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MIAMI UNIVERSITY - THE GRADUATE SCHOOL

CERTIFICATE FOR APPROVING THE DISSERTATION

We hereby approve the Dissertation

of

Kimberly D. Murray

Candidate for the Degree:

Doctor of

______Alice E. Adams, Director

______Jennie Dautermann, Reader

______Britton Harwood, Reader

______LuMing Mao, Reader

______Elizabeth Wilson, Graduate School Representative

SIGNS AND WONDERS: AND IN SOCIAL TURMOIL by Kimberly D. Murray

The purpose of this dissertation is to propose that exploratory thinking (or the use of wonder) can serve as an effective alternative to exclusive thinking and improve the functioning of critical reason within ideological frameworks. In the first half, I explore the ways in which current ideals and values in America– including of as a Supreme Being, belief in the dualism between humanity and divinity, and current practices of exclusive religion and nationalism– intensify cultural strife by increasing social dichotomization and decreasing the influence of critical reason. In the first , I discuss four interrelated signs that serve as strong indicators of escalating global conflict: greater attention to exclusive religion and nationalism, stronger ties between church and state, increasing social extremism, and the diminishing influence of reason. Chapter Two is an analysis of how exclusive forms of religion and nationalism reinforce insecurity, dependency, cultural egotism, and social uniformity. Applying Herbert Marcuse’s critique of operational reason and Slavoj i〉ek’s discussion of ideological fantasy, I argue in Chapter Three that exclusive thinking functions ideologically to disengage multiple viewpoints and, thus, reinforce racial and cultural , homophobia, violence, and social stratifications. As part of that chapter, I consider several definitions of reason and show how these definitions change according to metaphysical distinctions of -body- and, moreover, how these distinctions perpetuate social inequities. In the second half of the dissertation, I present examples of exploratory thinking that resist the ideological constraints of exclusive religion and nationalism by encouraging multiple viewpoints, expanding restrictive views of subjectivity, and bridging the gap between reason and faith. To support these points, Chapter Four incorporates a discussion of Luce Irigaray’s and Jean Luc Nancy’s of wonder, as well as the exploratory approaches to and offered by the Movement.

SIGNS AND WONDERS:

REASON AND RELIGION IN SOCIAL TURMOIL

A DISSERTATION

Submitted to the Faculty of Miami University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Department of English

by

Kimberly D. Murray Miami University Oxford, Ohio 2004

Dissertation Director: Alice E. Adams

c.

Kimberly D. Murray

2004

SIGNS AND WONDERS: REASON AND RELIGION IN SOCIAL TURMOIL

Table of Contents

Dedication______iv Acknowledgments______v Introduction ______1 Part I: Of Signs and Mysteries ______10 Signs of Cultural Turmoil and the Divisive Power of Mystery ______11 Shifting : Rising Interest in Religion and the Polarization of Exclusive Religion and Alternative Spirituality ______12 Effects from the Incremental Blending of Religion and Nationalism ______19 Social Polarization ______25 The Diminishing Application and Effectiveness of Reason______30 Reading the Signs: Social Ills and the Excesses of Belief ______36 Perpetuating Insecurities ______36 Perpetuating Dependencies ______40 Ideology, Belief, and the Diminution of Critical Reason ______47 Reason Dis(re)membered ______55 Part II: Exploring Wonders ______64 Revolutionizing the Discourses of Reason and Faith ______65 Mistrust of Exclusivity and Dualistic Thinking ______70 Revolutionizing Institutions ______74 The Balancing of Reason and Wonder in the New Age Movement______79 Revolutionizing Exclusive Subjectivity ______85 Conclusion ______94 Works Cited ______97

iii Dedication

Dedicated to all those who have inspired me and challenged my spirit, my heart, and my mind, and also to Elvis, my dachshund, who attended his first college English class in March 2002.

iv Acknowledgments

Each of the professors on this committee met with me personally, listened generously, read more than a couple drafts, and offered their own opinions as helpful guidance without inhibiting my own. Their friendship–often offered along with a cup of coffee or dinner–means more to me than I can say here. My family and friends have sustained me through both difficult and pleasant by believing in me and helping me laugh when I needed to the most. I especially appreciate my daughter, Erin, and partner, Megan, for their love, patience, and support. None of my professors or anyone close to me has ever expressed doubt about whether or not I could achieve this goal even though I doubted myself several times. For that, I am most grateful.

v

SIGNS AND WONDERS: REASON AND RELIGION IN SOCIAL TURMOIL

Introduction

What I relate is the of the next two centuries. I describe what is coming, what can no longer come differently: the advent of nihilism. This history can be related even now; for necessity itself is at work here. This future speaks even now in a hundred signs, this destiny announces itself everywhere; for this music of the future all ears are cocked even now. For some , our whole European culture has been moving as toward a catastrophe, with a tortured tension that is growing from decade to decade: restlessly, violently, headlong, like a river that wants to reach the end, that no longer reflects, that is afraid to reflect. (Nietzsche 3)

