (17). There are layers of meaning in that final word; not only are they skilled at this type of work (they are good at what they do), but Mark also posits
that they are good people in general. That is, they exhibit a standard of morality that he
believes ought to be desired by others around them, despite a potential departure from
the Church’s official position on homosexuality.
Even Tim himself seems to acknowledge the damage that strict adherence to
orthodoxy can effect. In his roleplaying session in “Lesson II—Consolations,” he—
presumably by accident—forgets his role and begins what becomes a genuine
confession. He admits that
I went into the preparatory seminary when I was thirteen. I
believed everything I was taught. Followed all the rules—to the
letter. I wanted everyone to be perfect. Especially my mother.
When I thought she wasn’t, I cut her off. She’d write—she’d call—I
never answered. Once she called, and I came so close—I had the
phone in my hand. But I hung up. Three weeks later she was dead.
You asked me if I believed there was such a thing as hell. There are
hints of it on earth. (46)
These hints were found in the actions of a clergyman rigidly following the rules of his
order.
Yet Tim and Monsignor Burke focus on dogmatic suspicion. Tim, acting on
rumors he’s heard, focuses on the potential damage the two young seminarians could
do to the Church’s reputation. More precisely, he suggests that these two seminarians
could cause ripples which might damage his congregation’s view of the Church in
general (and him specifically), thus diminishing his gifts and adoration. “[T]here are
40 still strong tabus. Frank and Alfred are fooling around with the ultimate tabu” (18). On the other hand, Mark identifies them first by their actions, rather than their orientation or power affiliation. Popular sentiment at the time the play was written would be
unlikely to define homosexuality as taboo, ultimate or otherwise. By echoing this view
rather than the traditional Catholic stance against same‐sex relationships, Davis
attempts to move the audience toward some other viewpoint. The result is that the
Church becomes the offender rather than the moral guardian, and the audience is
encouraged to reevaluate the role of religion in a secular society.
Mark is seen as a threat, by Burke at least, precisely because he is outspoken and
willing to critique the Church’s policies and behaviors publicly. Mark’s impassioned
speech to Tim about life at the seminary is a case in point:
You’re never at the seminary. You don’t see it. Nobody there cares
what’s going on. Do you know how many seminarians have TVs in
their rooms? Most of their praying and meditating is done during
commercials. They all drive brand‐new freshly simonized cars.
They take off to St. Thomas and California like I go to the movies.
But that’s fine with Monsignor Burke. Somehow that fits in with his
definition of ecumenism. But he hears a few rumors about Frank
and Alfred and he gets out his trumpet to blow down the walls of
Sodom and Gomorrah. (23‐24)
Mark at this point functions as raisonneur of the play; this is not only his criticism of the
seminary, but Davis’s critique of organized religion as a whole. The problem as Mark
sees it is that the seminary is all about image. Religious devotion is pragmatic, being
squeezed in during commercial breaks, and the seminary reinforces if not actively
advocates this philosophy of style over substance. Yet to infringe upon certain
theological areas, in this case sexuality, brings down the full wrath and might of the
faithful on offenders such as Frank and Alfred. Whether or not the Church should
41 ignore or allow (homo)sexuality among seminarians is not at issue here. Rather, Mark argues for consistency—if the Monsignor enforces Church policy regarding sexual expression, then he must enforce other laws as well, such as those concerning the seminarians’ asceticism. If Elam’s semiotic theories are applied to the Monsignor’s arbitrary enforcement, then a larger sociopolitical critique is revealed as well. Because of what Elam terms metalogisms, which are “context‐bound devices [. . .] that [. . .] depend on the audience’s ability to measure the gap [. . .] between reference and referent” and
“imply knowledge of the referent in order to contradict its faithful description” (160), the unstated implications about the Church—namely, that it is inconsistent in enforcement, focusing only on certain specific moral strictures—connects in the audience’s minds with other bureaucracies and organizations that focus on certain elements at the expense of other, perhaps more relevant, issues. Consider the parallel concept of single‐issue voting in American politics; as long as candidates have identical views on a specific issue—immigration, or balanced budgets, for example—their stances on other issues are considered irrelevant at the voting booth.
The conflation of the story of Sodom and Gomorrah from Genesis 18 with the defeat of Jericho’s walls from the much later narrative of Joshua 6 might simply be explained as a mixed metaphor borne out of Mark’s passionate fire, but another explanation seems more likely. Mark intentionally conflates the two stories in the same way as Monsignor Burke, suggesting that the latter’s piecemeal enforcement of biblical law is an equally inaccurate handling of scripture.
Davis structures the play so that the conflict is resolved not when Mark’s status at the seminary is unraveled, but when Tim is finally able to rid himself of his pragmatic impulses. This resolution can be seen through the only two times that the characters come into extended physical contact. The first occurs during the
“Consolations” lesson, the second at the end of the play when Tim punches the younger man in the stomach. The only times the two touch are direct results of Tim’s uncensored
42 emotional expression. When the pragmatic, self‐serving impulse is superseded, either
by sorrow in the first case or anger in the latter, the true and vulnerable humanity of the older man allows him to forge with Mark perhaps the only authentic relationship the priest has. As Davis suggests, the actor playing Tim must embody “viscera and humanity,” because “Tim is an injured healer” (“Interview”). In the first instance, the
injury is emotional and spiritual. The second is physical, but provides the catalyst for
Tim’s ultimate social and spiritual healing. He is finally able to move beyond his past
and “use his injury as a motivation, not as an endgame or what consumes” him
(“Interview”).
The physical encounters the two men share are symbolically chiasmic, with Tim
being the central focus. The first contact between the two consists of Mark’s hand
placed comfortingly on the older man’s shoulder. Yet the escalation to this gesture
suggests that more than comfort is symbolized by this act. Tim is playing a grieving
parishioner so that Mark can practice “saying something inane” since, according to the
priest, “Consolations should sound stupid so that the party in grief will realize how
inconsolable their grief is. Inconsolable grief puts a person in a very exalted position.
This feeling of being exalted gets most people through most tragedies” (43). Mark is
dubious, and the interaction begins with a flippant tone; when Tim states that his father
beats him, Mark responds “Uh . . . You don’t have any scars, you’d never know it,” and
“they’re always fighting in Catholic schools so they all have black eyes—you must fit
right in” (45). Throughout this dialogue in the Manhattan Theatre Club production, Tim
is seated at his desk sipping one of his ever‐present glasses of burgundy. In a case of in
vino veritas, Milo O’Shea’s voice becomes increasingly subdued and pensive. At the line,
“My mother’s remarried. I hate her new husband” (45), the cadence breaks and he
begins to tap the table tentatively, signaling first to the audience and then to Mark that
the conversation has shifted from hypothetical to actual memory. O’Shea’s Tim
becomes increasingly emotional as the conversation progresses:
43 TIM: I cry myself to sleep because I’m sure she’s going to
hell.
MARK: Do you believe there can be such a thing as hell?
TIM: After a while—I just wouldn’t talk to her.
MARK: You talk to her now—don’t you?
TIM: She died and we hadn’t exchanged a word in two
years.
MARK: You bastard.
TIM: Is that all you have to say? (45‐46)
Before Mark’s next line Eric Roberts, who has been standing at the end of the desk looking down at the priest, turns to face the back wall while he walks to it, hands clasped behind his back. At this point the seminarian understands, as perhaps does the audience, the vulnerability the priest is demonstrating. The younger character is clearly unsure how to proceed; his previously joking inanities seem profanely inadequate so, in perhaps the first truly priest‐like action of his life, he turns back to Tim and says softly, “Go on, I’m listening” (46).
Davis points out that this brief contact represents a turning point for both men, especially Mark. The extended hand “illustrates Mark’s way of doing things” and tells Tim two things: “a) this is how to deal with a human being in pain, and b) I know this about you” but am too compassionate to draw attention to it
(“Interview”).
Mark’s hand on Tim’s shoulder serves to close off Tim’s emotional outpouring; the priest visibly reestablishes his businesslike visage and demeanor:
“That’s enough on consolations. Let’s move on to Lesson III—Converts” (46). The opposite effect occurs with the final contact between the two. Tim’s punching of
Mark actually releases the pent‐up emotions—this time for both men. Mark, having called the priest’s bluff about an imminent “appointment,” states that “I
44 should warn whoever it is. People should be warned about you” (75). At this
point in the stage production, both men are alternately sarcastic and yelling.
After saying this line, Eric Roberts pokes the older man in the chest and yells,
“They all come thinking they’re being helped—but really they’re just pouring
their guts out to a drunk who catalogs their anguish” (75). At this point Tim with
a yelled “Get out!” lands his blow.
When they first meet at the beginning of the play, Tim critiques Mark for unholy
actions and words—the younger man’s stance on women in the Church, for example—
and considers them tantamount to heresy. However, Tim almost immediately attributes
secular or hidden motives to his fellow clergymen, noting wryly that Monsignor Burke
“gets very upset when I cancel anything with him, but he’ll never show it. So he does
something more subtle. He knows your reputation—he knows my dialogue sermons, so
he put them together hoping for exactly what happened” (16). The irony is that
Monsignor Burke’s joining of the two is what results in the alteration and growth that
each character experiences by play’s end. Burke’s “interference” provides the catalyst
for all subsequent action. Despite this, Tim’s rash assumptions and his resulting course
of passive aggression—each based in his pragmatic impulse to avoid change—stand in
sharp counterpoint to Mark’s naïve directness and honesty. Bringing to mind such
elements as the Church’s stance on sexuality and sexual expression, a frequent topic of
Christopher Durang’s works, or the American government’s interpretation of the
Patriot Act and the War on Terror, the subjects of John Patrick Shanley’s Doubt, the two
characters of Mass Appeal serve as an indictment of a system which, for its own
pragmatic purposes, would regularly judge other areas as well.
45
CHAPTER 3
MINORITY MINISTERS
Your mama’s kind of proud, you know, proud and silent. We had us a little trouble. And she wouldn’t come to me. That’s when she found the Lord. — Luke to David (Amen Corner 42)
Minority representation on the American stage illustrates by counterpoint the general role of religious imagery in modern American drama. Religious imagery is a convenient and familiar cultural shorthand, often used to create conformity or consensus with the tenets of civil religion as well as the playwright’s specific themes.
Thus Arthur Miller used the Puritans of The Crucible to critique McCarthyism not because he was concerned with the religious ideologies of witch hunters or Communist hunters, but because the symbolism would be more widely understood by an American audience steeped in a Judeo‐Christian‐based civil society. Theatrical use of religious imagery often nuances a particular work. That is, the audience’s previous knowledge provided the playwright a ready‐made foundation on which to construct his or her thematic elements. A case in point is The Last Days of Judas Iscariot by Stephen Adly
Guirgis, which takes the betrayer of Jesus, puts him on trial, and allows the audience to examine not only the complexities and motivations of an oft‐vilified and unidimensionally‐viewed character, but of their own actions in a self‐serving and litigious modern society. Neil Simon’s God’s Favorite, a retelling of the Biblical story of
46 Job, is another example. Although the play, set in the mid‐1970s, echoes the source text’s theme of unjust punishment, it moves quickly to an assessment of consumerism
almost wholly unrelated to the original story’s theme of unyielding devotion to God. In
many ways, then, religious imagery is used to defamiliarize; a play’s meaning is
predicated on a familiarity with and redefinition of an underlying symbol or
interpretation, in accordance with Elam’s concept of metalogisms.
For some minority playwrights, though, religious imagery was not used to create a comfortable consensus via a familiar sacred idiom. African‐American playwrights of
the 1960s and 1970s, such as Ben Caldwell or James Baldwin for example, often focused
on religious images in order to highlight the oppressive inadequacies they saw as
inherent in a tradition received directly from the racial majority. Most theatrical
productions engender what Victor Turner terms “spontaneous communitas,” which he
argues allows a playwright to influence thoughts and emotions more effectively than
possible in non‐theatrical venues. In these minority critiques, however, the playwright
often subverts this sense of unity to create a feeling of discomfort at complicity with the
forces of oppression and coercion.
This sense of oppression and coercion can be seen in Diane Shaffer’s 1995 play
Sacrilege. In this tale of Sister Grace, a Catholic nun who aspires to the priesthood, the
link between piety and politics is specifically laid out before the play begins, as the
dramatis personae uses distinctly political language to describe the various members of
the Catholic hierarchy. Cardinal King, second in command to Pope John Paul II,
“handles people and events with the relentless diplomacy of a politician” (Shaffer 5).
Father Jerome is the ambitious “public relations liaison for the Vatican Embassy” (5).
Even the nuns of the play are portrayed in secular terms. In an unusual conflation of
sacred and secular, Virgilia, a fellow Sister of Charity who comes to oppose Grace in
favor of the orthodox status quo, is “God’s policewoman” (5).
47 When Grace is first called from New York City to the Vatican Embassy in
Washington, D.C., the meeting is attended to by the elderly Sister Joseph, who serves as an attendant and functionary for the priests. Although nearly identical in age to the
more militantly orthodox Sister Virgilia, Sister Joseph sympathizes with Grace’s cause.
Upon entering the room to serve tea after the meeting has begun, Sister Joseph “touches
Grace’s hand” and they “exchange a smile” (16). Father Jerome and Cardinal King
proceed with their interview as though the older nun never entered nor interrupted the
meeting. Grace, on the other hand, stops the meeting to acknowledge the other
woman’s contribution: “Excuse me, gentlemen, just one moment. Thank you, Sister
Joseph, thank you. I’m sorry. You were saying?” (16). With the exception of Cardinal
King’s offer to sign her petition at the end of the play, none of the male clergy ever
addresses the elder nun as equals or even in a positive way. The closest Father Jerome
comes is during the final interviews when he is forced to seek Sister Joseph’s help to
repair the malfunctioning tape recorder. Even then, however, he does not acknowledge
her superior technical skills, choosing instead to dismiss her with a perfunctory word of
thanks. This is not merely an omission of manners on the part of the male clergy.
During Sister Joseph’s first scene, as she is lingering at the edge of the room and intently
following the proceedings, Father Jerome suddenly recognizes her continued presence
and becomes annoyed: “Excuse me, that will be all, Sister Joseph” (16), he says
dismissively. The older woman haltingly asks the Father for permission to stay and
listen; his response is a terse “Certainly not” (16), a verdict he maintains even when the
Sister offers to take notes: “No, Sister, this is an informal meeting. You are excused”
(16). Thus when Sister Joseph eventually returns to clear away the tea service at the end
of the first meeting, her apologetic “Just pretend I’m not even here” (22) takes on a
bitterly ironic significance.
In an emailed correspondence, Diane Shaffer states,
48 I didn’t set out to write “a religious play,” though the story is set in the
Catholic Church. I set out to write a play about the devastation caused by
discrimination, by gender‐weighted language as a tool for power.
She agrees that her play offers a larger political critique, and cites a contemporary example: “We have only to view and read some of the reportage and commentary about
Hillary Clinton’s [presidential] campaign to realize that sexism is alive and well in the
United States” (“Questions”). Until very recently, women were institutionally secondary in the American political establishment. Women’s suffrage was not established until 1920’s ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment; before then, women were politically influential only indirectly through their husbands, for example, or through gender‐based groups such as Ladies’ Auxiliaries. Although women have been ordained by some faiths such as the Episcopalians in recent years, they are still subordinated by many other organized religions. Even large and influential organizations such as the Sisters of Charity are ultimately under the authority of a male‐ dominated hierarchy.
The Second Ecumenical Council was called by Pope John XXIII in 1962 and ran for four consecutive autumns. Two of its stated (yet unfulfilled) goals according to Pope
Paul VI, who continued the Council after John XXIII’s death, were “to renew the
Church” and “to start a dialogue with the contemporary world.” Diane Shaffer had this in mind when she created Sacrilege. The stage directions call Sister Joseph “an unsung heroine” (5). Shaffer elaborates on this concept: “We all know them. The one in the background who always sets up the chairs, makes the coffee, cleans up after everyone else has left. The Christ who washes his brother’s feet” (“Questions”). Sister Grace’s petition and rallies are clear parallels to the actions of Equal Rights Amendment supporters. Grace tells the tribunal that “About 70% of all Catholics think women should be priests” (22). The fact that both initiatives failed on the institutional or
49 national level in spite of popular approval connects this play to its political surroundings and transforms the clergy into symbols of the American political life.
While women are certainly well‐represented in American drama, the most frequent incarnation of religious minorities on stage concerns race rather than gender:
the African‐American minister. When W.E.B. Du Bois wrote The Souls of Black Folk in
1900, he described the church as “the social centre of Negro life in the United States, and
the most characteristic expression of African Character” (311). He noted that the
Preacher “is the most unique personality developed by the Negro on American soil. A
leader, a politician, an orator, a ‘boss,’ an intriguer, an idealist,—all these he is, and [. . .]
the center of a group of men” and that the “combination of a certain adroitness with
deep‐seated earnestness, of tact with consummate ability, gave him his preeminence,
and helps him maintain it” (310). In the data compiled by St. Clair Drake and Horace R.
Cayton in the 1945 Black Metropolis: A Study of Negro Life in a Northern City, some of
those surveyed stated that “the church is a good influence on the community” and
“members of churches are the ones that you find trying to accomplish something worth
while” (356). By the last quarter of the century, however, the value of the African‐
American church and its leaders had greatly diminished in the eyes of the community.
While James V. Hatch and Ted Shine note that “The African American church became
the first social institution in the country totally controlled by blacks” (282), social
scientist Kenneth Clark suggested that “The Negro church is a social and recreational
club and a haven of comfort [. . . .] Within the church, a Negro porter or maid can
assume responsibilities and authority not available to him elsewhere” (143).
Clark’s conception of the African‐American church’s power structure follows
Victor Turner’s conception of communitas, which allows for the abandonment of
external social roles such as those imposed by race in the United States. Spontaneous
communitas replaces these socially‐imposed roles with a more homogenous
egalitarianism. This homogeneity becomes diminished, however, as the power
50 structures of the outside world become inverted and internalized. Thus the porter or
maid can begin to exercise power over other members of the group in a chiastic pattern
identical to the external forces from which the group originally withdrew. In Turner’s language, this standardization is characteristic of the shift from spontaneous to
normative communitas. A literal example of this “porter‐to‐power” phenomenon can be
found in Eugene O’Neill’s Emperor Jones. Brutus Jones freely admits that he manipulates
religious traditions—in this case his own Baptist tradition and the pantheism of the
islanders he seeks to control—in order to solidify his power and increase his wealth:
“I’se after de coin, an’ I lays my Jesus on de shelf for de time bein” (19).