As drafted The to Power in the late 1880s, he realized the “necessity” of an emerging nihilism that could “no longer come differently” (3). As many of us are aware, the advent of nihilism has affected the 20th and 21st centuries to such a degree that, for at least the last fifty years, a majority of Americans have mourned the loss of customary beliefs in , religion, , and other societal institutions. Psychoanalytic therapist Rollo May, writing about cultural change during the 1960s, observed a progressive loss of love and will in what he called an “age of radical transition”: the old myths and symbols by which we oriented ourselves are gone, anxiety is rampant; we cling to each other and try to persuade ourselves that what we feel is love; we do not will because we are afraid that if we choose one thing or one person we’ll lose the other, and we are too insecure to take that chance. (13-14) Change is occurring in American culture so fast now that it feels as if we a radical transition every few years. In , citizens of industrialized countries have experienced over a century of rapid changes in , , , and consumerism–all of which have dramatically affected how we view others, ourselves, and the functioning of our social worlds. Although we see the obvious benefits of such progress, primarily in terms of advances in , travel, and mobile , such dramatic changes in culture often have side effects that, at first, seem insignificant but, over time, can create cultural gaps and social inequities. For instance, corporate back-climbers create and fill industry niches that reinforce commodity fetishism, pollute groundwater, and overstock public landfills (the Disney Corporation’s plan to market disposable DVDs serves as a prime example). We only watch television or browse through a glamor magazine to see how materialism and continue to redefine social . Indeed, the effects of technological have impacted American and social relations throughout the globe; however, these effects are less profound and, possibly, less harmful than the strain that results when social foundations fail in response to human need. My focus primarily concerns American culture, one of the most gifted societies in the world--technologically, educationally, and economically. Prior to September 11, 2001, U.S. citizens were more inclined to think that, at least in contemporary society, 1 major episodes of cultural strife occurred on other . Americans felt free from the constant and terror that many people in other nations experience. After 9/11, this of safety generally disappeared without much reflection in the popular media or among the general public about why the attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center occurred. Fingers point to Osama Bin Laden and radical Islamic terrorism, but very little concern has focused on the Eurocentric elitism that the Pentagon and World Trade Center often represent. For well over a century, prominent social critics have observed an increasing dehumanization of public life in direct relation to the evolution of industry and social institutions. Writing at the height of World War II, Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno recognized both the values and dangers of social and technological progress. In The of Enlightenment, they observe that On the one hand the growth of economic productivity furnishes the conditions for a world of greater justice; on the other hand it allows the technical apparatus and the social groups which administer it a disproportionate superiority to the rest of the population. The individual is wholly devalued in relation to the economic powers, which at the same time press the control of society over to hitherto unsuspected heights. (xiv) What Horkheimer and Adorno saw in the 1930s and 40s is even more true for us now. Technology progresses at a rate that is exponentially faster than our social institutions or bank accounts can address. In High Noon: Twenty Global Problems, Twenty Years to Solve Them, J.F. Rischard illustrates the seriousness of this “”: Cities like and Tokyo have more telephone lines than all of sub-Saharan Africa. Cellular phone networks cover only 20 percent of the , mostly in rich countries. The telephone density (phone lines per 100 inhabitants) is fifty to sixty in rich countries but less than two in the poorest developing countries . . . . technology is even more unevenly distributed. The traffic between the United States and Europe is 100 times that reaching Africa, and thirty times that reaching America. (107-08) As technology improves, the gap between industrially-rich countries and those nations without computers or even adequate water and sewage systems continues to widen, making the most important advances unreachable for the majority of the world’s population. Technologically and economically, the U.S. and other industrialized countries have maintained a “disproportionate superiority” in comparison to other nations. Although these gaps create conditions for improving , as Horkheimer and Adorno explain, they also contribute to cultural egotism and dehumanization (xiv). Without dismissing the validity of what Horkheimer and Adorno observe, I propose that cultural egotism and dehumanization are the result of a long overdue need for revolutionizing social foundations. Among the many ideals that have grown to near universal importance are ideas about God as a Supreme Being, the accepted dualism

2 between humanity and divinity, and the practices of exclusive religion.1 Religious belief has generally been the basis of morality and justice. It also fuels nationalism and structures social relations. My purpose here is not to devalue the people who adhere to strict religious ideals or to destroy their belief in God; instead, I seek to explore what has resulted from current beliefs and how we might prevent some of their negative effects (particularly in light of such overwhelming technological and social change). This sort of exploration was also Nietzsche’s concern. He, too, recognized the need for revolutionizing old myths and values. Actually, the growing tension he mentions and its “hundred signs” can be viewed as manifestations of a shift that must occur in order for a society to purge itself of hollow principles and stale dogmas. Nihilism, according to Nietzsche, is the “ultimate logical conclusion of our great values and ideals” (4). His point is that we must experience an erosion of these values in order to uncover what is false about them, replace them with other ideals, or discover other just beneath the surface. The image Nietzsche uses, of a restless, raging river “that no longer reflects, that is afraid to reflect,” is suggestive of a society that has not yet purged itself of old myths (3). People cling to ideologies that have become powerful, yet dull and unreflective, lacking the multi-dimensionality of life. Jürgen Habermas takes this point about nihilism and reflection a step further, claiming that, according to Nietzsche, individual self- reflection cannot be separated from dogma, making it nearly impossible for individuals to determine for themselves (298-99).

1The term “exclusive religion” is used by in his Conversations With God series, and appears throughout his latest , The New . I will use the words “exclusionary,” “exclusionist” and “exclusivist” interchangeably to emphasize the difference between that accept a variety of practices and beliefs as mutually acceptable paths toward spiritual development and those that do not. (whether Muslim, Christian, or Judaic) tend to be exclusive; also, most Baptists and Roman Catholics are exclusive in the sense that they either reject interfaith ecumenism or consider it as merely social exchange.

3 For many churchgoers, reflection and worship do not seem contradictory; however, forming the basis of the most dominant religions throughout the U.S. and other nations are ideologically-reinforced beliefs that reject multiple viewpoints and, thus, overpower the social functioning of “critical reason,” a form of rational thinking that strives to resist restrictive or monolithic approaches to knowledge. Discourses concerned with the , what calls “mystery,” can be so strong that they seem to nullify rational thinking, for, in his words, “an ounce of ‘mystery’ is worth a ton of ‘argument’” (Burke and Hopper 105). This discursive power signifies mystery as ideological, for mystery is “a passive reflection of class culture” as well as “an active way of maintaining cultural cohesion” (Burke, Motives 174). According to Louis Althusser, ideologies create and sustain their own truths and function only as complete wholes. Each thought a person may think, explains Althusser, is conditioned, “not on its relation to a truth other than itself but on its relation to the existing ideological field and on the social problems and social structure which sustain the ideology and are reflected in it . . . .” (62). The idea of wholeness is a upon which ideologies rely. Generally, a social system presumes its own wholeness in order to maintain the authority of inclusion and exclusion. The power of mystery fractures rationality into discursive zones that identify social practices as either legitimate, unacceptable, or invisible according to how each fits into its ideological frame. Often, the reasoning that mystery counts as legitimate functions in such a way that the difference between the kind of reason mystery allows and the ideology of mystery itself becomes indistinguishable.2 Ideologies are so powerful that of reason and personal reflection are generally dismissed as irrational if these ideas are inconsistent with what the ideologies view as legitimate. Without altering the meaning of Althusser’s statement, we can also extend it to include the idea that each thought an individual might think can occur within and across several ideological frameworks at one time and is influenced by multiple constructions of meaning within the interrelationships of those frameworks. Thus, an “ideological field” includes a myriad of political, sexual, economic, cultural, and religious practices and beliefs. The blending of these influences, more often than not, work together to suppress difference, making individual choice and the practice of justice much more difficult to achieve. Thus, Althusser’s point about the strength and pervasiveness of ideology is in line with Nietzsche’s claim that self-reflection cannot exist apart from dominant cultural influences. Yet what is important about their is the other side of the coin: if it is true that a container model of the self no longer exists, then it is also true that ideologies cannot be contained. This point, the idea of ideological permeability, is essential to consider in light of the potential for individual and cultural transformation. No ideology can be so all-powerful that it disallows resistance and critique entirely, especially when the necessity for changing dominant social foundations reaches critical mass. However, regardless of the fact that ideologies cannot totally or completely isolate themselves from critique, institutional systems manipulate discourse and use great to shield their chosen truths from the contamination of alternative meanings. Generally speaking, technology makes it easier for dominant social to proliferate and assert their power. Furthermore, when exclusive religion becomes part of the discursive structures that sustain the rule of order, it tends to advance the interests of some at the expense of others. Under such

2I will sometimes use the terms “mystery” and “ideology” interchangeably.

4 conditions, exclusive religion seeks to proliferate its own version of righteousness that insulates not only its own followers but most of the populace from becoming aware of implicit and explicit religious practices that create conflict. Increasingly, these networks of ideologically- based social structures have become hegemonic. Antonio Gramsci explains that hegemonic control is supported mechanically by political and economic forces and sustained more generally through persuasion. Literary critic Dani Cavallaro sums up Gramsci’s observation, explaining that [hegemony] thrives by persuading the subordinated social groups to accept the system of cultural and ethical values treasured by the ruling group as though these were universally valued and embedded in human nature . . . . The dominant classes can only assert their authority in convincing ways if they are able to project their world onto a social order and make it appear as (78- 79). The hegemonic control of values and authority can be so strong that even though cultural change may be self-evident and even necessary, institutional frameworks continue to resist it. The ideologies that support cultural norms tend to dismiss reflective critique and exploration of new ideas. According to Habermas, this opposition to change and reflection can be directly related to cultural traditions that have “rigidified” the inequities of power relations (52). When these social forces become “rigidified to the point of abstraction” they represent “not immediately a stage of technological development but rather a relation of social force, namely the power of one social class over another. . . .” (52). The abstraction he mentions may be the primary inhibitor, for the intangible social forces that preserve deep-seated cultural and religious beliefs become stronger and more self-defensive during periods of radical transition. The danger of such rigid social forces is that they often carry negative side-effects and the breadth of this influence functions simultaneously at multiple levels, especially in the areas of church, family, and state--institutions people rely on to provide structure and security in a chaotic world. In addition to inhibiting self-reflection, exclusive ideologies can trigger intolerance, dependency, and abjection. It is the nature of ideologies to enforce an exclusive way of thinking that creates divisions. In this way political and religious ideologies produce conditions to ensure their own survival; in fact, they thrive best within an atmosphere of social passivity and uncritical acceptance of dominant assumptions, thus hastening an overall decline in the force of reason to effect social justice. So as Nietzsche so aptly predicts, much of our society seems characterized by a disengagement from or an incapacity for reflection. Because belief in the status quo requires a degree of unquestioning compliance, the uncertainty and anxiety May mentions could be positive signs of an emerging shift away from the of the past. He says that “we cling to each other and try to persuade ourselves that what we feel is love” (13-14), a statement showing how individuals are becoming aware of their illusions about love while, at the same time, realizing that they are still dependent on them. Many of our beliefs and values have such a hold on us that self-reflection, reason, and the intellect can offer only limited means of transformation. Thus it should come as no surprise to us that in our culture of leisure individuals are turning to drugs, alcohol, casual sex, self-help , talk shows, and even suicide as attempts to soothe their uncertainties and bridge their isolation. People seek more than what churches and the modern educational system can offer, so they turn to television, popular , entertainment, material wealth, and relationships to supplement what they believe is missing.