Inversion of power structure and the shift from spiritual to social emphasis
becomes essential to interpreting the role of more traditional clergy in the modern
African‐American congregation:
The value of the church [. . .] is great enough to permit [parishioners] to
tolerate almost any degree of personal, theological, or educational
inadequacy upon the part of their minister, so long as he holds the church
together as a successful social and financial institution. (Clark 144)
The parishioners tolerate shortcomings as long as the minister maintains materialistic success, with the spiritual or benevolent aspects of the organization being of secondary concern. Finances rather than faith indicate accomplishment.
The African‐American minister is frequently used as a representative racial boundary figure. Hatch and Shine note that “many of [the African‐American] ministers were among the first [. . .] politicians and liaisons between Black and white communities” (282). The Black minister is fluid, able to discourse in both societies with respect and ability; see, for example, the deference shown to the Black minister
Meridian Henry by certain members of the white community in James Baldwin’s Blues for Mister Charlie. However, this fluidity can result in criticism from both sides, such as
the attacks on Sister Margaret in Baldwin’s earlier play The Amen Corner. In this case,
51 Margaret stands for the African‐American community leadership, both religious and secular, at the time of the play’s conception. Baldwin’s portrayal of this troubled woman parallels the criticisms made by those members of the community who advocated resistance rather than assimilation. The charges that the congregation levels against Sister Margaret are significantly similar to those made against real‐world
African‐American leaders such as Martin Luther King, Jr.
James Baldwin acknowledges in his introduction to the play, which was begun in the summer of 1952, that it is a thematic continuation of his earlier novel Go Tell It On
The Mountain. First performed at Howard University in 1954, The Amen Corner was not widely produced until about a decade later (Hatch 514). It was rediscovered by producer Frank Silvery, whose Theater of Being’s stated purpose was “to bring the truth of black experience to the stage in a way that would exist beyond the mere words of the play” (Hatch 514). The Amen Corner played in packed Los Angeles theaters, first at the Robertson Playhouse, then the Coronet Theater, for over a year (Hatch 514). It then opened on Broadway in April 1965, but only for a twelve‐week run (Hatch and Shine
284). Set in a New York storefront church and its adjoining apartment, the play centers on the church’s minster, Margaret Alexander, as she interacts and conflicts with her son, her congregation, and her dying estranged husband.
Theater critic Howard Taubman of the New York Times noted in his review of the original Broadway version that while the overall production was lackluster, Beah
Richards, who played Sister Margaret, was nonetheless successful in creating this sense of what Victor Turner might call communitas:
She laughs at herself through her tears, and you laugh with her. She
remarks on something else that is funny. She laughs and you laugh.
Through her and your laughter there emerges the perception of a woman
for whom at long last you can muster up a deep fellow feeling. (Taubman
35)
52 Michael Lynch notes that “While Baldwin does evoke for the audience that joyous
togetherness possible in the black fundamentalist church, his more basic purpose is to
create the communion of the theater as a means to change people” (39). Because the
audience is intimately familiar with the religious imagery and symbolism, Baldwin is
able to engage viewers more fully than if another conceit had been used. This can be seen even among Baldwin’s other works, for example. While the audience experiences a
sense of communitas when watching Blues for Mr. Charlie, the structure and subject
matter of the play result in more passivity. Thus the sense of unity is not as strong,
despite both plays having similar generational and racial issues, as well as prominent
African‐American clergy as central parental characters.
Like Christopher Durang’s Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All For You, Baldwin’s
The Amen Corner creates conformity by configuring the performance space so that the
audience’s rows parallel and join with the seating onstage, giving the illusion that the entire auditorium is part of a single congregation. The play opens with a fast‐paced congregational song, complete with tambourines, shouting, and much handclapping by both actors and audience. The 2002 African Theatre Continuum production even had church members enter the stage via the house aisles, and Margaret began her sermon while standing in the center of the auditorium, surrounded by audience members on each side. As Michael Lynch points out, “The play is successful in performance because the audience is so powerfully drawn into and affected by the church ritual” (39). Once this congregational atmosphere is created, however, Baldwin immediately begins to subvert it, both onstage and off. When Margaret tells Ida Jackson that perhaps God is telling her to leave her husband, the young woman objects, “No! He don’t want that!”
The stage directions note “smothered giggles among the women” (14), but the audience laughs as well. Thus all parties are indicted when Margaret immediately chastises, “No, children, don’t you be laughing this morning. This is serious business” (14). By deliberately playing on the audience’s participation in the action, Baldwin is able to
53 internalize more fully his critical point. By critiquing the laughter as it occurs among the
audience, Baldwin encourages viewers to examine their connection to the events and
the society that produces them.
This reexamination stems from what Keir Elam and the Prague theorists called
foregrounding (aktualisace). In language, foregrounding “occurs when an unexpected
usage suddenly forces the listener or reader to take note of the utterance itself, rather
than continue his automatic concern with its ‘content’” (Elam 15). In performance,
certain elements—lighting, costumes, gestures, etc.—are given “unusual prominence.”
As Elam explains, this serves to distance these theatrical elements from their “codified functions. When theatrical semiosis is alienated, made ‘strange’ rather than automatic, the spectator is encouraged to take note of the semiotic means, to become aware of the
sign‐vehicle and its operations” (15). In the case of the African‐American minister, the
audience must consider the liturgical aspects of the play not merely as part of the
character’s background, but rather as the essential characteristic around which all the
action of the play centers. Margaret is a woman who has suffered terribly and whose
family is disintegrating, but the focus is not on her as a person, but as a type. The playwright causes the audience to focus its interpretation on Ministers (and perhaps other social and political leaders) in general, not simply on Margaret specifically.
In his introduction to the play, Baldwin states that in order to create the character of Sister Margaret he had to consider his own mother and “the stratagems she was forced to use to save her children from the destruction awaiting them outside her door”
(xvi). He then continues to note that this knowledge makes him “so unmanageable when people ask me to confirm their hope that there has been progress—what a word!— in white‐black relations” (xvi). He suggests that Margaret (like his mother) “is in the church because her society has left her no other place to go. Her sense of reality is dictated by the society’s assumption [. . .] of her inferiority” (xvi). In order to create such a varied and exploratory character, and to initiate the audience’s reexamination of the
54 racial status quo, he knew he had to situate the story within the religious idiom of a minister and her storefront church. Not only was it the life he had known (having been an evangelist himself during his teens), but he specifically invoked this idea of semiotic foregrounding: “I knew that what I wanted to do in the theatre was to recreate moments I remembered as a boy preacher, to involve the people, even against their will, to shake them up, and, hopefully, to change them” (xvi).
Baldwin’s criticisms of the clergy directly parallel the charges against many strands of fundamentalism, both sacred and secular, that were leveled in the 1950s and
1960s. These charges were especially brought by members of the African‐American community against their own leaders. Charles V. Hamilton suggests that “the most serious criticism[s] of the black preacher are materialism, anti‐intellectualism, and authoritarianism in terms of leadership style and political non‐involvement” (50). This first charge, materialism, is one of the early yet subtle critiques of Margaret in The Amen
Corner. Abuse of church funds is seen most notably through the symbol of the family’s refrigerator. After the services which open the play, Brother and Sister Boxer find themselves in the pastor’s kitchen, along with Sister Moore, David, and Odessa. Brother
Boxer opens the refrigerator with a passing, “Sister Odessa, what you got cool to drink in that fine new Frigidaire? You got any Kool‐Aid?” (20). When his wife chastises him that “You know you ain’t suppose to be rummaging around in folks’ iceboxes,” he objects, “This ain’t no icebox, this is a Frigidaire. Westinghouse. Amen!” (20). At first, this seems to be a simple case of wealth envy. Yet at the beginning of Act II, Sisters
Moore and Boxer begin to explain to Odessa some of the conversation that occurred when “Some folks just happened to drop by [Sister Moore’s] house and we got to talking” (39). When Odessa bluntly asks, “Is folks thinking that Margaret’s stealing their money?” Sister Moore responds:
Ain’t nobody accusing Margaret of nothing. [. . . .] Folks just loves Sister
Margaret. Just the other day one of the saints—was it you, Sister Boxer?—
55 one of the saints was saying to me how much trouble she have with her
old refrigerator and she say it sure done her heart good to know her
pastor had a nice, new Frigidaire. Amen. She said it done her heart good.
(39)
The fact that Sister Moore uses this particular example to counter Odessa’s query
suggests that financial malfeasance is precisely what the congregation (or at least Sister
Moore) suspects.
Moore is not the only member of the congregation with such suspicions. During
the congregational meeting in the middle of Act II, which contains the entire cast save
Margaret, David, and Ida Jackson, Sister Moore is upset that the money raised to send
Margaret to Philadelphia was spent without any accounting on the minister’s part.
When Sister Rice suggests that worrying about the money or how Margaret spends it is improper, Sister Moore chimes in magnanimously, “That’s what I say, amen. Sister
Margaret our pastor and the few pennies we scrapes together by the sweat of our brow to give to her she got a right to do with as she see fit, amen!” (46). Odessa, sensing the
true sentiment behind the discussion, objects by listing all the expenses the church
incurs—chairs, rugs, robes, etc.—and that “you people is just murder on hymnbooks,
tambourines and Bibles.1 Now Margaret don’t use hardly none of that money on
herself” (46). Brother Boxer, however, immediately objects: “You folks got a new
frigidaire, though. I ain’t saying nothing, but—” (46). Odessa, incensed at the
implication and the inaccuracy of his statement, heatedly retorts,
That frigidaire is in my name, Brother Boxer—it’s the first new thing I
bought for that house in I don’t know how many years—with money I
1 She points out, however, that even though “you folks is always breaking [chairs] during the service, when you gets happy[, t]hose of you what wears glasses, though, [. . .] don’t never break them. You holds yourself together somehow until somebody comes and takes them off’n you” (46). This suggest a level of inauthentic performance on the part of the congregation that equals what they charge against their leaders.
56 made from scrubbing white folks’ floors. Ain’t a one of you put a penny in
it. Now. You satisfied? (47)
A similar objection to the African‐American minister can be found in Ben Caldwell’s
1967 one‐act play “Prayer Meeting: or, The First Militant Preacher.” This short work
opens with a burglar entering the bedroom of a black minister. After commenting on
the amount and quality of the furnishings, he notices a photograph on the dresser. He
remarks, “I shoulda known this was a preacher’s pad,” since a black person with such
affluence is “either a preacher, a politician, or a hustler. Really ain’t no difference
though. All of ’em got some kind of game to get your money!” (420).
In the same way, while the statistical data in Drake and Cayton’s Black Metropolis
was generally favorable to the clergy, some survey respondents expressed suspicion of
the church leaders: “You pay and pay money and the church is still in debt” or “All
[churches] want is money to keep the big shots going” (355). One working‐class response was even more specific: “Some of these preachers [. . . are] living like kings— got great big Packard automobiles and ten or twelve suits and a bunch of sisters putting food in their pantry” (355). This comment is strikingly similar to one of Baldwin’s own in his essay “Down at the Cross”: “[T]he minister eventually acquires houses and
Cadillacs while the faithful continue to scrub floors and drop their dimes and quarters and dollars into the plate” (309).
This charge of financial malfeasance is not leveled solely at the African‐American minister. Shaffer’s Sacrilege takes great pains to foreground the difference between the
Vatican Embassy and the Houston Street Crisis Center run by Sister Grace. The former is described as having an “antique chair [and] end table” on an “expensive Persian rug”
(14). The crisis center’s office, on the other hand, contains “a beat‐up end table with lamp” and an “outdated PA system” (24). Sacrilege also illustrates the second of what
Hamilton identified as the most serious criticisms of African‐American ministers: The
57 charge of anti‐intellectualism. The scene introducing Sister Virgilia opens in the middle of a spirited conversation between her and Sister Grace:
Virgilia: I still don’t see why I have to learn a computer! My 3x5 cards
have worked just fine for years.
Grace: Sister Virgilia, we now have over three thousand
contributors.
Virgilia: So get bigger filing cabinets! (24)
This anti‐intellectual impulse—as expressed in this case through Virgilia’s refusal to learn new technology—stems from an unbending adherence to tradition. As Virgilia later tells the priests, “‘Stat crux dum volvitur orbis.’ The cross remains constant while the world turns” (73). Both the priests in Sacrilege and Sister Margaret in Amen Corner view formal education with a degree of skepticism. Philosophical and theological inquiry is acceptable, but practical application of knowledge in a way contrary to orthodoxy is forbidden. Sister Grace’s use of statistics and her Master’s degree in theology are subordinated to the Roman Catholic hierarchy. Similarly, David’s formal music training is seen as less important than the “natural gift” that “the Lord give” him
(19). In both cases, formal education is seen as a dangerously secularizing force that ought to be avoided.
This charge of anti‐intellectualism plays a minor yet thematically significant role in Baldwin’s plays. Historically, urban storefront churches like the one in The Amen
Corner were populated by lower‐income, working‐class African Americans with little or no formal secondary education. Ronald L. Johnstone’s demographic study of African‐
American ministers stratified the clergy into three groups: militant, moderate, and traditionalist. Johnstone discovered a direct correlation between education level and militant ideology; according to his study, “five out of every six militants have a college and/or graduate degree, with all militants having at least two years of college training” compared to 16% of the traditionalists and 38% of the moderates (278). This educational
58 disparity isolated the groups and often prohibited consensus. The differences in education, often according to generational lines, provide some of the tension between
Margaret and her son. David is eighteen and therefore a legal adult, yet Margaret
refuses to treat him as such. She is genuinely surprised at his refusal to accompany her
to Philadelphia:
David: But, Mama, I don’t want to take a week off from music school.
Margaret: Is the world going to fall down because you don’t go to music
school for a week?
David: Well, Mama, music is just like everything else, you got to keep
at it.
Margaret: Well, you keeping at it. You playing in service all the time. I
don’t know what they can teach you in that school. You got a
natural gift for music, David—(A pause. They stare at each other)—
the Lord give it to you, you didn’t learn it in no school.
David: The Lord give me eyes, too, Mama, but I still had to go to school
to learn how to read.
Margaret: I don’t know what’s got into you lately, David. (19)
Margaret’s comments suggest disdain toward formal education. In her view, David’s
schooling can do nothing but secularize him and pull him away from the vocation she
intends for him. David’s response presupposes the opposite view, in keeping with the
thematic generational difference that developed among the African‐American
community during the period the play was written. For David, formal education
supplements rather than subverts giftedness, whether natural or divine.
The third of Hamilton’s categories is that ministers are guilty of
“authoritarianism” (50). This translates in The Amen Corner as an abuse of pastoral
power in Margaret’s ministry. A case in point is the Boxers’ primary concern that
59 Margaret very publicly forbids Joel to drive a liquor‐delivery truck as part of his job. In her opening sermon she points out,
Some of you say, ‘Ain’t no harm in me working for a liquor company. I
ain’t going to be drinking the liquor, I’m just going to be driving the truck!’
But a saint of God ain’t got no business delivering liquor to folks all day—
how you going to spend all day helping folks into hell and then think you
going to come here in the evening and help folks into heaven? It can’t be
done. (9‐10)
Later, when the Boxers and Sister Moore are discussing Margaret and her family,
Sister Moore observes that “Folks is got a right to make a living” and that “It ain’t like
Brother Boxer was going to become a drunkard [. . .]—he won’t even see the liquor [. . . .]
He just going to be driving a truck around the city, doing hard work” (24). When
Margaret enters the kitchen after the service, the job discussion comes to a head. Sister
Moore tells her pastor that the Boxers “just happened to mention to me something about this job you don’t think Brother Boxer ought to take” (26). She then attempts to reason with Margaret:
Sister Moore: I don’t mean no wrong, Sister Margaret, and I know you the
pastor and is set above me, but I’m an older woman than
you are and, I declare, I don’t see no harm in it.
Margaret: You don’t see no harm in it, Sister Moore, because the Lord
ain’t placed you where he’s placed me. Ain’t no age in the
Lord, Sister Moore—older or younger ain’t got a thing to do
with it. You just remember that I’m your pastor. (26)
Sister Moore acknowledges Margaret’s superior leadership position, but offers the benefit of age in order to add a new perspective to the minister’s decision. Instead of seeing Moore’s comments for their informative value, however, Margaret takes them as an expression of insolence. This reaction is in line with the generational differences
60 highlighted by Johnstone’s research. Nor is Margaret’s response an isolated incident
within the play. Margaret repeatedly ends discussions not to her liking by citing her
position of authority. The explicit reminders of “where he’s placed me” and “I’m your
pastor” are clear examples of such appeals designed to shut down any disagreement. At
the end of this exchange between Margaret and Sister Moore, the latter woman tries
again to object, “But, Sister Margaret—”; Margaret immediately cuts her off with a terse,
“I don’t want to hear no more about it” (26). Rather than acknowledge any merits of a
dissenting viewpoint, she imperiously asserts her own position.
Margaret fails her congregation—a symbol of the African‐American
community—through her avoidance behavior and authoritarianism. She does not care
about them as fully as she should, instead doing such things as forcing compliance
rather than engendering it voluntarily. For example, after her ex‐husband Luke first
collapses, Margaret orders the rest of the members to tend to him, and commands
David to find a doctor. As she leaves to continue with her trip to Philadelphia, she calls
out “Praise the Lord” (32). When Odessa is the only one to repeat her words, Margaret
whirls around and, according to the stage directions, “dangerously” tells the others,
“Praise the Lord, I say”; Sisters Moore and Boxer issue a dry and perfunctory response
in kind (32). This exchange exemplifies Margaret’s tendency to use religious rituals as
an expression of personal power, rather than any sense of liturgical or religious
devotion. Baldwin constructs her as a strong‐willed woman who relies on her authority
as pastor to stop arguments and debate. The character seems to forget that this
authority comes from and is bestowed by the very people she is bullying (as evidenced by the fact that this flock eventually strips her of this authority).