5 Although some cultural transformations are gaining momentum, individuals are only beginning to critique the social frameworks of commonly accepted cultural values and the power of ideologies, particularly government and religion. People search for cultural and economic modes of transcendence that temporarily lift them out of their nine to five doldrums, even if it means seeking “irrational” alternatives. A quote from British critic A. N. Wilson captures this social mood: “The fact that cannot satisfy us awakens an almost insatiable hunger for the irrational.” Over fifty years ago, Kenneth Burke recognized that discourses identified as non-rational, ambiguous, dogmatic, or spiritual resist critique. Scholars in rhetoric have tended to ignore the subject of “mystery” in the writings of Burke, including the ways he connects mystery to ideology.3 Burke’s dialogue on mystery in the epilogue to The Rhetoric of Religion offers one explanation why discourses concerning the supernatural are so persuasive. Usually something ambiguous or mysterious suggests an open range of meanings, but mystery or belief in a supernatural unknown sometimes produces the opposite effect by reinforcing positions that foreclose further . Belief in the supernatural carries an incipient danger, for as “The Lord” explains, “once a believer is brought to accept mysteries, he will be better minded to take orders without question from those persons whom he considers authoritative” (Burke, Religion 307). The divine speaker traces this result to at least two possible causes. First, the nature of is such that “factual knowledge is necessarily fragmentary, and symbol-systems are necessarily inadequate for the ab intra description of the non-symbolic” (Burke, Religion 308). In other words, given the imperfections of language itself, reason and knowledge cannot function comprehensively. Secondly, he says, “Mysteries arise socially, from different modes of life” (Religion 308). As examples, he uses the “sexual dichotomy” between men and women as well as between people of different social positions: “The king will be a mystery to the peasant, and vice versa” (308). According to Burke’s , mystery reinforces belief by veiling social difference. Ideology functions in the same way. Burke presents a two-sided issue: in a social hierarchy, the quality of mystery encourages acquiescence to authority and thus reinforces the status-quo; but, at the same time, it also fosters communication across social boundaries: “Mystery allows for the transcending of the differences among members–whether real or imagined–by hiding some of the differences that do exist and allowing them to believe that they share some substance with one another” (Foss, Foss, and Trapp 177). According to Sonja Foss, Karen Foss and Robert Trapp, authors of Contemporary Perspectives on Rhetoric, the presumption of unity within the quality of “mystery” allows a fan of a rock to identify with the performer because “mystery cloaks their differences” (177). In many cases, it is this underlying sense of awe and unity that keeps mystery intact. The term “mystery” as I use it here implies an ideology that reinforces its own authority and maintains secrecy; however, Burke’s use of “mystery” actually incorporates a component of wonder, the effect of mystery that allows members of the audience and a rock star to experience a sense of unity in addition to the audience’s sense of awe and inspiration. Similarly, many people who share a common faith in the supernatural often feel a sense of wonder as part of their beliefs and practices, which is included in Burke’s use of the term.

3Two exceptions are James Kasteley’s Rethinking the Rhetorical Tradition and Contemporary Perspectives on Rhetoric by Sonja Foss, Karen Foss, and Robert Trapp.

6 Although we might view the ideas of mystery and wonder as very similar in that they both represent common approaches to the unknowable, Luce Irigaray’s concept of wonder and Burke’s analysis of mystery suggest a best and worst case scenario. According to Irigaray, the state of wonder has “no opposite or contradiction and exists always as though for the first time . . . .never taking hold of the other as its object” (Ethics 12-13). Rather than merely viewing wonder as a characteristic response to works of art, Irigaray says we can apply this state of fascination to “the other who is forever unknowable” (Ethics 13). Thinking in terms of wonder makes the barriers between subject and object seem inconsequential because both are caught up in a sense of equal limitlessness. Because wonder consists of that which resists definition, what is “unknowable” then, cannot be called upon to obey; nor can it be grasped and manipulated.4 Thus, a dynamic engagement with wonder may combine with reflective reason and resist the ideological constraints that limit rationality to exclusive beliefs. For wonder to counter the authority and closure of mystery and belief, it must remain alive and exploratory. The phrase I use in the title, “signs and wonders,” appears in several verses throughout the old and new testaments and tends to mark either of two extremes: the miraculous, as a result of divine intervention; or the counterfeit, as an indicator of human vulnerability to false prophets. Burke identifies two sides to the root definition of mystery, which unite in relation to the word “muein” (Motives 123). When “accented on the second syllable,” muein means “‘to initiate into the mysteries,’ and, accented on the first syllable, means ‘to shut the eyes’” (Motives 123). One part of the definition is exploratory and open; the other illustrates a division between outside and inside, a sense of excluding and enclosing particular , thoughts, and beliefs. As in the examples of the word “mystery” and the phrase, “signs and wonders,” each supports two opposing meanings. Speaking in general terms about the philosophy of language, V. N. Volosinov says that the “two-faced” nature of the sign is ever present since the sign is always ideologically-based (51). Yet this embedded contradiction that is already part of established, dominant ideologies, says Volosinov, does not emerge fully because the “dominant ideology is always somewhat reactionary and tries, as it were, to stabilize the preceding factor in the dialectical flux of the social generative process . . . .” (51). As a result of this stabilization, the Janus-like qualities of the sign only become recognizable in reaction to “social crisis or revolutionary changes” (51). Like other cultural theorists, including John Naisbitt, Patricia Aburdene, Karen Armstrong, and E. R. Dodds, Volosinov also recognizes the cultural dichotomization that accompanies social crises. However, what Volosinov observes in relation to the divisiveness of signs and ideologies is how language gauges and mirrors social instability. The implication of Volosinov’s theory, then, is that the stabilizing tendencies of ideologies will continue, and that the power of the sign– of language itself–cannot function anti-foundationally. Signs, then, can only produce counter- ideologies. Dominant forms of rationality and discourses that rely on a particular ideology of spirit are not mutually exclusive or entirely oppressive. Despite how political critiques have lessened in value and degree on college campuses, activism has not disappeared entirely. Criticisms of religion, however, are either overly cautious or non-existent due to a fear of imposing on the first amendment division of church and state. Although a dissertation is not the place for arguing whether a particular religious belief may be convincing, observing how religious viewpoints

4My thanks to Alice Adams for noting this important point.

7 influence social relations can show us some of the ways in which rhetoric and ideology impinge upon each other. Scholars and others who believe in social justice must be brave critics. Paying greater attention to the discursive structures supporting dominant ideologies has now become a crucial necessity. What I have written in this dissertation is my own effort to achieve that end.

* * * * My goal in the following chapters is to unmask the constraining forces behind the most powerful ideologies within American culture--nationalism and religion–in terms of how each attempts to limit “truth” and meaning. Specifically, I argue that during episodes of intense cultural change, religion and nationalism merge to disallow multiple viewpoints, intensify social dichotomies, and demonize those who are not legitimized by particular church and state value systems. This argument relies upon two main assumptions: the first is that social justice requires reason to function; the second–that reason requires an engagement with multiple points of view. The inclusive framework for all of the following chapters consists of answers to three main questions: “What signs accompany intense cultural turmoil?”, “What possible causes relate to these social changes?”, and “What outcomes or changes in social relations result?” In some parts of the world, social antagonisms are more intense than in others, yet everyone is affected in some way by war, poverty, and other social traumas–no how remote--because the reverberations carry long-term economic, emotional, and social effects. Even though the world is in a relatively constant state of turmoil and many of the manifestations of global and suffering have multiple sources (many of which are untraceable), I maintain in Chapter One that we may be able to pinpoint zones of future global conflict according to the saliency of four interrelated prerequisites: greater attention to exclusive religion and nationalism, stronger ties between church and state, increasing social extremism, and the diminishing influence of reason. In contrast to the global and national emphasis of Chapter One, Chapter Two explores some of the individual causes and manifestations of social extremism that stem from insecurity, dependency, cultural egotism, and appeals to uniformity. Slovoj i〉ek’s discussion of narcissism and Rollo May’s analysis of increasing “schizoid” tendencies call attention to why people today are turning within in order to find the answers they seek. Turning inward has also accompanied rising attention to fundamentalist religion. And, as part of this chapter, I examine the ways in which religious extremism has supported an atmosphere of dependency and self- erasure that furthers social oppression. In Chapter Three, I explore the connections between belief and ideology, particularly in terms of how, in the wake of cultural turmoil, the discursive formations of exclusive religion disengage the effectiveness of reason. Using the of i〉ek, Herbert Marcuse, and Luce Irigaray as the primary basis, I demonstrate that harmful social problems can result from a clash between reason and faith as well as an over-reliance on limited views of each. In the last half of the chapter, I trace a few definitions of reason through ancient and modern texts to show how these definitions change according to metaphysical distinctions between mind and body and, moreover, how these distinctions reinforce further divisions. In the fourth chapter, I survey several approaches from philosophy, contemporary theory, and alternative spirituality that decrease the gap between reason and faith by erasing metaphysical distinctions; when this blending occurs, the hierarchies involved with mystery become less rigid, more exploratory, and more akin to wonder. Part of this section includes an adaptation of Irigaray’s and Jean Luc Nancy’s concept of wonder, as well as the non-dualistic

8 themes and approaches to knowledge offered by the New Age Movement. Generally, I explore how the concepts alternative spirituality endorses offer ways of countering the negative effects of ideology. Specifically, I suggest that what scholars and others commonly dismiss concerning New Age texts may actually demonstrate a range of important phenomena: mistrust of exclusive doctrines and theories, critique of institutional power and authority, an integrated approach to reason, and a generative view of subjectivity. One of several accepted definitions of rhetoric describes it as “an inquiry into cultural values” (Harkin and Schilb 1). By extension, an analysis of how current concepts of spirituality function rhetorically–particularly in terms of their persuasive power--would further our understanding of the discursive framework surrounding some of the most fundamental questions of life that cannot be explored solely in terms of intellectual knowledge. Burke defends a similar approach in the introduction to his book, The Rhetoric of Religion: For regardless of whether the entity named “God” exists outside his nature sheerly as key term in a system of terms, words “about him” must reveal their nature as words. It is not within the competence of our project to decide the question either theistically or atheistically, or even agnostically. This investigation does not require us to make any decisions about the validity of qua theology. Our purpose is simply to ask how theological principles can be shown to have usable secular analogues that throw light upon the nature of language. (2) Like Burke, I believe that exploring theological principles can expand our understanding of the nature of language, particularly in terms of how religious discourse functions ideologically. If we explore the relationship between reason and faith, especially in light of current foundational crises that have become unsettling “signs of the times,” the results might suggest an alternative and more effective means of understanding and improving social relations. As a “system of political or social ideas framed and propounded for an ulterior purpose,” ideology is rhetorical as its most basic level (Burke, Motives 88). Rhetoric can often be contentious and thus critical of what ideologies seek to sustain, and because it ventures to disrupt the containment of knowledge and truth, it becomes what Paolo Valesio terms as the “enemy” of ideology (61). Rhetoric offers reason and critique as ways of prohibiting the passivity and dichotomization that ideologies often amplify. But because the forces of reason and effective argument are always subject to dominant beliefs and ideological control, they are failing. Like Nietzsche, I maintain that “the future speaks in a hundred signs” to warn us, yet these signs remain unheeded because ideological power is the greater force, one that has grown so strong that it rages before us like an unstoppable river.

9

Part I: Of Signs and Mysteries

10 Chapter 1 Signs of Cultural Turmoil and the Divisive Power of Mystery5

“[W]herever signifying practices are shaping in daily life, has work to do” (Berlin 101).