The priests in Sacrilege take a similar approach to dissention and heterodoxy. At the first meeting in the Vatican Embassy, Cardinal King notes that on numerous occasions Sister Grace has been “formally reprimanded for expressing personal opinions in direct opposition to the Church” (16). He asks Grace, “Sister, would you
61 agree that unity strengthens the Church and dissent weakens it?” (17), and compares her to Martin Luther. Sister Grace’s response to the priest’s decision is indicative of the
authoritarian control exerted by the Roman Catholic Church, whose hierarchy prohibits
dissention both without and within:
King: We have instructed your Mother Superior to discourage you
from staging any more public rebellions, delivering
commencement addresses to theology graduates and
agitating your fellow nuns.
Grace: Am I discouraged or forbidden?
King: Discouraged.
Jerome: You took a vow of obedience.
Grace: The vow of obedience can be and has been used as a
convenient device to subjugate the people of the Church. But
the fear of excommunication has held us hostage since the
birth of organized religion. You’ve got us by the throat. Any
challenge to your authority only tightens the grip. (19‐20)
Monsignor Burke in Mass Appeal exhibits the same sense of dogmatic authority, and neither priest denies this authoritarian impulse. On the contrary, Father Jerome celebrates it: “Even you will agree, Sister Grace, that in ruling any large body of people, a certain degree of authority is necessary to prevent anarchy. That is not intrinsically a bad thing. On the contrary, it is a very good thing” (20). The sense of helplessness in the face of eternal banishment serves to keep heterodoxy in check, as it does in The Amen
Corner concerning Brother Boxer’s job driving the liquor truck. In the same way, the magnitude of power wielded by federal‐level politicians served to stifle rebellion in the
United States. For example, fear of being called a Communist sympathizer and forced to testify before HUAC prevented many from speaking out against the politicians fueling the Red Scare.
62 Authoritarianism also tends to negate any compassionate response on the part of dramatic clergy. In the first act of Sacrilege, a phone call alerts Grace that the drug‐ dealing Crackerjack has been in an accident. Sister Virgilia leaves Grace’s office to
intercept them, and the audience hears the following offstage exchange:
Ramon: Where’s her office?
Virgilia: Young man, if you ever try to sell drugs in this soup kitchen
again . . .
Ramon: GET OUT OF THE WAY! (25)
When Ramon finally enters Grace’s office, his reaction to “God’s policewoman”
becomes understood. He drags in a “doped‐up Crackerjack” who has a “blood‐soaked
T‐shirt tied around his head” (25). Virgilia’s authoritarianism precludes a
compassionate response to Crackerjack’s obvious suffering. Yet while Virgilia was only
concerned with maintaining order and obedience to the rules, Grace immediately
begins to administer first aid.
Hamilton’s final critical element is that the African‐American minister is too uninvolved in political reform. In 1964 Gary Marx, a researcher at the University of
California, Berkeley, demonstrated a distinct correlation between levels of religiosity and militant tendencies. Of those who cited religion as “extremely important,” only 22% expressed overtly militant ideals, as opposed to the 62% who identified religion as “not at all important” (154). Ronald Johnstone termed these apolitical ministers traditionalists, and described them as those “passive with regard to challenges to the prevailing social order, preferring never to enter the battle arena” (277). Johnstone’s assessment of the African‐American clergy’s political efficacy is grim:
In short, we see in the Negro clergy as a total category or group no
significant or sustaining leadership source for continuing civil rights
action. This is not to deny that Negro preachers can still serve as a [. . .]
grass‐roots support [and a] middle‐man function. (285)
63 He notes that even militant preachers are minimized and constrained by the church:
They have an outreach and influence disproportionate to their numbers.
In all likelihood, however, they will have to be co‐opted by other
organizations and drawn out of the [. . .] church [. . .] if they are to make a
sustained and significant impact on civil rights. (285)
James Baldwin echoes this disjunction between pastoral and political activity. He states
in “Down at the Cross” that “[W]hen I faced a congregation, it began to take all the
strength I had not to stammer, not to curse, not to tell them to throw away their Bibles
and get off their knees and go home and organize, for example, a rent strike” (309).
In The Amen Corner, this lack of political activism is seen through Margaret’s
insistence on the concept of ekklesia, a New Testament Greek term meaning “set apart
from the world.” In her opening sermon, Margaret concludes that the Old Testament
King Hezekiah didn’t call on any of his own spiritual advisors, but called on the
prophet Isaiah “because Isaiah lived a holy life. He wasn’t one of them always running
in and out of the king’s palace” (8). She implies that Isaiah was holy precisely because he was not one who pandered to royalty. The idea of ekklesia is a repeated motif in both testaments of the Bible, and is a recurring theme in African‐American literature as well—the idea of aliens and strangers in a foreign land. Yet here Margaret emphasizes the value of this separation. It is a negative characteristic to be a frequent visitor to the king. That is, to be involved in politics somehow diminishes the “holiness” of a person.
The members of her congregation, however, do not share her isolationist interpretation.
Sister Boxer, lamenting to Sister Moore about Margaret’s injunction against Joel driving the liquor truck, points out:
Sister Moore, you know that woman I work for, sometime she give a party
and I got to serve them people cocktails. I got to. Now, I don’t believe the
Lord’s going to punish me just because I’m working by the sweat of my
64 brow the only way I can. He say, “Be in the world but not of it.” But you
got to be in it, don’t care how holy you get, you got to eat. (24‐25)
In order for the African‐American community to survive, even on the most basic physiological level, they must engage the dominant social order.
Margaret’s idea of religiously‐enforced isolation brings up a criticism that moves beyond Hamilton’s schema: namely, that she is out of touch. She exhibits much the same behavior as Sacrilege’s men of the Vatican, who Sister Grace says “live isolated existences of privilege and power and are out of touch” with the problems of their constituents (Shaffer 18). Margaret is disconnected from her family, from her congregation, and from society as a whole, both racially and nationally. She has spent so many years compartmentalizing the various aspects of her life—wife, mother, pastor, woman, African American—that when others try to force confluence she is unable to cope, often lashing out in anger or authoritarianism to maintain the status quo.
Margaret’s advocacy of this compartmentalization philosophy to Sister Jackson at the beginning of the play is one of the first indicators of malignancy in her pastorate and emphasizes her failure with her congregational family. She is unable to console or guide Ida Jackson not once, but twice. Initially, she suggests that the younger woman should leave her husband—often a financial impossibility for a single black mother at the time. That she fails the Jacksons again after the death of the baby is darkly ironic, given that part of her inability to guide seems to be a flashback and projection on
Margaret’s part. Her advice is so ineffective that Mrs. Jackson rejects Margaret’s offer of prayer, stating that there’s nothing she could do; a desire for prayer is what drew
Jackson to Margaret’s church in the first place. While the motives of God are called into question, it seems to ultimately be Margaret whom Baldwin has Jackson reject. This is unfortunate, since of all the issues that Margaret faces in her congregation—sickness, wealth envy, rebellion, etc.—her own life experience should have offered particular clarity in this situation, having previously lost a child of her own. (Note that Margaret
65 must symbolically lose another baby before she is ready to be a fully‐engaged member
of the African‐American community.)
Traditionally, the church in African‐American culture functioned to unite and strengthen the family, but throughout The Amen Corner the church is something that divides people—Margaret, David, and Luke, of course, but also Ida Jackson and her husband. When Margaret asks the young woman why her husband is not with her at the worship service, she replies, “I guess he at the house. He done got so evil and bitter, looks like he don’t never want to hear me mention the Lord’s name. He don’t know I’m here this morning” (14). The implication is that had he known, the husband would have belittled her, prevented her from coming, or worse. Yet Margaret does not see this element—she believes that if the man is not “trying as hard […] to lead a life that’s pleasing to Him” (14), then the problem is automatically with the husband. Margaret’s immediate response is that “Maybe the Lord wants you to leave that man” (14), psychological projection on her part as the play later reveals. Furthermore, she refuses to pass it off as a joke. As previously mentioned, she admonishes the congregation, “No, children, don’t you be laughing this morning. This is serious business [. . . . W]e is got to be saying amen to Him, no matter what sorrow He cause us to bear” (14). Her admonition to the young mother is even more severe: “Don’t let the Lord have to take another baby from you before you ready to do His will” (14). Her prayer at the end of this encounter reinforces the idea that Margaret is projecting her own family problems onto this younger woman. She prays that the Lord will raise the baby up “and make him a good man and a comfort to his mother” (15).
Yet her disconnectedness renders her own son a discomfort. Margaret only thinks of David in one dimension—as her ministerial successor. She is too myopic to recognize that something more is going on with her son. Despite his sarcasm and lackluster agreement with her assessment of his spiritual status, Margaret is unable (or perhaps simply unwilling) to interpret these signs correctly. The other members of her
66 congregation, however, have no such difficulty. Brother Boxer, while criticizing
Margaret, calls David a “half‐grown, hypocrite son of hers [. . .] just running all roads to
hell” (37). When Odessa tries to defend her nephew by suggesting that his companions
“just might be fixing to drop him at this very doorstep [. . .] in time for tarry service”
(38), Brother Boxer sarcastically responds,
I don’t hear no cars drawing up in front of this door [. . . .] And I bet you
prayer meeting ain’t what David had on his mind. That boy had a
cigarette between his lips and had his hand on one of them girls, a real
common‐looking, black little thing, he had his hand on her—well, like he
knowed her pretty well and wasn’t expecting her to send him off to no
prayer meeting. (38)
This situational irony provides much of the tension of the play. Margaret refuses to see
David as the adult that he is, preferring to think of him as a child who is still moldable, innocent, and under her control. When instead she is confronted by the strong‐willed independent young man determined to follow his own path, one that does not involve his mother’s organized ministry, she is unable to adjust. She laments to Odessa, “I done something, somewhere, wrong [. . . . M]y baby’s in the world” (80).
Given her emphasis on ekklesia, this worldliness is the ultimate betrayal in
Margaret’s mind. When David misses the church service and instead shows up reeking of alcohol, Margaret is incensed:
Is that what I been slaving for all these long, hard years? Is I carried slops
and scrubbed floors and ate leftovers and swallowed bitterness by the
gallon jugful—for this? So you could walk in here this Lord’s‐day
morning stinking from whiskey and some no‐count, dirty, black girl’s
sweat? Declare, I wish you’d died in my belly, too, if I been slaving all
these years for this! (76)
67 She is less concerned with his physical and psychological pain than she is with the
spiritual and professional ramifications of his actions, as the subsequent interrogation
reveals:
Margaret: David, I ain’t so old. I know the world is wicked. I know young
people have terrible temptations. Did you do it because you
was afraid them boys would make fun of you?
David: No.
Margaret: Was it on account of some girl?
David: No.
Margaret: Was it—your daddy put you up to it? Was it your daddy made
you think it was manly to get drunk?
David: Daddy—I don’t think you can blame it on Daddy, Mama.
Margaret: Why’d you do it, David? When I done tried so hard to raise
you right? Why’d you want to hurt me this way? (77)
Note that she makes no reference to her own culpability for her son’s actions; only through repeated denials is David able to dissuade her from placing the blame at the feet of his father. Furthermore, her phrasing of the last questions places the impetus on
David, suggesting that somehow he is willfully rebelling against her wishes. The spiritual aspect of this supposed rebellion is explored as the scene continues. David points out that “I didn’t want to hurt you, Mama. But this day has been coming a long time. Mama, I can’t play piano in church no more” (77). After reiterating her suspicion that this stems from Luke’s appearance, Margaret begs David to play one last time for
Sunday School, to which David responds, “Mama, I told you. I can’t play piano in church no more” (77). In the 2002 African Continuum Theatre production, the actor playing David alters the line slightly—the second time, he says that he can’t play the piano in this church no more, an adjustment that seems more in line with the overall thematic import of David’s character, and highlighting the distinction James Baldwin
68 consistently makes in his works between organized religion and an authentic personal religious experience.
Margaret, still refusing to accept that her son is rejecting her mantle of leadership, tries one last time to return him to her faith:
Margaret: David, why don’t you feel it no more, what you felt once?
Where’s it gone? Where’s the Holy Ghost gone?
David: I don’t know, Mama. It’s empty. (He indicates his chest) It’s
empty here.
Margaret: Can’t you pray? Why don’t you pray? If you pray, pray hard,
He’ll come back. The Holy Ghost will come back. He’ll come
down on heavenly wings, David, and (She touches his chest) fill
that empty space, He’ll start your heart to singing—singing
again. He’ll fill you, David, with a mighty burning fire and burn
out (She takes his head roughly between her palms) all that
foolishness, all them foolish dreams you carries around up
there. Oh, David, David, pray that the Holy Ghost will come
back, that the gift of God will come back! (78)
Baldwin specifically connects Margaret’s concern for David with the boy’s inability to
feel the Holy Ghost, not because he is suffering a crisis of faith—perhaps even to the
point of doubting the existence of the Holy Ghost. She presupposes that the problem is
on David’s part—that he is the one who has failed. Yet from David’s perspective (and
Baldwin’s), the opposite is true. It is organized religion which failed David. Further,
Baldwin seems to suggest that the church has perhaps failed the Holy Ghost as well; the
reason that David no longer feels a spiritual connection is that organized religion at
large, as embodied in Margaret, is so corrupt or misguided that it is no longer able to
forge or facilitate an authentic divine relationship.
69 Although Hamilton correctly posits that the African‐American clergy were often
accused of being disconnected from politics and society, perhaps the charge most
specifically directed against the African‐American clergy is the opposite criticism. This
idea, the one most fully developed by Baldwin and others, is that the church was too
closely connected to and coerced by the white majority in America. As Eric Lincoln and
Lawrence Mamiya summarize the relationship,
The one constant factor in any survey of the relationship between black
churches and politics is the history of white domination and racial
oppression. [. . . T]he target has always been the white system of
domination and oppression that has often attempted to define the limits
and choices of the African American subculture. (199)
This limitation was often subtly veiled in donations or largesse given to struggling
black churches whose ministers acquiesced to white domination. Ronald Johnstone
describes a typical black minister as “one who knew he was to keep his place,
encourage submission and fatalistic acquiescence on the part of his flock, and preach an
otherworldly gospel” (275). This type of minister would focus his messages on the
perfection of the life to come, at the expense of the persecutions in this life; as James
Cone puts it, these ministers were “advocating obedience to white oppression as a
means of entering at death the future age of heavenly bliss” (347). “If he did his job
well,” Johnstone continues, “he knew his choir would receive an invitation to sing
spirituals in a white church or two and he could look forward to a little free coal for his church in the winter” (275).
Such an example can be found in Ben Caldwell’s “Prayer Meeting: or, the First
Militant Preacher.” In it, a burglar breaks in to the home of a minister; both are African
American. When the latter enters the bedroom while the burglary is in progress, the thief is forced to hide while the minister says his evening prayers. The burglar pretends
to answer the minister’s supplications as the audible voice of God:
70 You ain’t worried ’bout what’s gon’ happen to your people. You worried
’bout what’s gon’ happen to you if something happen to your people. You
so sure that if they go up ’gainst the white man they gon’ lose and whitey
won’t need you no more. Or if they go up ’gainst whitey and win, then
they won’t need you. Either way yo’ game is messed up. So you want
things to stay just as they are. You tell them to do nothing but wait. Wait
and turn the other cheek. No matter what whitey do, always turn the
other cheek. As long as you keep them off the white folks, you alright with
the white folks. (421)
For many people, “Christianity was largely viewed as an instrument of social control, to produce ‘obedient and docile’ slaves” (Lincoln and Mamiya 200). This propagandistic impetus of the theater recurs frequently on the American stage—morality plays, temperance dramas, even the Federal Theatre Project’s Living Newspaper. The use of religion as a social tool in the theatre is lamented by English director Peter Brook, who notes that “It is not the fault of the holy [theatre] that it has become a middle‐class weapon to keep children good” (46) or in this case, to keep a minority subservient. That
Christianity was considered “white” is demonstrated by such religious expressions as
Marcus Garvey’s return‐to‐Africa campaign (see, for example, Theodore Ward’s Big
White Fog), Father Devine’s International Peace Movement Mission, or the Nation of
Islam, which James Baldwin claimed “provided historical and divine proof that all white people are cursed [. . .] and that God was black” (“Down at the Cross” 315). For many African Americans, both playwrights and political leaders, Christianity represented merely another tool used to oppress the minority community.
In The Amen Corner, overt racial expression is limited to three passing references.
Two have been mentioned above—Sister Boxer’s lament to Sister Moore that the younger woman has to serve cocktails for her employer, and when Odessa rebukes
Brother Boxer with the information that she had purchased the Frigidaire with money
71 earned from “scrubbing white folks’ floors” (47). The third occurs in Margaret’s opening sermon; she notes that when faced with trouble, people “don’t go running to the people they was playing cards with all night long. When the trouble comes, [. . .] they go a‐digging back in their minds [. . .] for a saint of God” (9), which often turns out to be an African‐American servant. Margaret suggests that this sense of ekklesia manifests itself to the world in that the African‐American community is a repository for authentic spirituality. “You be in the woman’s kitchen, washing up her cocktail glasses and maybe singing praises to the Lord. And pretty soon, [. . .] this woman who maybe ain’t said two words to you [. . . will come and say] ‘Can I talk to you?’” (9).
More subtle is Baldwin’s attack on the church’s abdication of community in favor of the majority. Baldwin recognized the suggestion that Christianity was “the white man’s religion,” as evidenced by his comments in “Down at the Cross” and Blues for Mr.
Charlie. In the introduction to the latter work he called the plague destroying the
African‐American community “the plague of our concept of Christianity” (xv). He also adheres in his plays to the familiar trope that the African‐American community is a family. In The Amen Corner, Baldwin repeatedly indicates that Margaret’s chief flaw is abandoning her family in favor of church business. Thus, since Margaret can be read as a synecdoche for African‐American ministers, the accusation becomes that the minister’s chief flaw is abandoning his or her racial community in favor of the white man’s business.