During periods of cultural strife, according to V. N. Volosinov, the embedded dichotomies supporting a dominant ideology become more reactionary and erratic than usual, and, thus, more noticeable (51). Yet, by the time these cultural formations become evident, their force has already taken effect to escalate social extremism and restrict the functioning of critical reason. Rather than fearing that our nation and our world is heading toward social and mental atrophy, however, we can envision the next level of change--post-nihilistic societies that may not only recognize but prevent destructive forms of social polarization. When Nietzsche spoke of an impending and necessary nihilism, he cautioned that “the future speaks in a hundred signs” (3). This chapter illustrates some of the signs that accompany and shape social crises. Because culture is multi-dimensional and ever-changing, I do not offer the following discussion of signs as a definitive prediction of social patterns; instead, what follows illustrates one of many cultural formations that tend to become salient and influential during periods of rapid change. The most important of these formations (or signs) can be traced to respective social relations that have developed in tandem with ideological power, particularly exclusive religion and its ties to nationalism. Discussing possible causes and how the effects of these social formations reinforce or resist further change will be the focus of chapters two and three. Of the signs I observe and discuss here--1) increasing attention to religion and nationalism, 2) stronger links between church and state, 3) social polarization, and 4) the diminishing effectiveness of reason–the last two are not only the most dangerous but also the most difficult to challenge due to the self-sustaining nature of ideology, or what Burke refers to as “mystery.” Mystery becomes more powerful during episodes of dramatic cultural change by limiting alternative points of view and reinforcing social separations. Underlying this social momentum are ideological frameworks that reinforce uncritical acquiescence to authority– regardless of whether the power structures are linked to church or state. In an environment of social passivity, the barriers between the ideologies of two dominant institutions, religion and nationalism, often go uncontested and blend. The more diffused this uncontested blending of power becomes, the more both religion and nationalism attempt to validate and literalize their own ideas. My use of “literalize” stems from the term “Literalist,” mentioned in a recent work by Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy, and the Lost Goddess. According to Freke and Gandy, “Literalists” not only “believe that their particular spiritual tradition is different from all others” and has “a unique claim on the Truth,” they are also “ prepared to enforce their opinions and silence those who dissent, justifying their actions by claiming that they are fulfilling God’s will” (10). Literalism and exclusivism are mutually sustained by an insider/outsider relationship.

5Most church doctrines are foundational and, thus, produce self-protective discourse communities that legitimate acceptable meanings for particular signs. and most other ideologies function in this way also. . . and in this sense, I am using the terms “ideologies” and “mysteries” interchangeably to identify these institutional systems.

11 In this sense, a literalist concept of religion is used to legitimate personal and cultural identity “in opposition to others”--which explains not only centuries of religious wars but also why Christianity has sprouted over 20,000 different denominations (Freke and Gandy 10).6 Burke’s description of “mystery” also applies to the divisive nature of both exclusivism and literalism. As mystery reinforces its authority, it also suppresses differences (Religion 308). By extension, although Burke says ignoring differences fosters bonds between people of various social backgrounds, this suppression produces a negative side effect, one that totalizes unity and intensifies social dominance. The differences that become recognized, then, are extremes, creating an “us/them” way of viewing the world. As the power of exclusive religion gains greater ideological influence within contemporary culture–affecting nationalism and social relations in general–the scope of reason diminishes. Exclusive forms of religion remain dominant in most parts of the world, and this dominance affects the scope of reason so that, among most members of these faiths, any idea that belief disallows or renders unrecognizable appears “irrational.” Acceptance of lesbian and gay relationships, , critiques of the virgin birth, challenges to Biblical “truth,” and of Jesus’s mortality are just a few examples of reasonable alternatives that exclusive religious belief disallows. Likewise, belief, , instinct, and desire may assume “rational” form so that, in the extreme, people can mistake belief for reason. As a result, belief becomes either appropriated by ideology or remains unchecked by the components of reason that it excludes. The following section incorporates several examples from the past and present that illustrate how mystery limits rationality.

Shifting Paradigms: Rising Interest in Religion and the Polarization of Exclusive Religion and Alternative Spirituality Religion becomes more prominent during a period of rapid social change. According to Greek historian E. R. Dodds, a rational/irrational from belief in intellectual explanations to belief in daemons and tends to occur almost predictably after a particular civilization experiences periods of cultural disruption (44-45).7 Other theories concerning paradigm shifts supplement Dodds’ findings concerning a shift to extremism. For instance, Naisbitt and Aburdene’s assessment of cultural change in Megatrends 2000 describes how, “[i]n turbulent times, in times of great change, people head for two extremes: and personal spiritual experience” (277). At the basis of religious fundamentalism, which is a

6In contrast to the vast numbers of different Christian , the two basic branches of Islam (Shias and Sunnis) have grown to nearly 150 varieties, over twice the 73 branches that Muhammad anticipated. According to historian Karen Armstrong, Jews and Muslims–whose faiths are also Abrahamic and based on “the Book”--are concerned with the political establishment; they have less passion for “abstruse theological debate” than Christians (159). Thus, the myriad of divisions within Christianity may relate to a blend of philosophical differences that are specifically unique to Christian literalism.

7One example of how national conflict may affect religious practice occurs in Greece early in the 5th century B.C.E with the Persian wars and later in the century with conflicts between Athens and Sparta. After the intense philosophical period of Socrates, , and spanning Greek intellectual life in the 5th through 4th centuries B.C.E. and beginning even in the highly scientific early Hellenistic age, the of tyche (meaning “luck” or “Fortune”) became “widely diffused” (Dodds 242). According to Dodds, acceptance of the supernatural in Greece was so extreme that in 432 B.C.E. disbelief in the spirits or was considered a legitimate reason for indictment (189).

12 characteristic within most of the world’s major religions, is the reliance on an unchanging concept of God, a view that cannot be updated in response to cultural or intellectual changes. According to Armstrong, “fundamentalism is antihistorical: it believes that , , and the later prophets all experienced their God in exactly the same way as people do today” (xx). It promotes exclusive religious views that are based on literal interpretations of holy scripture.8 Slavoj Zizek provides an example of fundamentalist rationality in his recent book, On Belief. He describes a meeting of a Catholic priest, Jewish rabbi, and Southern Baptist minister on the Larry King Show. Two of the three, the priest and the rabbi, expressed hope “that the unification of religions is feasible since, irrespective of his or her official creed, a thoroughly good person can count on divine grace and redemption” (1). According to i〉ek, Only the Baptist–a young, well-tanned, slightly overweight and repulsively slick Southern yuppie–insisted that, according to the letter of the , only those who “live in Christ” by explicitly recognizing themselves in his address will be redeemed, which is why, as he concluded with a barely discernible contemptuous smile, “a lot of good and honest people will burn in ” (1). Exclusivist doctrine relies upon a literal and external sense of authority (usually through a literal interpretation of holy scripture), whereas spiritual practices that emphasize inclusion and personal empowerment have gained influence as a reaction to dogmas that emphasize exclusionary beliefs. Although the trend that Naisbitt and Aburdene recognize in contemporary culture has already been occurring since the 1960s, attention to literalist doctrines of fundamentalism and the self-taught of the New Age movement has increased exponentially since the 1980s. Cultural strife draws even more attention to religious and spiritual issues. For instance, after September 11th, according to the American Association of Professional , personal readings climbed from 715 per day to 1,120 per day; similarly, sales of and apocalyptic fiction increased--particularly the Left Behind series by Christian fundamentalists Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins, which rose 100 percent (Gates 57-59). As Naisbitt and Aburdene explain, people are seeking “a link between their everyday and the transcendent” (277). Fundamentalists tend to return to “simpler times, when values were more -cut” whereas contemporary spiritual seekers turn away from traditional religion toward the new and different (Naisbitt and Aburdene 277). We live in an age in which our mental and social lives are supremely impacted by the media, entertainment industry, consumerism, financial and medical institutions, as well as expansions in education, technology, religion, and the expression of sexuality. Yet, of all these forces, exclusive religion is not only the most influential, it stands as the strongest opponent against disrupting traditional values. Just as Nietzsche predicted, old myths and values must, by necessity, be exposed and critiqued. The frequency of cultural upheaval and reactionary movements suggests that the clashing of old and new values could be one explanation for the current emphasis on personal growth and soul-searching that is antithetical to conventional,

8Slavoj i〉ek makes an interesting distinction between fundamentalisms. The Amish, he explains, are in a different category than the moral majority form. What seems to distinguish the moral majority fundamentalists from the Amish is “horror/envy” toward others who engage in the pleasures of (On 68). The Amish seem to avoid outsiders and their ways as much as possible whereas the fundamentalists we hear about most often want to condemn others for their “sinful” choices.

13 institutionalized practices. In light of these social tendencies, it is not surprising that congregational churches that do not emphasize personal spiritual experience have lost members. Naisbitt and Aburdene describe the drop in church and synagogue attendance throughout the 1980s among Jews, Catholics, Methodists, Presbyterians, Disciples of Christ, Episcopals, and Lutherans (273-76). While these congregations recede, fundamentalist or Evangelical memberships (including Baptists, Pentecostals, Assemblies of God, and Jehovah’s Witnesses) are on the rise (Naisbitt and Aburdene 278). More importantly, their influence is global. According to Kenneth Woodward, writing for , 12,000 new Evangelical churches are springing up across Africa every month (48). In America, fundamentalist churches often exist within a few minutes’ driving distance of each other. In many cases, their church pews are so packed that, in order to meet the demand, many churches offer two services on Sundays. These churches invite their congregations to have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, but in addition to providing comfort in clear-cut, traditional principles for living, they emphasize an exclusive path of personal .9 In contrast, seekers aligned with New Age thought reject dogma and develop their own principles independent of the external authority of church doctrine--often without relying on a single text as their only source of reference.10 The principles these seekers choose may change or expand according to each person’s approach to spiritual enlightenment. Religion at the end of one millennium and the beginning of the next can generally be characterized as a parting of the ways: between adherence to clear-cut principles and rejection of fixed doctrines. Armstrong discusses this shift in her books, The History of God and The Battle for God, yet she takes this point a step further by suggesting that mysticism can be more valuable than legalistic types of religion because it is “immediate”; it also offers more depth and speaks to “more primitive hopes, and anxieties before which the remote God of the philosophers was impotent” (History 212, 256). In her opinion, the dominant ideological stances of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam have tended to oscillate between the extremes of traditionalism and mysticism, and when individuals feel threatened by the unknown or when they experience intense personal or cultural change, mysticism tends to grow. In such cases, people seek more subjective, imaginative approaches to spirituality that de-emphasize ritual and dogma. In times of intense change, the difference between spirituality and religion grows more extreme. By accentuating the difference between religion and spirituality, I do not intend to promote a polarization of the two. Religious people can often be very spiritual. Some believers find a way of honoring common tenets and blending ritual with personal development without becoming caught up in literalism or exclusive ways of thinking. New Age spirituality, in general, seeks to break the boundaries of most religious doctrines by suggesting that a single text or single point of view about God, life, or the is much too restrictive. Conventional

9I attended a funeral at a Southern Baptist church recently, and several times during the service, the pastor and music minister issued invitations to repent and accept Jesus as well as cloaked warnings, such as, “If you should die tonight, where will you spend ?”

10Although The Church of Latter Day Saints and Scientology could, technically, qualify as churches promoting their own brand of alternative spirituality, I have never read a recommendation for either in my reading of New Age texts. In fact, many New Agers would critique the church’s hierarchical structure, secrecy, and overemphasis on doctrine. Note that each relies on a single book as a founding resource: ’s The and L. Ron Hubbard’s Dianetics.