Several times the connection between Margaret’s family and her congregation is explicitly mentioned. After Luke collapses, David suggests that Margaret “write or telephone or something” (31) to the Philadelphia congregation so that she can postpone the visit and take care of her husband. The other elders concur, with Sister Moore even offering to go in her stead, noting that “everybody understands that when you got trouble in the home, the home comes first” (31). Yet Margaret’s response is immediate and bitter: “In this home, Sister Moore, the Lord comes first. The Lord made me leave
72 that man in there a long time ago because he was a sinner. And the Lord ain’t told me to
stop doing my work just because he’s come the way all sinners come” (31). Margaret’s
response here is a fundamental case in point of the perceived disparity between the
clergy and the laity. She retorts that “The Lord comes before all things, Sister Moore”
(26), family included. This is no coincidence either; her remarks about religious
priorities are foreshadowed moments earlier. Sister Moore’s criticism of Margaret’s
decision concerning Brother Boxer had been couched in properly religious language:
“I’m mighty glad you knows [that we are faithful]. Because the Lord’s done laid
something on my heart to say to you, right here and now, and you going to take it in the
proper spirit, I know” (25). At this point David, who has slowly entered the apartment
from the alley and is clearly troubled, interrupts: “Mama, can I see you for a minute?”
Margaret brushes him off, “In a minute, son” (26), a clear indication that yet again
family is superseded by the business of the church.
In many ways, all the objections raised by the dissenters can be viewed as
expressions of familial neglect. The first dialogue heard in the play is a congregational
song: “One day I walked the lonesome road / The spirit spoke unto me / And filled my
heart with love” (6), a recitation of belonging, of a community forged by common
religious belief. The presence of religion is a comforting and unifying force in the vein of Turner’s communitas—a family that alleviates loneliness and gives a sense of purpose
and worth to the people. Ironically, Margaret herself introduces this theme of an
ordered family with her opening sermon’s scripture text. She states, “[T]he Lord God
Almighty—the King of Kings, amen!—had sent out the word, ‘Set thine house in order, for thou shalt die and not live.’ And King Hezekiah turned his face to the wall” (8). This quotation from 2 Kings 20:1 and Isaiah 38:1 clearly foreshadows later events in the play, specifically the disintegration of both Margaret’s literal and spiritual families. It is significant that Baldwin stops the quotation when he does. By simply stating that
Hezekiah turned his face to the wall, he suggests that the king hardened his heart as, of
73 course, Margaret seems to do later in the play. The original text, however, continues that the king turned his face to the wall and began to pray so sincerely that Yahweh
granted him healing. The thematic divergence between the two spiritual leaders should
not be overlooked.
Throughout the play, Baldwin portrays Margaret as having a profound blind
spot where her son is concerned. She tells Odessa early on that, “I praise my Redeemer
that I got him raised right—even though I didn’t have no man” (18). This is in part the reason why she is so determined to go to the church in Philadelphia; she states that “I’d like Mother Phillips to see what a fine, saved young man he turned out to be. It’ll make her feel good” (17). She assumes that David has in fact been raised correctly—on a standard that she herself has established—and that his plans will line up perfectly with her own. Margaret is determined that David follow in her footsteps and fully embrace her faith and profession. Later, Luke asks Margaret if her desire to save him is motivated to “get me into heaven, or [. . .] so you can keep David home?” (59). She anxiously jumps on this idea:
Margaret: Is David been talking about leaving home?
Luke: Don’t you reckon he going to be leaving home one day?
Margaret: David going to work with me in these here churches and he
going to be a pastor when he get old enough. (59)
Ironically, David is being driven away from the faith precisely because of
Margaret’s path and example. At the end of Act One, the true story of how David’s parents separated—that Margaret left Luke, contrary to what she had told David all his life—is revealed. During this scene, the following exchange takes place:
Luke: I wouldn’t never of left you, son. Never. Never in this world.
Margaret: Leave us alone, Luke. Go away and leave us alone. I’m doing
the Lord’s work now—
David: Mama—you just said—God don’t like liars.
74 Margaret: Your daddy weren’t hardly ever home. I was going to explain it
all to you—when you got big. (30)
It is interesting that David interjects where he does. In context, he is referring to
Margaret’s lie concerning Luke. Yet the interjection point comes immediately after she
states that she is doing the Lord’s work, a subtle suggestion on Baldwin’s part that
Margaret merely believes she is doing so. That David does not hold his mother’s views of the pulpit is also revealed when Luke first arrives. He comments that “I figured I’d find you somewhere near a church. [. . .] She a good pastor?” Sister Moore replies with an “Amen!”, yet when Luke asks, “What do you think, David”, the stage directions have the boy remain painfully silent (28).
Margaret’s failures are not confined merely to her son. She fails Luke in marriage by leaving him after her daughter’s death. She says that she left because she felt called by God into the ministry. Yet one of her ministerial duties is ostensibly to save souls; if so, then she fails Luke a second time. She rejected the role of wife to become a minister, yet she fails in her ministerial duties toward her husband. She cannot save his soul, at least as her religious training defines salvation.
Thus the congregation, under the prompting of Sister Moore and the Boxers, rejects Margaret’s authority on several levels, and this marital incompetence forms the foundation for one of the primary attacks—that she has rejected her own “womanly nature” in order to usurp pastoral authority. Despite the historical presence of women in positions of pastoral leadership, and the presence of Old Mother Phillips within the play itself, some nonetheless believed that the pulpit was rightly a male domain. As
Brother Boxer argues early in the play, “She done gone too far, she done rose too high.
She done forgot it ain’t the woman supposed to lead, it’s the man” (36‐37). Sister Moore points out that Elder King, the congregation’s previous pastor, held such sentiments:
“He was too set in his ways. All that talk about not wanting women to preach. He didn’t want women to do nothing but just sit quiet” (22). (Ironically, as Margaret points
75 out, Sister Moore herself “wasn’t so much on women preachers, either” when Margaret first took the role (22).) In the final Act, Sister Boxer tells Odessa that the elders have “a responsibility to tell the congregation [. . .] that the Lord ain’t pleased at Margaret sitting in the seat of authority” (72), an example of vox populi, vox dei, since Sister
Moore had earlier explained the process the elders used to arrive at “the Lord’s will”:
“[W]e just decided we’d come to church this evening and put our minds together.
Amen. And let everybody say his piece and see how the Lord, He wanted us to move”
(39).
Margaret’s pursuit of the pastorate divorces her from her sexuality. The celibacy
she undertakes completely suppresses her sexual impulses. Yet Baldwin’s works
repeatedly suggest that sexuality is an essential element of the human condition, and
perhaps one of the most important methods of establishing an authentic connection
with other human beings. For Baldwin, Margaret’s attempted asexuality is unnatural.
Sister Boxer negatively evaluates Margaret’s reaction to Luke’s return, noting that
Last Sunday she acted like she didn’t think that man was good enough to
touch the hem of that white robe of her’n. And, you know, that ain’t no
way to treat a man who knowed one time what you was like with no robe
on. (35)
The problem is not that Margaret at one time had a sexual connection with Luke, or
even that she still might. Rather, the dissention stems from her attempts to disavow that
part of her life—her husband and her sexuality. Sister Boxer, on the other hand,
repeatedly references her own sexuality: “I’m a married woman and the Lord done
blessed me with a real womanly nature” (36)2, a pointed comment against Margaret’s
self‐imposed misanthropy and asexuality. This explains Sister Boxer’s rationalization
that “I reckon I always thought of Sister Margaret like she’d been born holy. Like she
2 In the African Theatre Continuum production of October 2002, Brother Boxer chimes in at this point, from the opposite side of the kitchen, with an enthusiastic “AMEN!,” to the delight of the audience.
76 hadn’t never been a young girl or nothing and hadn’t never had no temptations” (36).
This expression of naïve idealism is akin to the supposition that American politicians were as dedicated to promoting the general welfare and their constituents’ best interests as those who elected them. Sister Boxer supposed that this innate holiness was the reason Margaret took to the pulpit in the first place: “There’s women like that, you know, [who] ain’t got much nature to them somehow” (36). She later expands this critique of the pastor when she tells Odessa that a congregation “can’t have no woman for pastor who done been married once and then decided it didn’t suit her and then jump up and run off from her husband and take a seat in the pulpit and act like she ain’t no woman no more” (74).
Having established that Margaret does not deserve her position by virtue of her gender and its concomitant sexual nature, the elders conclude that she is thus a usurper of authority. When Odessa wonders where Margaret would go or what she would do if ousted, Brother Boxer retorts that, “She didn’t worry about Elder King when she took over the church from him” (74); Sister Boxer had earlier reminded Odessa that the result of this “coup” was that “poor little Elder King is in his grave” (21).
In the eyes of the congregation, Margaret’s pastorate represents a double failure on her part. In addition to usurping a position to which by virtue of her gender she had no right, her asexuality has placed Luke in spiritual peril. Odessa, defending her sister’s decision to leave Luke, contends that “if she’d followed that man, he might have led her straight on down to hell” (37). Sister Boxer, again the voice of sexuality, retorts, “If she’d done her duty like a wife, she might have been able to lead that man right straight to the throne of grace” (37). In an obviously loose interpretation of the truth, Brother Boxer sums up for Odessa the other elders’ “concerns”: “Ain’t no need for folks to know all of
Sister Margaret’s personal business. So we ain’t said nothing about Brother Luke. Folks is bound to try and put two and two together—but we ain’t said nothing” (71). Note that the elders intentionally allow the other members (and the audience) to draw certain
77 conclusions, however erroneous, which they then reinforce: “We is just told the congregation that the Lord’s done revealed to the elders of this church that Sister
Margaret ain’t been leading the life of a holy woman, especially a holy woman in her position, is supposed to lead” (72).
After the first church service, Odessa and Sister Moore are in the kitchen talking about the troubles in the Philadelphia congregation. Odessa remarks, “I don’t know what’s got into them folks up there, cutting up like they is, and talking about the Lord’s anointed” (21). Sister Moore responds that “They got more nerve than I got. You ain’t never going to hear me say nothing against them the Lord is set above me. No sir.
That’s just asking for the wrath” (21). This is, of course, foreshadowing, as Sister Moore is the one who leads the charge for excommunication against Margaret later in the play.
Yet it should also be read at face value. The point is that Margaret is not higher than
Sister Moore—the social contract/appointment by her peers is more significant than any divine calling, for that is what supersedes at the end. Even though Margaret humanizes and humbles herself at the end of the play, she is still removed from her position by the rest of the congregational leadership (Odessa excepted). This suggests that the power of the African‐American religious leader (Martin Luther King, Jr., et al.) derives from the
African‐American community itself more so than any supernatural direction. Thus a betrayal or usurping by such a leader is more injurious because it is a betrayal of public trust—the accusation against many African‐American politicians who had supposedly
“sold out” their own constituencies.
Margaret is a figure caught between two communities. Indeed, the play is about the tension between various worlds. In Margaret’s case, it is the tension between pastor and wife/mother. She repeatedly tries to assert her authority and influence in each of the two spheres, but ultimately fails in each arena. The theme of “in the world but not of it” repeats in her immediate family, as well. David is caught in the tension between secular and sacred, in the forms of his music (religious versus jazz) and his parents
78 (Margaret versus Luke). In Margaret’s case, this failed conjunction of worlds results in a denial of her supposed place and “womanly nature.” As a result, because she cannot lead her own family, she therefore lacks the authority and ability to lead the congregation, which is explicitly portrayed in African‐American culture in familial terms. The central tension of the play is that Margaret places church business and politics over the needs of her family, both biological and pastoral. In the same way, by the 1950s, African‐American pastors were accused of putting the white man’s politics and interests over the needs of the African‐American community—their own family, as it were.
79
CHAPTER 4
PRESCRIPTIVE PREACHERS AND SEMANTIC SAINTS
Nun to Man about to commit suicide: Don’t jump! Man: Why not? Nun: It’s against the fifth commandment [. . . .] If you do that, you’re going to go straight to hell. — (Durang “Diversions” 218)
A New York Times article from 1981 described Christopher Durang as “a demonic satirist for whom no subject is sacred, not even the Roman Catholic Church,” calling his one‐act play Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All For You “a ferociously funny attack on parochial‐school education” and a “savage exposé of what [Durang] regards as the church’s hypocrisies and follies” (Lawson C7). Durang’s focus is not on the Roman
Catholic Church, however; the Church merely functions as the vehicle for a more elaborate cultural critique. Durang’s target, rather, is the autocratic dogmatism he perceives at certain points of traditional orthodoxy and modern American politics. He uses humor as a defamiliarizing element to analyze the inconsistencies of his childhood religion, and the audience is disarmed by the comedic elements long enough to consider the deeper religious, social, and psychological ramifications of Sister Mary
Ignatius’s unflinching dogmatism. This in turn can lead the audience to similar contemplations of contemporary political structures, with which Durang establishes an explicit critical connection in this and several other of his works.
80 Theater critic Frank Rich suggests in “The New Angry Playwrights” that
Durang’s plays follow in the tradition of “angry American plays of the 60’s” whose
“rage was often aimed, directly or by inference, at public officials who could be
blamed” for America’s difficulties (1). Rich argues that plays such as Durang’s Sister
Mary Ignatius Explains It All For You are intentionally disturbing. As he concludes in the article,
It’s not always pleasant to watch their plays. They do make us
uncomfortable; they offer little escape. But, if we squirm as we hear these
angry voices, we’re also forced to look harder at the world around us, to
question the assumptions of our lives—in other words, to feel the bracing
exhilaration of being challenged to think. (1).
Like others who have explored in didactic form the issues of religious orthodoxy and political practice—George Bernard Shaw’s Major Barbara, for instance—Durang deconstructs the mechanisms of dogma in order to demonstrate the inherent inconsistencies created by both the Church’s and the government’s epistemological practices. As a result, the audience is given an alternative interpretation for the pervading social and political ideologies.
In the tradition of the Theater of the Absurd, which translates a sense of hopelessness and irrationality into disjointed and surreal stage expressions, Sister Mary
Ignatius is the account of the title nun, a long‐time teacher in a parochial school, whose lecture on Catholic theology is interrupted by four of her former students from the late
1950s. Gary, Philomena, Aloysius, follow the lead of Diane, the ringleader whose goal is to embarrass their teacher for “making me [. . .] expect everything to be ordered and to make sense” (407). The initial comic elements derived from the Sister’s lecture on the finer points of traditional Catholic theology turn abruptly tragic following Diane’s angry rant about the hardships she endured and for which she blames God in general and Sister Mary Ignatius specifically. The lecture hall becomes the source of a gun battle
81 and hostage situation, and the curtain falls with a seven‐year‐old boy holding the
surviving students at gunpoint while the Sister sits down to rest.
The play first appeared Off‐Off Broadway at the Ensemble Studio Theatre on 14
December 1979; its three‐week run won Obie awards for Durang as Best Playwright and
Elizabeth Franz, who played the title character, as Best Actress (Durang “Full‐Length
Plays”). Despite such critical and commercial success, the play was followed by boycotts and protests when it began touring regional and college theaters. While protests occurred in many locations, such as Detroit (“Detroit Archdiocese”), Boston
(“‘Sister Mary Ignatius’ Draws Boston Pickets”), and West Palm Beach, Florida
(Mitgang), the controversy surrounding two specific productions are particularly noteworthy. In 1985 the Nassau (NY) Community College’s Theatre Department staged the play under a heavy protest spearheaded by the local chapter of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, who put pressure on community leaders, the college’s president and board of trustees, as well as politicians on the state and national levels
(Fanelli 24). The college’s leadership ultimately allowed the performance to proceed, citing issues of academic freedom (Fanelli 26, Udow 29).
The second protest, which Durang himself would frequently reference during later discussions of the play, occurred in St. Louis, Missouri. When the non‐profit
Theater Project Company staged the play in 1983, the state legislature threatened to cut all funding to the group, as well as to the Missouri Arts Council which had partially subsidized it. Although the funding was restored in favor of an official letter warning the Arts Council “against giving any public money [. . .] to groups that discriminate against religious denominations” (Mitgang C17), Durang believed the result was an intimidating “atmosphere of uncertainty and suspicion” (qtd. in Mitgang C17).
In the afterword to the Smith & Kraus edition of his shorter plays, Durang acknowledges that “some Catholics felt offended [. . . .] They asserted that the play was
82 ‘anti‐Catholic’ and ‘bigoted’ and ridiculed their beliefs” (413).1 He states that he was
“really startled and unprepared for those accusations” (413), since he at the time still considered himself to be Catholic at least on some level. In a 1985 New York Times article, Durang summarized his view of Sister Mary and the segment of Catholicism that she represented:
She’s just this one crazy nun who isn’t drawn to the humane and merciful
parts of Christianity, but only to the punishing and regimented side,
which has been added to Christianity as it has been interpreted and
misinterpreted by generations of fallible human beings. She’s not the
entire Catholic church any more than Medea was every mother who ever
lived. (“How Do You Feel About Our Career?” 14)
He notes that his own religious background originated in “the religion of rote [. . . and] following the rules rather literal mindedly” (413). He later developed a more
“compassionate religion focusing on the more radical, love‐affirming things that seem to be the main part of Christ’s message” (414), a sentiment echoed by Philomena and
Gary in Durang’s play, as well as Mark Dolson in Bill C. Davis’s Mass Appeal. Durang’s astonishment at the negative response to his plays suggests either naïveté or, more likely, that his purpose in constructing the plays was something other than a simple lampooning of his religious tradition. On a literal level, the idea that the Catholicism of his youth did not directly lead him to this “compassionate” religious relationship with
God is his main element of contention with the Church. Yet this contention is broader in scope, suggesting a similar disjunction between the practices of the major political parties of the period and the “compassionate” principles of social embodied in
American civil religion.
1 For a detailed account of the censorship history of Durang’s plays in addition to the Smith & Kraus Afterword, see Dawn B. Sova’s Banned Plays: Censorship Histories of 125 Stage Dramas (New York: Facts on File, 2004).
83 The sharpest points of satire can jolt the audience into questioning, along with
Durang’s characters, why a disparity exists between the semantic space occupied by orthodox religious practice (such as the teachings of the Catholic church), and the semantic space of moral religion upon which that practice is built (such as the teachings
of Christ). For the Sister’s four students (and perhaps some in the audience), this disparity is what ultimately drove them from organized religion. This dichotomy between morality and dogmatism provides the central division in which the play oscillates. The question becomes whether or not the satirical elements exist to bridge the divide, or to widen it. To use Victor Turner’s terms, is Durang’s fourth‐stage goal reintegration, or is it schism? Ultimately, the humor functions to redeem moral semantic space from overdetermined dogma, albeit in an absurdly deconstructive way.
Satire works by amplifying existing stereotypes specifically for the purpose of subverting them. Durang, for example, hyperbolizes the stereotypes associated with his religious figures and their beliefs: the strict, ruler‐wielding disciplinarian schoolteacher, the sexuality‐obsessed cardinal, and the hyper‐literal layperson, among others.
However, contrary to much of the criticism levied against his plays, such as Archbishop
John L. May calling Sister Mary Ignatius a “vile diatribe against all things Catholic” (qtd. in Mitgang C17), the figures themselves are not the target of Durang’s absurdist portrayals. To use a linguistic analogy, the clergy are the vehicles for the message, not the message itself.
To this point in the current study, religious expressions on the modern American stage have demonstrated a connection with the executive and legislative branches of the national government. The pragmatic priest parallels the practical impulses exhibited by the former branch, while the latter branch’s codified mistreatment is seen through the racial and gender minorities in the theatrical pulpit. Durang’s plays contain these elements as well; “The Doctor Will See You Now,” for example, was specifically written to address the issue of parental notification laws as proposed under Ronald Reagan and
84 George H. W. Bush, and “Cardinal O’Connor” was a critique of the Archbishop’s
attempts to “[use] his political clout [. . .] to convince city government” to treat sex
education according to Catholic strictures, despite the fact that he was “trying to impact
public schools over which he [had] no jurisdiction” (“Cardinal O’Connor” 212). Yet
Durang’s clergy more frequently exemplify another use of religious figures in American
drama: to parallel the clergy with the judicial branch of the American government. Both
groups define the governing legal code for their organizations, pronounce sentence on
infractions, and interpret the codes already in force.
The first way that American drama parallels its clergy with the national judiciary
is by emphasizing each group’s perceived power to delineate right and wrong, legal
and illegal. Throughout Durang’s works, clergy appoint themselves the ultimate
arbiters of morality. Cardinal O’Connor informs the audience, “I am a man of God, and
I must point out to you what’s wrong when it’s wrong” (209). The stated purpose of the cardinal’s monologue is to “[clear] up any misconceptions you may have had” about birth control (210); he ends by saying, “And so, until the next moral crisis comes along and I need to tell you what’s moral and what isn’t, so long!” (210).
These clergy define more than simple morality, however. They establish more fundamental and existential matters as well. Seven‐year‐old Thomas tells the audience of Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All For You, “We know that there is a God because the
Church tells us so” (388). Religious philosophers have spent centuries outlining other proofs for the existence of God—natural law, ontology, etc.—yet none of these play into young Thomas’s worldview. His knowledge of the supernatural is received directly from the Church via its unfailing spokeswoman. When Sister Mary asks him how he knows that Christ loves him, Thomas is even more specific: “Because you tell us” (386).
Toward the end of the play, the disregard for her definitive power finally causes the
Sister to lose her temper with her former students:
85 Peter was the first Pope and subsequent Popes would be infallible on
matters of doctrine and morals. So your way is very clear: You have this
infallible Church that tells you what is right and wrong, you follow its
teaching, and then you get to heaven. (402‐403)
Durang provides another example and explanation in his Grove Press “Addendum” to
Sister Mary Ignatius. Here, discussing the Sister’s comment that “celibate rhymes with celebrate” (409), he points out that they do not,
nor (in my mind) does Sister think it does. I prefer that she pronounce
both words properly and then says they rhyme because she wants them
to; it sort of extends her power to say blatantly false things when she feels
like it, to make a point (as when she says Christ stoned many women
taken in adultery). (214)
Sister Mary’s claim that “Celibate rhymes with celebrate” carries no definitional force because language is defined by convention, not individual fiat, despite her continuing efforts to the contrary.
Another example of this definitional imperative is that both groups, religious and political, consistently engage in performative speech, a term coined by philosopher and linguist J.L. Austin. Performative speech occurs when the words spoken actually alter the semantic landscape. For example, the statements “I now pronounce you man and wife,” or “We find the defendant guilty” each alter the status of the people indicated. Through no verbal or physical changes of their own, the man transforms from groom to husband, and the defendant from citizen to convict. Sister Mary regularly utters performative speech acts, attempting to impose order and truth merely by her own force of will and word. Performative speech acts that connect Sister Mary and her fellow clergy with the American judiciary often concern the infelicity of certain speech acts. Austin uses the term “infelicitous” to describe a performative speech act uttered by an unqualified person. Unless a person is recognized as the judge in a
86 particular court proceeding, for example, his or her pronouncement of “Not Guilty” has
no legal power. Otherwise, a defense attorney’s identical plea at arraignment would
carry an identical force of law.
One of the central sources of conflict (and humor) in Sister Mary Ignatius Explains
It All For You is Sister Mary’s frustration with the results of the Vatican’s Second
Ecumenical Council, commonly known as Vatican II. This Council, which was first
convened by Pope John XXIII, ran for four consecutive autumns from 1962‐1965,
continuing after John XXIII’s death by his successor Paul VI. The latter Pope, in his
opening address to the second session of the Council, stated four main purposes for the
gathering: to define the nature of the Church more fully, to renew the Church, to restore
Christian unity, and to start a dialogue with the contemporary world. Sister Mary is a
synecdoche for the segment of the Catholic Church that rejects the reforms of Vatican II
in favor of more conservative orthodoxy. She believes that the Church is divinely
authorized to define (even create) truth merely by speaking from the papal throne, but
not necessarily at the behest of a committee swayed by the influences of modern
society. For Durang and others, these epistemological acts of creation often overstep the
semantic authority of the Church in the relativistic modern world. Ironically, this very
papal authority is what Sister Mary decries, such as during her opening monologue on the afterlife:
There is also limbo, which is where unbaptized babies were sent for
eternity before the Ecumenical Council and Pope John XXIII. The
unbaptized babies sent to limbo never leave limbo and so never get to
heaven. Now unbaptized babies are sent straight to purgatory where,
presumably, someone baptizes them and then they are sent to heaven.
(381‐382)
Even someone as staunchly devoted to the Catholic church as is Sister Mary Ignatius
can see how such definitional power sometimes can be misused. For the nun, Limbo is
87 still an operative force in her theological worldview, just as she maintains other aspects of Catholicism that Vatican II altered or removed. Sister Mary’s displeasure with the
results of the Council can be seen while she is answering questions that the audience
has previously submitted on index cards. To the question of why Christopher is no
longer considered a saint, she states:
[S]ometime around Pope John XXIII, the Catholic Church decided that
[the legend of St. Christopher] was just a story and didn’t really happen. I
am not convinced that when we get to heaven we may not find that St.
Christopher does indeed exist and that he dislikes Pope John XXIII. (389)
Durang has suggested that this element of her background is essential to understanding
Sister Mary’s character and, by extension, what she represents. He explains that she had
been an orthodox believer, unquestioningly accepting all the teachings of the Church
until the reformations of Vatican II. In his essay “Regarding Issues of Updating Some of
My Plays,” Durang notes that “when Pope John 23rd came and said some of that is
nonsense [. . .] and it’s not really what Christianity is about, she felt betrayed. In her gut
she felt what she was taught was right.” He is very emphatic about this point; he states
that “to make psychological sense of Sister Mary, she needs to have been in the church
for a substantial time BEFORE the Ecumenical Council and Pope John the 23rd.”
The disaffection and sense of betrayal that Sister Mary displays in the wake of
Vatican II parallels many Americans’ views of the government in the aftermath of
Vietnam and the Nixon scandals, the period in which Sister Mary Ignatius was created.
Those accustomed to the unity predominating after World War II began to feel
disconnected and suspicious of their elected officials and of the political process as a
whole, as evident in the National Science Foundation’s American National Election
Studies surveys conducted during that era. Between 1964 and 2004, the ANES
published a biennial “Trust in Government Index,” a composite score based on
perceptions of trustworthiness, benevolence, and “crookedness” of Washington
88 officials. The scores steadily decreased from 61% trustworthiness rating in 1966, to a
mere 27% in 1980 (“Trust in Government Index 1958‐2004”).
One of the goals of the Second Ecumenical Council was to analyze and reform
Catholic theology in order to broaden its appeal to a modern audience, which had been
turning away from what it perceived as dogmatic intolerance on the part of organized
religion (not just Catholicism). Durang recounts that Vatican II was a very liberalizing
event” (“Regarding Issues”) which brought far‐reaching changes to Catholic practice.
The Mass was moved to the vernacular, the teachings on Limbo were altered, and the
condemnation of eating meat on Fridays as a mortal sin was discarded, despite Sister
Mary’s contention that “people who would eat meat on Fridays back in the 50s tended
to be the sort who would commit other mortal sins, so [. . .] I bet many of them are in
hell” (388).
Pope John XXIII died before the council was completed, and Durang contends that the most significant consequence of this was the suppression of another element of the Pope’s intended changes. According to Durang,
Pope John [had] also created a group to look into the church’s teachings
on birth control. [. . . .] It included [. . .] imagine this!—two married
couples, who could add their knowledge. These couples described to the
clergy the extreme difficulty of using the so‐called rhythm method [. . .]
and described the pressures it put on their marriages to always be worried
if intimacy would lead to pregnancy. [. . . .] This panel was going to
publish their recommendation that the church CHANGE its policy about
forbidding birth control. (“Regarding Issues”)
When John XXIII was replaced by the more conservative Paul VI, the papacy
suppressed (to use Durang’s word) the findings of this group and issued an encyclical,
Gaudium et Spes, reaffirming the traditional dogma regarding sexuality. At the height of
this theological tension, Sister Mary undertakes the task of imparting traditional
89 Catholic values to her young students. For four of them, however, the pressures of the secular world would drive them away from her authoritarian views. If they remained
Catholic at all, as did Gary, then it was the more inclusive version advocated by the
reformers.
The power to define right and wrong leads to the next link between American
theatrical clergy and the country’s judiciary. Both groups are charged with defining the
bounds of morality or legality, and as part of this responsibility they are given the task
of interpreting the laws and codes already established by other elements of the society
such as the legislative branch of government. Religious leaders have spent countless
pages in commentary on various sacred texts such as the Bible, the Koran, the Torah, or
the Upanishads. In the same way, the United States Supreme Court’s highest task is
determining what is and is not constitutional, which requires careful study and
interpretation of the nation’s foundational document. This is also why so much debate
focuses on the interpretive methodology of potential Justices—“living document”
versus “strict interpretation,” for example—whenever a vacancy arises on the Court. In
each case, whether of Scripture or of Constitution, the interpretation at hand holds sway
and alters the society from that point forward; the members of the group abide by the
judicial decision or suffer consequences, either in this life or the life to come.
Durang’s clergy are generally strict interpreters of Scripture, allowing few if any
exceptions to a literal interpretation of the Bible. As Durang puts it in his Author’s Note
to Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All For You,
The church of the 1950s (and before) [. . .] didn’t say, Christ said such and
such, and we interpret that to mean x, y, or z. Instead, it said, Christ said
this, and we as His representatives on earth are infallible because Christ
said we were and so everything we say is fact, not interpretation. (376)
Theater critic Walter Kerr calls Sister Mary Ignatius “not a willful ogre but a literalist
[and a] wildly strict logician” who “is in earnest, unquestioningly so; that is where her
90 comedy comes from—from intense belief that is merely decorated by extravagance”
(“Durang’s ‘Sister’” D3). She views the world through a rubric that is resolutely
unbending, and does not ameliorate any of her dogmatic pronouncements for any
reason.
The equation of the Catholic Church as sole metonym for Christ has been called
into question both onstage and off, as with the warning the Lawyer gives Brother Julian
in Edward Albee’s Tiny Alice: “I have learned [. . .] Brother Julian . . . never to confuse
the representative of a . . . thing with the thing itself” (39). Yet this stance is what
underscores the words of the title character in Durang’s one‐act “Cardinal O’Connor.”
In this short piece the titular clergyman, based on the historical Archbishop of New
York, explains that “although Christ never talked about condoms, he made the Catholic
Church His spokesman, and we have explained until we are blue in the face that [. . .]
anything that interferes with procreation is wrong” (209).
Such moral certainty is also what allows Sister Mary Ignatius confidence to make her proclamations in her opening monologue. She walks the audience through various aspects of Catholic beliefs, such as heaven, hell, and purgatory (a place where “you can expect to be [. . .] for anywhere from 300 years to 700 billion years”) (381). She vehemently sets straight what she perceives as misconceptions about her faith:
I want to be very clear about the Immaculate Conception. It does not mean
that the Blessed Mother gave birth to Christ without the prior
unpleasantness of physical intimacy. That is true, but is not called the
Immaculate Conception; that is called the Virgin Birth. The Immaculate
Conception means that the Blessed Mother was herself born without
original sin. Everyone makes this error, and it makes me lose my patience.
(382)
She further categorizes the people who make such errors as “fault‐finding non‐
Catholics” who “run around saying that Catholics believe the Pope is infallible
91 whenever he speaks. This is untrue. The Pope is infallible only on certain occasions,
when he speaks ‘ex cathedra’ which is Latin for ‘out of the cathedral’” (382). Setting
aside the fact that cathedra is the etymological origin of the English word cathedral, not
its definition (it literally means “chair” or “throne”), her comments illustrate the tension
between those who interpret and those who are bound by the resulting interpretations.
A more specific example of this interpretive mode at work is seen when Sister
Mary introduces the audience to Thomas, her young student:
This is Thomas. He is seven years old and in the second grade of Our
Lady of Perpetual Sorrow School. Seven is the age of reason, so now that
Thomas has turned seven he is capable of choosing to commit sin or not to
commit sin, and God will hold him accountable for whatever he does.
Isn’t that so, Thomas? [He concurs.] Before we turn seven, God tends to
pay no attention to the bad things we do because He knows we can know
no better. Once we turn seven, He feels we are capable of knowing. (382‐
383)
The so‐called “age of accountability” is never specifically listed in the Bible. It is a rather
arbitrary age limit (ranging from seven to fifteen, depending on the religious tradition) at which a child becomes aware of and responsible for the morality of his or her actions.
Sister Mary, however, does not treat this age as arbitrary. Instead, she sees it as a chronological toggle which activates a person’s theological culpability.
This strict view is similar to the textualist or originalist philosophies of constitutional interpretation, which are often aggregated under the umbrella of “strict constructionism,” although that term does have a more narrowly‐defined legal definition. Under this philosophy, which is similar to formalist theories of literary criticism, proper interpretation of the Constitution is predicated on understanding what the text actually says, rather than any sense of authorial intent or extrapolated and modernized meaning. An example of the textual impulse’s effects on American society
92 analogous to the religious dogmatism would be the issue of the right to privacy, with its implications for individual choice (Roe v. Wade) or national security (the Patriot Act).
The “age of accountability” is not explicitly found within the Bible; similarly, “privacy”
is found nowhere in the Constitution, either the document itself or its Amendments.
However, both accountability and privacy are frequently‐expressed elements of canon
and constitutional law respectively.
The emphasis on literal interpretation becomes clearly connected with the
Constitutional strict constructionists (in the broader popular definition of the term) in
Christopher Durang’s “The Book of Leviticus Show.” This play is the premiere episode
of the titular show, which airs on “the Wheeling, West Virginia Community Public
Access Station, Channel 61” (110). The host of the show is Lettie Lu, who informs the
audience that she and her husband/cameraman Tommy, having lost their house in a
fire, feel divinely led to teach others “to follow the teachings of God in the Book of
Leviticus” (112). She tells her viewers that they discovered the following passage while
randomly browsing through the hotel bible: “And the man that committeth adultery with another man’s wife, even he that committeth adultery with his neighbor’s wife, the adulterer and the adulteress shall surely be put to death.” This passage, from Leviticus
20.10, got Lettie Lu “to thinkin’ about how people say they believe in the Bible but they don’t follow through and do nothin’ about it” (112). When they discovered another passage a few verses later in that same chapter that states that homosexuals “shall surely be put to death” (112, from Leviticus 20.13), she concludes that “God thinks it’s so much what the right thing to do, that he just presumes somebody’s gonna do it for him! But we’ve gotten mighty far from followin’ God’s commands” (112).
Lettie Lu and Tommy, with the help of two local bouncers, went into town and
“captured an adulteress and a homo [and . . .] tied ’em up and brung ’em here” (112).
She then pronounces sentence on them: “In the name of God’s will, you shall surely be put to death” (113). The stage directions tell the rest of the story, noting that Lettie Lu
93 “gets in a position, aims at the two people on the floor, but maybe looks the other way; she’s not bloodthirsty, just doing her best to follow the Bible. [. . . .] Lettie Lu fires the gun twice” (113). Even though the host is not normally a violent individual, she feels compelled to exact capital justice on a complete stranger simply at the behest of a literal interpretation of an isolated section of the Old Testament, regardless of the ramifications and without investigation or trial.
Both the American judicial system and the religious figures in this study take as a primary function the task of dealing with infractions to the established code, whether legal or moral. This is the third link between the judiciary and the religious that
American drama strives to establish. Having established the epistemological tenor of
Sister Mary as the representation of conservative formal religion, Durang uses her as a theological straw woman who becomes the purveyor of some of Catholicism’s most stereotyped teachings. For example, human sexuality almost always figures with
Catholic imagery on the American stage, and Durang’s works are no exception, with this topic being the largest subject of Durang’s satire. His religious characters are quick to judge those who have broken the strictures of orthodox sexual behavior, and the plays abound with abortions, extramarital sex, illegitimate children, birth control, and homosexuality. Sister Mary Ignatius envisions herself as God’s judicial enforcer. She arbitrates, then condemns one former student, absolves another, and executes the final two by gunshot. One of the latter victims was shot not because he was currently guilty, but because the nun wanted to make sure he was sent “straight to heaven and eternal, blissful happiness[.] I’m afraid otherwise he would have ended up in hell” (409).
After the “pageant,” while Sister Mary is reacquainting herself with her former students. Diane bluntly informs her that “I don’t have any children. But I’ve had two abortions” (399). The Sister immediately reacts: “You are in a state of mortal sin, young woman [. . . .] You are a murderer” (399). The nun immediately jumps to a conclusion about the woman’s soul, without waiting to see if there were any ameliorating
94 circumstances. Diane then elaborates on her story, noting that the first abortion “was when I was raped when I was eighteen” (399). This does not, however, change the nun’s
original diagnosis: “Well I am sorry to hear that. But only God has power over life and
death. God might have had very special plans for your baby. Are you sure I taught
you?” (399). At this point Sister Mary begins to resemble the witch‐hunting Reverend
Hale in Arthur Miller’s The Crucible. Early in his investigation, the Reverend challenges
John Proctor to list the Ten Commandments. Proctor does so, except for the injunction
against adultery. When his wife supplies it for him, he jokes, “You see, sir, between the
two of us we do know them all. I think it must be a small fault,” to which Hale responds
darkly, “Theology, sir, is a fortress; no crack in a fortress may be accounted small” (67).
Neither Sister Mary nor Reverend Hale can allow for any exceptions to the rules of
orthodoxy. In both instances, the clergy resolved the infraction by eventually sentencing
the offender to death.
Many religious professionals would likely recognize Diane’s story as an
opportunity for compassion and counsel, or at least further inquiry, rather than
condemnation. For the Sister, however, sin is sin. There are no grey areas or special
circumstances; the cause of Diane’s pregnancy is irrelevant, since the Sister’s strict
interpretation does not allow for an abortion in any situation. Thus, after a brief
discussion of Diane’s school record and the discovery that the former student no longer
goes to confession, Sister Mary’s pronouncement is final and absolute: “[W]e’ll just add
you to the list of people going to hell. [. . .] Thomas, we’ll put her name right after
[Broadway musical writers] Comden and Green” (399). Just as a Supreme Court Justice
might render a verdict under the authority of the United States Constitution, so too
does Sister Mary Ignatius issue a performative utterance that she presumes carries the
force of heaven behind it and relegates her sexually reprobate student to hell. Yet
whereas there exists a system of lower courts through which appeals must pass before a
95 final verdict by the highest Court, Sister Mary (like Sister Aloysius in Shanley’s Doubt) circumvents the chain of command and issues her own decree.
In addition to decrying Diane’s abortions, Sister Mary also strictly adheres to the
Catholic Church’s prohibition of artificial contraception. When asked to tell about her family, she informs the audience that she came from a family of twenty‐six children
(384). Her mother, she continues, “hated little children, but they couldn’t use birth
control” (385). She then launches into a brief diatribe about contraception:
Let me explain this one more time.
Birth control is wrong because God, whatever you may think about the
wisdom involved, created sex for the purpose of procreation, not
recreation. Everything in this world has a purpose. We eat food to feed
our bodies. We don’t eat and then make ourselves throw up immediately
afterwards, do we? So it should be with sex. Either it is done for its proper
purpose, or it is just so much throwing up, morally speaking. Next
question. (385)
The humor here depends on the way Sister Mary’s actress delivers these lines. If the
Sister is to be read as absolutely earnest about her beliefs on the subject; the actress
therefore must be completely deadpan in her delivery. Durang is explicit on this point,
suggesting that “the humor works best when presented straight. That is, it’s fine that
we as an audience think it outrageous [, . . . but] the actress should not indicate her own
awareness of this outrageousness” (“Addendum” 210). Indeed, it is this aspect of her
character that prompts Frank Rich to call Sister Mary Ignatius “the most chilling
character in the Durang canon” (“Nancy Marchand” C20). He notes that Nancy
Marchand, who succeeded Elizabeth Franz in the Off‐Broadway production,
“punctuates her most severe pronouncements with beatific smiles that belie the
meaning of her words” and that “it’s because Sister Mary delivers even threats of
eternal damanation [sic] as casual, matter‐of‐fact asides that her dogmatic convictions
96 are rendered absurd” (C20). The Sister, like those religious and political figures for
whom she stands, is incapable of recognizing the philosophical and logical inconsistencies in certain areas of dogmatism.
To this point in the discussion, little has been said about the character of
Aloysius, yet the former student is second only to Diane as Durang’s vehicle for critiquing Catholic authoritarianism as it applies to matters of sexuality. After having discovered Diane’s abortions and Philomena’s illegitimate daughter, Sister Mary turns pleadingly to Aloysius:
Sister: And what about you? Is there anything the matter with you?
Aloysius: Nothing. I’m fine.
Sister: But you are living properly?
Aloysius: Yes.
Sister: And you’re married?
Aloysius: Yes.
Sister: And you don’t use birth control?
Aloysius: No.
Sister: But you only have two children. Why is that? You’re not
spilling your seed like Onan, are you? That’s a sin, you
know.
Aloysius: No. It’s just chance that we haven’t had more.
Sister: And you go to Mass once a week, and communion at least
once a year, and confession at least once a year? Right?
Aloysius: Yes.
Sister: Well, I’m very pleased, then. (401)
Aloysius passes this impromptu catechistic interrogation, having responded correctly
(that is, agreeing with the Sister) to all the stereotypically inflammatory issues dividing traditional and liberal Catholic theologies. However, Aloysius then confesses his
97 shortcomings to his former teacher: “I am an alcoholic. And recently I’ve started to hit
my wife. And I keep thinking about suicide” (401). Presumably most people, religious
or not, would respond with a sense of social concern, both for him and his abused wife.
Having already passed blessing on Aloysius, the Sister reacts again in immediate judgment. She thinks for a moment, then pronounces, “Within bounds, all those things are venial sins [. . . .] At least one of my students turned out well” (401).
The Sister demonstrates no compassion for a raped teenager forced to abort the
resulting baby, nor for the mother who chose a similarly difficult choice to raise a
daughter alone in what some might consider a noble acceptance of the consequences of
unwise life choices. The nun does, however, show sympathy for the abusive alcoholic—
but not from a socially redemptive standpoint. Whereas she decrees that the two
women are guilty of the much more serious mortal sins of murder and extramarital
affairs, Sister Mary Ignatius absolves Aloysius’s transgressions as merely venial,
depending, she says, on how hard he hits his wife (401)!
One of the more controversial verdicts that Sister Mary Ignatius makes concerns
the issue of homosexuality. One of the audience’s question cards asks, “What exactly
went on in Sodom?” (388). She becomes irritated, wondering who asked that question,
and “looks suspiciously at certain members of the audience, especially if they are two
men sitting together” (388).2 Sensing another opportunity to offer moral instruction,
though, she proceeds to answer the question (although not before sending young
Thomas off the stage). She describes Sodom as the place “where they committed acts of
homosexuality and bestiality in the Old Testament, and God [. . .] destroyed them all in
one fell swoop” (389). This definition, although a bit exaggerated in that bestiality is not
2 This stage direction is missing previous to the Smith and Kraus edition. When queried about this, Durang explained that “A number of the actresses, who got into playing with the live audience from time to time, started to do that after that line. I just decided to add it when ‘Sister’ went to print again [. . . .] It’s funny (I thought), and also gives a sense of how the actress might play with the audience” (“Quick Answer”).
98 mentioned in the Genesis account, is mostly accurate etymologically, and the Sister presents it as a factual statement without any humorous undertones. Then she continues:
Modern day Sodoms are New York City, San Francisco, Amsterdam, Los
Angeles . . . well, basically anywhere where the population is over 50,000.
The only reason that God has not destroyed these modern day Sodoms is
that Catholic nuns and priests live in these cities, and God does not wish
to destroy them. He does, however, give these people body lice and
hepatitis. (389)
This pronouncement again illustrates the Sister’s tendency to equate her interpretation of the world as an ex cathedra statement of dogmatic reality.
When she is later reintroduced to her former student Gary, her attack on homosexuality becomes more personal. After excoriating the other three characters, she turns her attention to Gary, asking if he’d “turned out all right” (401). She observes,
“You’re not married. Have you not found the right girl?” (401). Gary responds with a not‐quite‐flippant “In a manner of speaking” (401). At first, the Sister shows uncharacteristic restraint. She initially seems content to let the obvious implications of
Gary’s statement go unrebuked beyond a raised eyebrow, but she cannot contain herself for long. She charges, “You do that thing that makes Jesus puke, don’t you? [. . .]
Drop the polite boy manner, buster. When your mother looks at you, she turns into a pillar of salt, right?” (402). When Gary tries to explain that he was seduced in the seminary, then slept with over five hundred men, she retorts that “Jesus is going to throw up” (402).
Most viewers, regardless of religious or political views, would probably agree that Gary’s promiscuity was not the wisest expression of his sexual identity. As his narrative continues, though, Gary recounts that he himself came to admit the error of his ways—the error of promiscuity, not homosexuality—and began to restrain himself.
99 He admits that he had been “trashing” his life and therefore began to sleep only with
“guys I had an emotional relationship with” (402). Sister Mary’s loving response is a terse “That must have cut it down to about three hundred” (402). Gary ends his story on, for him at least, a positive note. Reunited with a boyhood friend (who was also one of Sister Mary’s pupils), Gary has re‐embraced the Church and once again defines himself as a practicing Catholic. The nun, however, is unconvinced: “I’d practice a little harder if I were you” (402).
Sister Mary Ignatius and her fellow clerics represent a distinct category of clergy on the American stage. She acts as a spokeswoman for the pre‐Vatican‐II orthodoxy.
More importantly, she represents the judicial impulse of some religious and political traditions regarding the definition of morality and the enforcement of the resulting moral codes. The primary connection between the courts and the clergy, though, is that
both engage in performative speech on a regular basis and attempt to shape semantic
space so that it conforms to their specific worldviews. As a result, these performative
utterances occasionally become infelicitous and open the group in question to charges
of misuse of power. As Brother Julian lamented in Edward Albee’s Tiny Alice while
explaining his self‐imposed institutionalization, “I could not reconcile myself to the
chasm between the nature of God and the use to which men put . . . God” (44).
100
CHAPTER 5
PARANOID PASTORS
The most innocent actions can appear sinister to the poisoned mind. —Father Flynn to Sister James (Shanley 41)
In 1949, the House Committee on Un‐American Activities published a booklet entitled 100 Things You Should Know About Communism in the U.S.A. Addressed to a second‐person American reader and arranged as a series of questions and answers similar to a catechism book, the booklet had the stated purpose “to help you know a
Communist when you hear him speak and when you see him work” in order to
“destroy his arguments completely and expose him as he is for all to see” (5). The
booklet repeatedly emphasized how widespread the Communist threat was, and urged
citizens to become more vigilant in their daily lives. The pamphlet later became a larger
series of “100 Things You Should Know”: Communism in Religion, Government, Labor,
even Education. Since the underlying idea was that Communists could be anywhere,
just waiting to take “complete control over the human mind and body, asleep and
awake, in sickness and in health, from birth to death” (35), the pamphlet offered
techniques for uncovering these perceived enemies. When the “citizen” asked, “How,
incidentally, can you TELL a Communist?” the guide proposed this investigative
technique:
Get him in an argument about the United States. He can tell you plenty of
things wrong with this country. But ask him to tell you what’s wrong with
101 Russia. Even the slickest Communist will sooner or later give himself
away on that one. Particularly watch what he says about Stalin. (76)
These pamphlets illustrate the sense of distrust that developed among the general
American population during the years immediately following World War II. Not only
were people warned to be concerned about a threat that was potentially lurking anywhere, but they were actively encouraged by the government to seek out and
expose any subversive elements that opposed traditional American ideology. This Cold
War paranoia suppressed heterodoxy and brought to life a cultural fear of supposed
dissidents. This patriotic call‐to‐arms logic was typical of the 1950s move toward
suburbanization and standardization. In order to be counted among the literate and
informed, a citizen must therefore be against the sinister vices of the Communist infiltrators. Yet as national commander of the American Legion James F. O’Neil noted about the Soviets’ “assault” on America:
[T]he first step is to disguise, deodorize, and attractively package
Moscow’s revolutionary products. Next the salesmen and peddlers
themselves must be skillfully disguised, deodorized, and glamorized
[. . . .] These artful dodges and ingenious dissimulations obviously make it
difficult for the average trusting citizen to keep up with every new
Communist swindle and con game. (123)
So how was the average American citizen to protect the family and combat this spread of insidious Marxist ideology? The answer, in part, was national conformity: make things so uniquely, so fundamentally “American” that no Communist would be able to infiltrate successfully and still carry out his nefarious aims. It became an era of patriotic pragmatism; in order to avert the Communist influence (and any appearance of ideological impropriety), Americans constructed the standardization now often synonymous with the 1950s. As William Levitt, creator of the suburban communities
102 known as Levittowns, argued, no one who owned his own house could be a
Communist—he had too much to do (Jumonville).
The furor and paranoia created by the Cold War, helped by such adamant voices
as Joseph McCarthy and J. Edgar Hoover, raised awareness not only of what it meant to
be Communist, but more significantly how to be (and how important it was to be) anti‐
Communist. The ideological echoes of patriotism, capitalism, and the American dream
(core elements of civil religion), as seen through the eyes of McCarthyism and general
anti‐communist paranoia, were manifested in a national desire for homogeneity and a
solidification of the status quo. Such was the cultural milieu in which Arthur Miller
wrote The Crucible. Having seen the effects of institutional paranoia combined with
unchecked investigative powers, Miller co‐opted the imagery of a religious inquisition
to highlight the dangers inherent in the contemporary political climate.
John Patrick Shanley’s 2004 play Doubt follows a similar path and brings the
argument full circle, back to Arthur Miller’s Crucible and the political commentary it
contained. However, Doubt should be read in counterpoint to Miller’s play. Whereas
Miller’s clergy represented the American government in order to negatively critique it,
especially the actions of Joseph McCarthy and the House Committee on Un‐American
Activities, most of Shanley’s clergy are portrayed in a positive light. In The Crucible,
when the community’s religious and legal procedure is followed during the witch hunt
and subsequent trials, innocent people such as Rebecca Nurse die from false
accusations. In Doubt, when similar procedure is correctly followed, such as the case
with the “problem priest” at Sister Aloysius’s previous institution, then true offenders
are removed and stability is maintained. Father Flynn’s innocence or guilt is never
determined, in part because due process is not observed; ultimately, the priest’s career
is affected only by Sister Aloysius’s crusade outside the bounds of Church doctrine.
To phrase things in terms of Victor Turner’s stages of social drama, both plays
lend themselves to a schismic reaction in the audience. Miller’s viewers were directed to
103 reexamine the nature of the American response to the Red Scare. Likewise, Shanley’s audience considered the implications of the War on Terror since, as one reviewer noted,
the play “was written [. . .] when the inflexible certitude of the Bush administration resulted in the Iraq War” (T. McCarthy 48). Yet all four of Turner’s stages play out within the universe of each drama. The Crucible’s redressive action—the trials—result in cultural reintegration through execution, which eradicates and contains the opposing forces. The redressive action in Doubt is more problematic; although she does not appear to realize it, Sister Aloysius’s actions oppose the social structure which she is trying to uphold, and she ultimately creates a scenario in which she herself is the one cut off from the dominant society.
Doubt first ran Off Broadway at the Manhattan Theatre Club from 23 November
2004 to 30 January 2005 (Lortel “Doubt”). It then transferred to the Walter Kerr Theatre on Broadway on 31 March 2005, closing on 2 July 2006 after 525 performances (“Doubt”
IBDB). The initial production won numerous awards, including the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, four Lucille Lortel awards (as well as an additional nomination), three
Drama Desk Awards, and two Obies (“Doubt” Lortel Archives). In addition, the
Broadway production received seven Tony Award nominations, willing Best Direction,
Best Featured Actress, Best Actress, and Best Play (“Doubt Awards” IBDB).
Described by screenwriting professor John Petrakis as “a mystery story embracing a morality play concerning the things we know and those we only suspect”
(37), Doubt takes place in 1964 in the Bronx at St. Nicholas School, of which Sister
Aloysius Beauvier is the principal. Her namesake is the patron saint of children and youth (Farmer 216), foreshadowing the nun’s zeal in protecting what she perceives as an attack on one of her students. Critic Ethan Kanfer calls Sister Aloysius an “energetic administrator” and a “tough disciplinarian” who nevertheless “displays a genuine concern for the children’s welfare and a keen eye for potential trouble spots” (63). The name Aloysius means “fierce warrior,” and she is a formidable force, characterized by a
104 dogmatic adherence to tradition and authority similar to Christopher Durang’s Sister
Mary Ignatius. Both women are also portrayed with a distinct sense of certainty about
all that they do. Toward the end of Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All For You, the nun
asks the homosexual Gary when he last went to confession; he responds, “This
morning, actually. I was going to be playing St. Joseph and all” (409). The nun then pulls out a gun and shoots him. She turns to the audience and says, “I’ve sent him to
heaven! [. . . .] I’m not really within the letter of the law shooting Gary like this, but
really, if he did make a good confession I have sent him straight to heaven” (409). She
later insists that “Christ will allow me this little dispensation from the letter of the law”
(409).
This rationalization parallels the repeated mantra of Shanley’s Sister Aloysius
that “when you take a step to address wrongdoing, you are taking a step away from
God, but in His service” (20). She has firm conceptions of an ideal world, and she makes
every effort possible to conform her sphere of influence to this model, even if it means
defying traditional procedures. For example, she rails against secular Christmas carols:
“‘Frosty the Snowman’ espouses a pagan belief in magic” which is “heretical” and
“should be banned from the airwaves” (29). At the previous year’s Christmas pageant,
when the girl playing the Virgin Mary was wearing lipstick, Aloysius notes that “I was
waiting in the wings for that little jade” (13). A more recurring example is her intolerance of ballpoint pens. In her first scene, she laments to Sister James, “I’m sorry I allowed even cartridge pens into the school. The students should really only be learning script with true fountain pens” (9) because “ballpoints make them press down and when they press down, they write like monkeys” (10). Father Flynn’s use of the forbidden writing implement to record his sermon idea on “intolerance” symbolizes for her the chasm between the two clergy and helps to solidify her resolve against him.
In his review of the Manhattan Theatre Club’s Off‐Broadway production of the
play, Ben Brantley notes that the nun is “a triumph of hard‐won conviction over human
105 indecisiveness,” rather than the stereotypical “doctrine‐wielding, terror‐inspiring
Sister” (7) such as Durang’s Sister Mary Ignatius. Shanley himself supports this view when he states that the story “starts with that kind of archetypal nun, and then gradually you realize that your preconceived notions about what a nun is are being deterred one by one, as she becomes a more and more complex character” (“The Nun
Vs. the Priest” 64).
Aloysius’s sense of absolute certainty expresses itself in other ways as well, often in spite of conflicting or absent evidence. While meeting with Donald Muller’s mother, the following exchange takes place:
Aloysius: I believe this man [Father Flynn] is creating or has already
brought about an improper relationship with your son.
Mrs. Muller: I don’t know.
Aloysius: I know I’m right.
Mrs. Muller: Why you need to know something like that for sure when
you don’t? (47).
This single‐minded view of the circumstantial evidence is a function of her sense of
moral superiority—she is certain that her interpretation is the only viable one. At
various points in the play, the other characters offer different explanations for Donald’s
unusual behavior. Mrs. Muller, the mother of the supposed victim, intimates that if
something happened, it was likely mutual, since “maybe some of them boys want to get
caught” (48) and that “maybe what you don’t know maybe is my son is . . . that way.
That’s why his father beat him up” (48). The nun tells her that “This isn’t about what
the boy may be, but what the man is. It’s about the man.” When Mrs. Muller objects
“But there’s the boy’s nature,” Aloysius tersely cuts her off: “Let’s leave that out of it”
(48). Mrs. Muller had told her that “Sometimes things aren’t black and white,” to which
Sister Aloysius responded, “And sometimes they are” (49). Sister James supposes that
Donald was upset at being caught drinking the wine by Mr. McGinn and Father Flynn.
106 She tells her superior, “Well, I’m convinced,” to which Aloysius responds, “You’re not.
You just want things resolved so that you can have simplicity back” (35).
The final interpretation that Aloysius rejects comes from Father Flynn, who asks
whether or not she knew that Donald was being physically abused by his father. When
she answers affirmatively, he suggests, “And might that not account for the odd
behavior Sister James noticed in the boy?” She dismissively responds, “It might” (52);
both Cherry Jones in the Broadway production and Meryl Streep in the film adaptation
delivered this line with disbelieving sarcasm. The nun is unswayed from her interpretation of the evidence. Shanley once described the character as having “to some degree a Victorian attitude in the sense that good and evil were fairly clear” (Rose). This certainty echoes the way Arthur Miller described American society in his description of
The Crucible’s Reverend Hale: “Ours is a divided empire in which certain ideas are of
God, and their opposites are of Lucifer” (33). There is no middle ground. In both Miller and Shanley, as one reviewer of the film version of Doubt phrases it, “the representative
of religious absolutism sticks to [. . .] certainty in the face of a deeply moving
confession” (T. McCarthy 48).
Shanley constructs Aloysius’s character so that all her actions stem from an
apparent desire to enforce and maintain, in herself and in those under her authority, the
moral code instilled by the Church, at least as she defines it. She is portrayed as a
valiant fighter, defending the faith in the same way her husband defended the country.
The way she describes her husband’s death to Sister James is telling: He was not a
soldier in World War II; he “died in the war against Adolph Hitler” (18). This creates a
clear parallel to the War on Terror’s Axis of Evil, especially Saddam Hussein and his
regime. While discussing a speech by President Bush to the UN in 2002, Karl E. Meyer
noted that “If ever a national leader provided an argument for proactive military
surgery, it is surely Saddam Hussein” (92). Sister Aloysius expresses similar certainty in
personifying Hitler as the figure of evil which had taken her husband. Both leaders
107 personalize the opposition, focusing on a physical embodiment of what they consider to
be an evil or antithetical ideology.
When Sister James states that she wants her students “to feel they can talk to me,” Aloysius replies with the philosophy that drives her teaching and her interaction with those under her care: “They can talk to each other. It’s more important they have a
fierce moral guardian. You stand at the door, Sister. You are the gatekeeper. If you are
vigilant, they will not need to be” (13). Yet the headmistress doesn’t fully articulate this
task of moral guardianship. Against what is she defending her flock? This lack of
definition confuses Sister James: “I’m not sure what you want me to do” (13). In
contrast, Aloysius lacks no certainty. The perceived duty engenders in her a sense of
cynicism and hypervigilance which later manifests itself in a campaign against Father
Flynn based on highly circumstantial evidence. Sister Aloysius sees her purpose as a
vigilant defender of the faith, and this drive shapes her advice to Sister James. Aloysius informs the neophyte teacher that St. Nicholas School “is a society which requires
constant educational, spiritual and human vigilance [. . . .] Innocent teachers are easily duped. You must be canny, Sister James” (12). She later continues,
When William London gets a nosebleed, be skeptical. Don’t let a little
blood fuddle your judgment. God gave you a brain and a heart. The heart
is warm, but your wits must be cold. Liars should be frightened to lie to
you. They should be uncomfortable in your presence [. . . .] The children
should think you see right through them. (12)
She later tells Sister James that “It is my job to outshine the fox in cleverness” (22). This emphasis on cunning at the expense of innocence ignores the words of Christ in
Matthew 10.16 (New International Version): “I am sending you out like sheep among wolves. Therefore be as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves.” The King James
Version reads “and harmless as doves.” The Greek word used here, ακεραιος, literally means “unmixed [or] pure as in wines or metals” and metaphorically “of the mind,
108 without a mixture of evil, free from guile, innocent, simple” (Strong 185), so Aloysius’s statement is contraindicated by both translations.
Like the clergy in Bill C. Davis’s Mass Appeal, Aloysius’s philosophy contains an
element of pragmatism; she notes that after school the students are “beyond our
jurisdiction. We simply have to get [them] through, out the door, and then [they are]
somebody else’s problem” (8). Until then, however, paranoia and hard‐lined doctrinal
enforcement were her primary requirements. When Sister James apologizes for
disappointing Sister Aloysius, her superior states, “I want to see the starch in your
character cultivated. If you are looking for reassurance, you can be fooled. If you forget
yourself and study others, you will not be fooled” (15). Sister James appears
uncomfortable with this approach, however, stating that she feels she has lost her
“peace of mind” after having tried to “become more cold in [her] thinking” (20). After
the initial confrontation with Father Flynn, Sister James heatedly tells Aloysius that “it
would be nice if this school weren’t run like a prison” (35‐36) and that the students are
“all uniformly terrified of you!” (36), to which the principal calmly responds, “Yes.
That’s how it works” (36).
In counterpoint to the decisiveness of the headmistress, Father Flynn is a study in
contrasts. One reviewer, in fact, praises the casting of the film version for this very
reason: “When it comes to ambiguity, no actor is better than Philip Seymour Hoffman.
He conveys Flynn’s possible creepiness and possible saintliness not just by turns but
simultaneously in a portrait that is downright cubistic” (Alleva 21). While Flynn holds
fast to the hierarchy and strictures of the Church, he is highly influenced by the
proceedings of the Second Ecumenical Council, whose message, as he articulates, was
“that the Church needs to take on a more familiar face. Reflect the local community”
(30). Shanley uses Flynn to express Vatican II’s countermanding of Sister Aloysius’s
educational philosophy of teacher‐student distance: “We should be friendlier. The
children and the parents should see us as members of their family rather than
109 emissaries from Rome” (30). Like Sister Mary Ignatius before her, however, Sister
Aloysius “embodies the stifling tradition that Pope John XXIII attacked when he threw open his windows to the spirit of modernity” (Cullingford 256) through the findings of
Vatican II. Thus when Father Flynn describes Sister Aloysius as being “like a block of
ice” (40), Sister James concurs: “She discourages . . . warmth. She’s suggested I be more
. . . formal” (41).
Sister Aloysius is not merely a passive “moral guardian.” Rather, she has undertaken her own crusade to defend the faith against those who would destroy it, whoever they may be. Indeed, the threats she perceives are numerous. Art is “a waste of time” (7) and “Penmanship is dying all across the country” (10). To her, both of these are indications of laziness—“Always the easy way out these days” (9). She is particularly suspicious of males, at least since her experience at her previous post, St.
Boniface, where she battled “a priest who had to be stopped” (22). When Sister Aloysius proclaims that student William London has “a restless mind,” Sister James suggests that this is a good thing. Aloysius counters that, “No, it’s not [. . . .] William London is headed for trouble. Puberty has got hold of him. He will be imagining all the wrong things” (9).
In American drama since the 1960s, a common trope has been to represent
Catholic clergy as being preternaturally obsessed with human sexuality—abortion, conception and contraception, homosexuality, etc. To be sure, most of the plays under consideration in this study fall into this category. Christopher Durang’s Cardinal
O’Connor and Sister Mary Ignatius each rail against contraception, with the former noting that the use of any prophylactic “is wrong, it’s wrong, it’s wrong, it’s wrong”
(209). In Diane Shaffer’s Sacrilege, the Church hierarchy is concerned that Sister Grace advocates condom use—the Vatican is especially concerned at Grace’s noting the
110 cheaper ones being better because they use thicker latex.1 Doubt too is concerned with sexual mores. Early in the play, before the circumstances surrounding Father Flynn and
Donald Muller are introduced, Sister Aloysius indicates a distinct disdain for sexual matters. Upon learning that Father Flynn is in the rectory giving a talk to the boys on
“how to be a man,” she admits, “I’m not sure I would feel competent to lecture tittering girls on the subject of womanhood” (18). Although such things as ballpoint pens, transistor radios, and secular Christmas carols attract her attention at various points, her main focus throughout the play concerns sexual issues.
Elizabeth Cullingford argues that “Sister Aloysius [. . .] becomes a metaphorical spokeswoman for the Bush doctrine of preemptive war, [. . .] although there is nothing in the play itself to compel this allegorical reading” (258). Yet Shanley has stated in several interviews that connecting the play and the Bush administration is a valid reading. In a 2005 interview with Charlie Rose, the playwright noted that while
I’m not interested in writing a play that takes a political stand [or] that’s a
polemic of some kind [. . .] certainly the invasion of Iraq was a stimulus.
There was what I felt to be a rush to war, and that people who expressed
doubts were being depicted as unpatriotic.
Elsewhere, when asked if Doubt was “a criticism of the Bush administration’s invasion of Iraq and its unconfirmed belief in weapons of mass destruction,” Shanley responded that “On some level, there’s a political point” (Schilling 78). If Sister Aloysius’s paranoia and determination to bring down Father Flynn parallels the American government’s response to the September 11th attacks, as Shanley has suggested, then it follows that sexuality and sexual issues become symbols of terrorism and anti‐American sentiments.
1 This trope extends beyond the plays in this study, of course. A case in point is Jean‐Claude van Itallie’s short play “Rosary,” a stream‐of‐consciousness recollection of a sexual encounter, delivered by a young nun riding home on the subway.
111 With a symbolic connection between sexuality and terrorism established, the central male characters become more fully developed critiques of various aspects of the
American response to the War on Terror. As viewed by Sister Aloysius’s paranoid crusade, William London, Monsignor Benedict, and Father Flynn all function as implicit political references. Because sexuality can be seen as a symbol for terrorism, William
London exhibits the characteristics of a frequent terrorist profile. When Sister Aloysius points out disdainfully that “Puberty has got hold of him” (8), this awakening of the human sexual nature can be read as someone’s assumption of militant terrorist philosophies. She says that he will “set his foot on fire for half a day out of school” and that she “strongly suspect[s] he will not graduate high school” (8). Both of these characteristics parallel those of terrorist martyrs, who are generally young (albeit not
usually minors) and, by definition, willing to sacrifice themselves to cause societal
disruption. There have been instances of terrorists being children of influential
politicians or other public figures, even some friendly to the terrorists’ enemies, such as
the United States or Israel. Examples include famed al‐Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden,
whose father owned a highly successful construction business in Saudi Arabia.
Aloysius’s comment that William London’s policeman father does not want “a rowdy
boy” (8) echoes this pattern.
Another connection between London and the stereotypical terrorist concerns the
timing of the boy’s injury at the beginning of the play. Sister James points out that his nosebleed, which Aloysius believes to be “self‐induced” (8), “just let loose and started gushing during The Pledge of Allegiance” (7). The Pledge is essentially an ode and oath that combines symbols of both secular and civil religion in America. As terror attacks are often imbued with symbolic import themselves, such as launching attacks on a day
whose date contains 911, the United States’ emergency services number, it is significant
that the boy would launch his attack during the one time of the school day when both
patriotism and piety are most publicly being expressed.
112 Just as the sexuality‐terrorism connection nuances and expands William
London’s character, so too does it color Sister Aloysius’s portrayal of her superior,
Monsignor Benedict. She focuses on the hierarchical and special divide between the
priests and the nuns that her superior represents. Early in the play, she references the disparity between the two groups when she points out to Sister James that “The
convent [is] here, the rectory there. We might as well be separated by the Atlantic
Ocean” (18). As Elizabeth Cullingford points out, Shanley’s film version visually reinforces this idea: “At dinner, the nuns silently sip milk and chew unappetizing gristle, while the priests uproariously consume glasses of wine and expensive cuts of meat” (255).
Aloysius’s most complete description of the monsignor comes as she and Sister
James are walking in the garden:
Aloysius: I used to potter around out here, but Monsignor Benedict
does his reverie at quixotic times and we are rightly
discouraged from crossing paths with priests unattended.
He is seventy‐nine, but nevertheless.
James: The monsignor is very good, isn’t he?
Aloysius: Yes. But he is oblivious.
James: To what?
Aloysius: I don’t believe he knows who’s President of the United
States. I mean him no disrespect, of course. It’s just that he’s
otherworldly in the extreme. (18‐19)
Her discussion of the monsignor’s shortcomings echoes some of the rhetoric used by the
Bush administration to critique the United Nations—for example, the U.N.’s response
to Saddam Hussein. In a September 2002 speech to the United Nations, President Bush
said, “We want the United Nations to be effective, and respectful, and successful. We
want the resolutions [. . .] to be enforced. And right now those resolutions are being
113 unilaterally subverted by the Iraqi regime.” Yet in a speech one month later he accused that the international body’s inaction
would embolden other tyrants, allow terrorists access to new weapons
and new resources, and make blackmail a permanent feature of world
events. The United Nations would betray the purpose of its founding and
prove irrelevant to the problems of our time. (“Address to the Nation”
1720‐1721)
Both president and principal caution against the negative outcomes of ignoring their
proposed courses of action, supposing dire consequences for merely following
traditional procedures in what they perceive to be extraordinary circumstances.
Sister Aloysius’s suspicion sets in motion the events of the play, and her focus
ultimately lands on Father Flynn. During the final confrontation between the priest and
the nun, Flynn points out, “This has nothing to do with the wine, not really. You had a
fundamental mistrust of me before this incident! It was you that warned Sister James to
be on the lookout, wasn’t it?” (51‐52). When she concedes the point, he asks what
started her to suspect him. She responds, “On the first day of the school year, I saw you
touch William London’s wrist. And I saw him pull away.” Stunned, Flynn objects,
“That’s all? [. . . ] But that’s nothing” (52). Despite her statements to Sister James about
William’s troubled nature and his problems with authority, her position is that Flynn is
at fault and the cause of the boy’s flinching.
Even Mrs. Muller sees what the headmistress is doing; she tells Aloysius, “I feel
like you’re on the march somehow” (46) and “You got some kind a righteous cause
going with this priest and now you want to drag my boy into it” (47). Sister Aloysius
responds with an ultimatum of sorts:
Aloysius: I’ll throw your son out of this school. Make no mistake.
Mrs. Muller: But why would you do that? If nothing started with him?
Aloysius: Because I will stop this whatever way I must.
114 Mrs. Muller: You’d hurt my son to get your way?
Aloysius: It won’t end with your son. (49)
In their final confrontation, Father Flynn yells at the Sister, “You have not the slightest proof of anything,” to which she replies, “But I have my certainty, and armed with that,
I will go to your last parish, and the one before that if necessary. I will find a parent,
Father Flynn!” (54).
In the Preface to Doubt, Shanley notes that “I still long for a shared certainty, an
assumption of safety, the reassurance of believing that others know better than me [sic]
what’s for the best” (ix). In the aftermath of September 11, 2001, this burden lay on the
American federal government, which quickly stepped in to deal with these issues. The
national climate began to echo the situation described by Miller in the stage directions
for The Crucible’s first act:
For good purposes, even high purposes, the people [. . .] developed a
theocracy, a combine of state and religious power whose function was to
keep the community together, and to prevent any kind of disunity that
might open it to destruction by material or ideological enemies. (7)
It soon became apparent that perhaps the task was impossible—that a watershed event
had occurred and the security the country once knew no longer existed. However, some
were unwilling to accept this proposition, and began to act by any means necessary to
reinstate the security of the status quo ante. So too does Sister Aloysius strive to maintain
the pre‐Vatican II strictures that she accuses Father Flynn of working to destroy.
Doubt is written in part as a critique of the American response to the terrorist
attacks of September 11th. As a result, Sister Aloysius’s paranoid zeal in battling Father
Flynn has clear parallels to the Bush Administration’s efforts to find those responsible
for the attacks and bring them to justice. Both the nun and the government were
criticized for false accusations, overstepping authority, and for refusing to accept
alternate interpretations of circumstantial evidence. Arthur Miller described the similar
115 situation of the Red Scare when he noted that “political policy is equated with moral
right, and opposition to it with diabolical malevolence. Once such an equation is
effectively made, [. . .] the main role of government changes from that of the arbiter to
that of the scourge of God” (Crucible 34).
Numerous reports of paranoid reactions to Muslims and those of Middle Eastern
descent occurred in the wake of September 11, 2001. Innocent words and actions
occasionally would be misinterpreted, resulting in negative consequences such as the
bombing of mosques and a general rise in racial tension. Sister Aloysius exhibits this
paranoid tendency throughout Doubt. Unlike some of the other plays in this study,
however, the Church and its hierarchy as a whole are not necessarily the subject of
critique. Shanley’s Sister Aloysius is unlike Sister Mary Ignatius in Christopher Durang
or Cardinal King in Diane Shaffer, who stand for the Church as a whole, or at least large
subsets such as those who reject the changes of Vatican II. Sister Aloysius is an
individual acting outside the properly‐established bounds of her order, which Shanley
ultimately portrays in a favorable and sympathetic light. The playwright consistently
suggests that Sister Aloysius’s charges are not the problem, nor that they are potentially
unfounded. Indeed, part of the play’s power stems from the fact that the audience
potentially shares Sister Aloysius’s distrust of the church hierarchy. The problem,
according to Shanley, is rather that she went outside the existing hierarchy in order to advance her crusade. She is convinced that going through proper channels would allow
an abusive priest to go free, yet there is no evidence, apart from her conjectures about
Mr. McGinn and Monsignor Benedict, that any miscarriage of justice would occur.
Richard Hornby of The Hudson Review argues that the Catholic Church is
“depicted as reprehensible in the play for not providing fair, impartial procedures for
ascertaining abuse” (471). However, such procedures do exist, and have been
completely followed at least once within the context of the play. Sister Aloysius herself recounts the play’s only account of a problem priest’s successful ouster. She tells Sister
116 James that “eight years ago at St. Boniface we had a priest who had to be stopped” (20).
The audience infers that the priest was successfully removed, and Aloysius says it was
because “I had Monsignor Scully then” (20). However, others such as Father Flynn (and
perhaps the audience) would agree that the system worked by design, not merely
because Aloysius had a good working relationship with her superior, despite her protestations to the contrary.
Furthermore, the first overt reference to the hierarchy also comes from Aloysius, who insists on following proper channels. She tells Sister James that “usually more children are sent down to me” for discipline, to which the younger nun states, “I try to take care of things myself.” The principal’s response suggests that she in fact does value
the Church’s chain of command: “That can be an error. You are answerable to me, I to
the monsignor, he to the bishop, and so on up to the Holy Father. There’s a chain of
discipline. Make use of it” (8). Richard Alleva suggests that Sister Aloysius “[regards]
hierarchy and rigid order as lifeboats for floundering souls” (20). Yet a few scenes later,
when Sister James heeds her advice and suggests telling the monsignor her suspicions
about Father Flynn and Donald Muller, Sister Aloysius is appalled: “To Monsignor
Benedict? The man’s guileless! He would just ask Father Flynn” (22). When Sister James
says, “Well then tell the bishop,” her superior responds:
The hierarchy of the Church does not permit my going to the bishop. No.
Once I tell the monsignor, it’s out of my hands, I’m helpless. I’m going to
have to come up with a pretext, get Father Flynn into my office. Try to
force it. (23)
The older nun rejects the idea of simply following the chain of command and shows the
first signs of breaking with protocol.
In addition, Sister James must be part of the plan: “You’ll have to be there,”
which garners a sputtered, “Me? No! Why? Oh no, Sister! I couldn’t!” (23). Perplexingly,
Sister Aloysius justifies James’s complicity by reiterating another element of Church
117 protocol: “I can’t be closeted alone with a priest. Another Sister must be in attendance and it has to be you” (23). Sister Aloysius from this point forward exhibits great inconsistency with regard to Church protocol and decorum; she insists that others follow it completely, yet frequently abandons procedure when her vendetta requires.
Sister Aloysius states that “There are parameters which protect him and hinder me” (21). To what parameters is she referring? In context she means the hierarchy of the
Roman Catholic priesthood. In the broader symbolic context of the American political and legal system, though, the parameters are more variegated. In American jurisprudence, the accused are not only presumed innocent until proven otherwise, they are also granted certain protections to ensure that their rights are maintained. These protections serve to keep in check overly zealous prosecutors who believe that the end justifies the means. In the case of the Bush administration and the “War on Terror,” steps were taken to skirt those protections in the name of national security: increased surveillance powers, more interrogation techniques, and occasional suspensions of habeas corpus. Similar moves are perhaps what Sister Aloysius has in mind when she says to Sister James, “When you take a step to address wrongdoing, you are taking a step away from God, but in His service. Dealing with such matters is hard and thankless work” (20). When Sister James tries to dissuade her, citing a lack of evidence or even certainty that anything happened, the older nun snaps, “We can’t wait for that!”
(20).
Father Flynn’s reaction when Sister Aloysius initially accuses him of impropriety further suggests that it is the Sister, not the Church hierarchy, in error. When Scene Five begins, Flynn observes the proper protocols required when meeting with clergy of the opposite gender. He stands in the doorway and does not enter the principal’s office until the third party—Sister James—arrives. After the pretense of the Christmas pageant discussion is dropped and he realizes what the meeting is about, Flynn informs the principal, “If I had judged my conversation with Donald Muller to be of concern to you,
118 Sister, I would have sat you down and talked to you about it. But I did not judge it to be
of concern to you” (32). Then the following exchange takes place:
Aloysius: What happened in the rectory?
Flynn: Happened? Nothing happened. I had a talk with a boy.
Aloysius: About what?
Flynn: It was a private matter.
Aloysius: He’s twelve years old. What could be private? (32)
This insistent line of questioning contradicts what Sister Aloysius tells her subordinate
earlier in the play. When the two nuns are discussing Father Flynn’s opening sermon on
doubt, Aloysius wonders aloud what he meant. Sister James states the obvious solution:
“I suppose you’d have to ask him” (14). Sister Aloysius is shocked and such hints of
impropriety: “No. That would not be appropriate. He is my superior. And if he were troubled, he should confess it to a fellow priest, or the monsignor. We do not share
intimate information with priests” (14). By her own account, Sister Aloysius as his
subordinate should have accepted Father Flynn’s explanation without suspicion. Once
he stated that it was a private matter—perhaps counseling or confessed sin—the issue
should have been dropped, or at least handed up the hierarchy to the bishop, as Flynn
himself points out when he stands to leave:
I don’t wish to continue this conversation at all further. And if you are
dissatisfied with that, I suggest you speak to Monsignor Benedict. I can
only imagine that your unfortunate behavior this morning is the result of
overwork. Perhaps you need a leave of absence. I may suggest it. (33)
She stops him, however, with a terse, “There was alcohol on his breath” (35). After
Aloysius presses the issue and forces Flynn to reveal Donald Muller’s transgressions
with the altar wine (he drank some of it rather than disposing of it properly), the priest
finally does leave, after reiterating his previous contention: “I’m not pleased with how
119 you handled this, Sister. Next time you are troubled by dark ideas, I suggest you speak
to the monsignor” (35).
The next time Flynn and Aloysius meet in her office to discuss the situation, the
priest abandons protocol. He enters her office without the requisite third party, and
immediately demands, “You have to stop this campaign against me!” (50). When she
tells him that she spoke to a nun at his previous parish, rather than the pastor as
procedure required, Flynn rebukes her: “That’s not the proper route for you to have taken, Sister! The Church is very clear. You’re supposed to go through the pastor!” (53).
He refutes her charge directly—“I’ve not touched a child” (53) and points out, “You
have not the slightest proof of anything” (54). She counters that, “I have my certainty,” which will allow her to find a parent. She continues: “Trust me I will. A parent who
probably doesn’t know that you are still working with children! And once I do that, you
will be exposed” (54). When she says this in the Broadway production, Brían F.
O’Byrne’s Father Flynn stands up, towering over the nun seated behind her desk, and
yells, “You have no right to act on your own! You are a member of a religious order.
You have taken vows, obedience being one! You answer to us! You have no right to step
outside the Church!” (54). Only after his appeals to her “spirit of charity” (55) and
“compassion” (56) fail does he finally capitulate and phone the bishop.
Aloysius is not completely victorious, though, since Father Flynn is not removed
from the priesthood. As she tells Sister James during the final moments of the play,
“They’ve made Father Flynn the pastor of St. Jerome Church and School. It’s a
promotion” (58). Richard Hornby concludes his review of the Broadway production of
Doubt by noting
In an era when hysteria over child molestation has led to terrible injustice
[. . . and] media outlets like CNN and Fox News act like cheering sections
for the prosecution in high‐profile criminal trials, when terrorist suspects
are warehoused for years with rights of the accused suspended [. . .],
120 Doubt is a reminder of why we have rules of evidence, why suspects are
supposed to be considered innocent until proven guilty, and why guilt
must be proven in a court of law beyond a reasonable doubt. (471)
In the larger context of the play the headmistress, against the directives of the Church, had taken the fight into her own hands and successfully fulfilled the prophecy she gave
Sister James after the first confrontation with the priest: “I’ll bring him down. With or without your help” (35). Furthermore, Sister James points out that “Donald Muller is heartbroken” (57), suggesting that in the end Sister Aloysius’s paranoid crusade, perhaps like the Bush administration’s, did more harm than good to the very people and values she was trying to protect.
121
CHAPTER 6
CONCLUSION
I could not reconcile myself to the chasm between the nature of God and the use to which men put [God] (Brother Julian, Tiny Alice 44).
In the opening scene of Tiny Alice, Edward Albee goes to great lengths to portray his Cardinal as having two defining concerns: business, and an arrogant preoccupation with the first person plural pronoun. An early exchange between the Lawyer and the
Cardinal provides a case in point:
LAWYER: Do you ever slip?
CARDINAL: Sir?
LAWYER: Mightn’t you—if you’re not careful—(Tiny pause) lapse . . .
and say I to me . . . not we?
CARDINAL: (pretending sudden understanding) Ah ha! Yes, we understand.
LAWYER: Do we, do we.
CARDINAL: We do. We—and here we speak of ourselves and not of our
station—we . . . we reserve the first‐person singular for
intimates . . . and equals.
LAWYER: . . . And your superiors.
CARDINAL: (brushing away a gnat) The case does not apply. (8)
122 At this point in the play, such a dialogue appears benignly amusing—the Cardinal
thinks too highly of himself, but this perhaps is common in any hierarchy. Yet Albee continues the construction of the Cardinal’s personality and motivations through the
foil that is the Lawyer. Having gone to school together with the Lawyer as a child, the
Cardinal charges: “[You] were a swine at school . . . we find it fitting” (Albee 9).
Performances such as the Hartford, Connecticut Stage production directed by Mark
Lamos lace this speech with disdain and superciliousness. Yet the Lawyer is quick to bring the discussion back on point: “Overstuffed, arrogant . . . we find it fitting” (Albee
9). Both men use the first‐person plural. The Cardinal’s use of the plural is reminiscent of the royal “we,” as clearly indicated in the above passage; the Lawyer’s “we,” on the other hand, is more complex. On the surface he is mocking the Cardinal’s pretentiousness. It is reasonable to read the Lawyer’s word choice as literal; the actions of the clergyman are seen as fitting by a larger group—the audience (who will likely agree with the Lawyer’s assessment of the other’s business acumen). Perhaps even the culture at large is represented, since American society was beginning to associate the priesthood with these negative appellations.
Tiny Alice is emblematic of a larger phenomenon in American theater. Elements of formal religion, especially Christianity, abound in twentieth‐ and twenty‐first‐ century American dramas: the clergymen in Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, Bill C. Davis’s
Mass Appeal, or Brutus Jones’s appeals to Christ at the end of The Emperor Jones by
Eugene O’Neill (whose more explicit biblical retelling was the 1924 Lazarus Laughed).
Clifford Odets retold the story of Noah and the Flood in The Flowering Peach. Archibald
MacLeish and Marc Connelly each won Pulitzer Prizes for their biblical retellings—the former for Job’s story in J.B. and the latter for Old Testament montage in The Green
Pastures. In what some purport to be a post‐Nietzschean, post‐religious society, it seems discordant that playwrights, especially those involved in social commentary,
123 consistently rely on religious components within their works. If God is dead, shouldn’t
his symbols be as well?
In light of the association between priest and politician, which is the focus of this
study, understanding religious imagery and its uses is essential to interpreting the development of modern theater. In twentieth‐ and twenty‐first‐century America, playwrights constructed or critiqued ideological tenets central to the American
consciousness by divesting these religious symbols of the sacred, using them as
signifiers of secular humanism instead. The relation on the modern stage between
religion (both orthodox and civil) and the concept of “America” can clearly be seen in the works of the authors examined in this study, who each used religion to reinforce (or
critique) the American exceptionalism that dominated the post‐WWII period. While this
study narrows the scope of religious motifs to the clergy depicted by these five less‐ frequently‐analyzed playwrights, the thematic concerns these characters embody echo other religious elements such as those of Arthur Miller’s Crucible, Tennessee Williams’
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, or Eugene O’Neill’s Emperor Jones. These more widely‐studied playwrights represent an earlier generation of religious exploration that, while informing the later authors now under consideration, is beyond the scope of this work.
Each of the playwrights in this study attempts to re‐code the religious signs—in this case, their characters—to effect in the audience an understanding that these onstage clergy represent a larger social commentary. Theatre anthropology and semiotics, especially the work of Victor Turner, Peter Brook, and Keir Elam, as well as theorists of
American civil religion such as Robert Bellah, provide the foundation by which this study demonstrates the ways religion has been used on stage to construct and constrain
American ideology. As an analysis of American theatre and cultural history, the present work establishes the link between dramatic clergy and the larger societal figures they represent.
124 Arthur Miller chose to couch his anti‐HUAC play in Salem during the times of
the witch trials. This setting bears examination since he deliberately chose to use
Puritan Massachusetts rather than contemporary times, biblical times as he proved he
could do with Creation of the World and Other Business, or some other motif from his own
Jewish background. Judaism particularly is rife with stories of undeserved oppression at the hands of both secular and religious tyrants, so that religious idiom would have been similarly suitable for presenting his desired themes. However, Miller accepted that in American culture, the government and the church held similar functions (and faults) in the minds of his American audience.
Why, though, does this connection between religion and drama indicate a connection specifically to American politics in the 20th Century, and not any form of authority? It is precisely because of the specificity of the religious elements used. A simple Marxist reading of the power structures involved might lend itself to a generalized commentary of authority or hierarchy at large. Rousseau’s Geneva
Manuscript argues that “as soon as men live in society, they must have a religion that keeps them there [. . . . I]f it were not given one, it would make one itself” (qtd. in
Deneen 153), so even if the connection can be made between theatrical priest and real‐ world government, an interpretation focusing on the United States rather than making a more universal commentary has yet to be established. The answer is that specific elements, such as Durang’s emphasis on sexuality and reproductive rights, Shaffer’s repeated references to religion’s role in the war on drugs, or, in the case of Davis’s Mass
Appeal, Tim’s references to the Fifth Amendment and HUAC, suggest that the playwrights in question are offering a critique of American politics and society, not just religious orthodoxy or politics in general.
Although the scope of this investigation is limited to the representations of clergy on stage, the principles set forth here also apply to other categories of theatrical religious expression. This includes, for example, adaptations or retellings of sacred
125 stories, such as J.B. or The Green Pastures mentioned above. These adaptations are by far the most consistent manifestation of religious elements on the stage, which is no surprise considering the origin of drama within ancient Greek religious festivals, as well as the Catholic Church’s extensive use of morality plays in the Middle Ages. Modern
versions take many forms. Some are direct retellings, such as Chayefsky’s Gideon, transporting religious characters into a modern idiom. Adaptation also includes dramas which extend or alter traditional narratives for a specific effect. A representative example here is Arthur Miller’s The Creation of the World and Other Business, which portrays God as a distractedly incompetent creator of a sexually ignorant (and, under
Lucifer’s tutelage, sexually frustrated) Adam and Eve. A final subset of these retellings borders on roman à clef; the characters and plots of Neil Simon’s God’s Favorite directly correspond with the sufferings of the biblical Job (as do the sufferings of the aforementioned J.B.). One could argue that Beckett’s Endgame and Wilder’s The Skin of
Our Teeth bear similar connections to the biblical Flood narrative, but in each of these cases the connection, while no doubt intentional, is ancillary; in a true retelling such as the ones listed, the connection to the original tale is primary.
Another category of religious expression addresses religious imagery which takes place in an almost completely secular context, devoid of any overt sacred or orthodox meaning. While these images may resonate with audiences and critics, the characters themselves are portrayed as unaware of any transcendent implications. A prime illustration is Edward Albee’s Zoo Story. While much has been made of the
Christological interpretations of Peter’s character, including his “sacrifice,” the redemptive elements that one might assume would follow such a character are lost on
Jerry, despite his dying declaration. Similar religious elements can be seen in Jean‐
Claude van Itallie’s short play “Rosary,” which is the disjointed prayer of a novice nun struggling with her sexuality. While she seems to address the Virgin Mary, the
126 conversation is less a plea for absolution than it is a psychological rationalization of the nun’s own sexual nature.
In what is ostensibly a secular age, the resurgence of religious imagery in modern America should concern theatre scholars and cultural historians. When the line between politics, religion, and art is blurred—or is even indistinct—the rationale behind any invocation of the sacred must be examined. When politicians speak at prayer breakfasts asking God’s blessing on the President’s campaign, or when prominent televangelists call for the assassination of a foreign leader, as did Pat Robertson, the social, secular, and sacred have been significantly conflated. The resurgence of religious rhetoric on the national scale, especially in political arenas, as well as the cooption of religious imagery and texts for everything from presidents to photocopiers (whereby a monk uses Xerox to handle the duplication of his illuminated manuscripts), encourages literary scholars and cultural critics to analyze the boundaries within which religion,
literature, and culture operate. Shifts in American dramatists’ use of formal religious
elements are clearly linked to the conceptual shifts regarding secular religion in the
larger American culture. This work places religious expression in the context of a
secular society and its body of literature, and establishes this link through a diachronic
analysis of the plays of the era and the ways in which their playwrights used religion to
explore and establish American ideology.
At one point in Tiny Alice, the Lawyer tells Brother Julian, “I have learned [. . .]
never to confuse the representative of a . . . thing with the thing itself” (39). This concept
is the key to understanding religious elements on the American stage. At the heart of
semiotics (both theatrical and otherwise) is the Saussurean idea of the signifier and the
signified. The connection between the two makes effective communication possible,
albeit constantly in flux. The playwrights at the heart of this study attempted to break
the signifier/signified chain and establish new links between the religious elements
portrayed, and the sociopolitical elements they were intended to represent. The social
127 commentary was “the thing itself”; the religious elements were merely the
“representative.” The unconventional nature of this semiotic remapping allowed audiences to consider the ideologies at hand, and the resulting alienation engendered a sense of communitas which allowed for a more effective communal examination of cultural and political standards. The rise of the imperfect religious professional— pragmatic, marginalized, prescriptive, and paranoid—fostered a reevaluation of what it means to be authentically “American.”
128
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BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH
Troy Appling earned his bachelor’s degree in Humanities and Biblical Studies from Atlanta Christian College in 1997. He completed a master’s degree in English from the University of Memphis in 2002 and the following year enrolled in the doctoral program at Florida State University with an emphasis in religion and modern American drama. He has taught Composition and Literature at Florida State and at Santa Fe
College, and has accepted a tenure‐track position in Literature and Composition at
Florida Gateway College.
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