14 religion has been a powerful authority in creating specific definitions of morality, justice, public opinion, and human worth, definitions which differ radically from New Age ideals. On an individual level, spirituality and religion blend to such a degree that in some cases it is difficult to tell the difference, yet on a larger, cultural level, spirituality and religion can seem more like opposites. In Conversations With God - Book Two, Neale Donald Walsch places this opposition in a broad perspective: Religion asks you to learn from the experience of others. Spirituality urges you to seek your own. Religion cannot stand Spirituality. It cannot abide it. For Spirituality may bring you to a different conclusion than a particular religion–and this no known religion can tolerate. Religion encourages you to explore the thoughts of others and take them as your own. Spirituality invites you to toss away the thoughts of others and come up with your own.” (80) Walsch’s dichotomous language here may be intentional, set up to focus attention on the problems that institutionalized religion can magnify. In fact, his definition of religion could just as well be a definition of ideology, for both inhibit self-reflection and reinforce conformity through hierarchical, external authority.11 Recent concerning religious belief in the United States illustrate what Dodds, Burke, Armstrong, Naisbitt and Aburdene suggest. Greater numbers of people have become dissatisfied with exclusive religion or secular and are turning to spiritual practices that cannot be defined or supported in conventional ways. For example, George Gallup, Jr. and D. Michael Lindsay observe in Surveying the Religious Landscape: Trends in U.S. Beliefs that “[t]he percentages of adults in the 1990s who state a preference for mainline Protestant denominations continue to fall below the levels recorded in the 1960s and early and mid-1970s” (17). Another study, A Generation of Seekers, by Wade Clark Roof, provides a range of quantitative and qualitative supporting the Gallup poll findings. Roof’s initial survey explores a variety of interests among baby boomers that could be classified as both philosophical and spiritual.12 Roof defines baby boomers as “a new, truly distinct and rather mysterious generation” who “value experience over beliefs, distrust institutions and leaders, stress personal fulfillment yet yearn for community, [and] are fluid in their allegiances” (8). The main commonality among them is an ability to integrate spirituality and self-awareness, or, as Roof describes it, a way “of affirming life’s meanings and fundamental values and of dealing with spiritual voids, of looking back upon their lives as a means of preparing to move forward” (8). Several of the study’s participants describe themselves as “anti-institutional” or “believers rather than belongers.” In the range of detailed case-studies included in the book, one parent said she worries that her “children could come under the influence of ‘born-again Christians,’” something she believes “would be awful” (Roof 16-17). A Catholic man, for instance, views spiritual practice as social activism or taking care of his family rather than as study or worship (Roof 19). An African-American who values the way Black churches

11I wish to emphasize here that I do not intend to set up a binary between all forms of religion and spirituality, but only those that could be labeled as exclusive.

12The participants span four states and were born between 1946 and 1962. After the initial questionnaire, researchers conducted 536 phone interviews, 64 face-to-face interviews, and 14 group interviews. 15 have initiated social change sees churches now as less interested in social justice; he seeks a church “with vision” (Roof 21). A Catholic woman wants less hierarchy in the church and more faith-in-action (Roof 24). She found the church to be of little help when her son attempted suicide as a result of questioning his own sexual orientation. She and her husband are now active members of PFLAG.13 Other boomers found spiritual sustenance in 12-step programs, and several others in New Age practices–visiting Native American medicine wheels, invoking a blend of ideas from world religions, , and . Overall, this rising attention to personalized religion, particularly New Age mysticism and fundamentalism, has gained ground as a reaction to social disruptions that have been occurring in America since the 1960s as well as to growing discontentment with formal religion. Mysticism, however, is provoking greater interest outside the boundaries of church doctrines. So, in spite of the ways mainline denominations continue to dominate the American religious scene, a general fluidity of spiritual practice that does not confine itself to dogma is gaining popularity in comparison to exclusive religion. For instance, the number of newspaper articles about religion doubled between the 1980s and 1990s, with half of the stories concerning Eastern practices, Islamic religions, or new movements (Kurtz). Although traditional publishing houses catering to Catholic or Protestant readers have substantially increased sales within the last few years, the New Age (or mind/body/spirit) market has overfilled its less than 30-year-old category,14 spreading into the architecture, science, and business shelves (Winston, “Liturgical” 37; Winston, “Joel” 38). According to Joel Fotinos, publishing director for Penguin Putnam, non-religious book categories “are today rife with New Age titles” and “people who would never dream of browsing the spirituality section find New Age books on other shelves” (Winston, “Joel” 38). The head publishing director for Harper San Francisco, Diane Gedymin, notices the same trend of mainstreaming New Age books; to her, the audience is “not just people who believe in UFOs anymore” (Frederick 36). The 16% rise in the sale of religious books between 1993 and 1998 reflects the strong connection between the varieties of alternative spiritual practices, expanding media interest, and book selections offered by popular book chains. For as Fotinos says, “Marketing your [New Age] book used to mean you published your ad in a small New Age press somewhere . . . . Now it means getting your book on Oprah” (Winston, “Joel” 39). Television and film, of course, further reinforce the new emphasis on personal spiritual development. Changes in the “ Show” began around 1994 when the format became less confrontational and more motivational (Clemetson 43). Later, in 1998, Oprah initiated a segment called “Remembering Your Spirit” as a regular ending to the show. According to a reporter from Newsweek, Oprah turned down one editor’s that she title her new magazine “Oprah’s Spirit” because the press had blasted her the previous year for what they called her attempt to create “the church of Oprah” (qtd. in Clementson 44). Possibly to counteract charges that her talk show sugar-coats life’s problems, Oprah invited Dr. Phil, a “tell- it-like-it-is” , to appear weekly; he now has his own show. Yet her show still retains

13PFLAG is an acronym for “Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays” and is a non-religious support group. 14New Age books used to be labeled under any of the categories, “esoteric,” “,” or “.” Book market categories are often in advance of formal library subject headings. The Library of Congress subject heading, “New Age Movement” was not established until 1987, and was based upon entries in the Encyclopedia of American Religion, Volume II and J. Gordon Melton’s Encyclopedic Handbook of in America, published in 1986.

16 a sense of the spiritual, regardless of what some critics have said. For instance, Gary Zukav, a New Age author, has been a frequent guest. Appearing in person around the country, Oprah participates in a “Live Your Best Life” tour with Cheryl Richardson, another self-help author who frequents the show. Oprah averages 22 million U.S. viewers per week (“About”),15 and her magazine, as well, has millions of readers. Her web pages at Oprah.com and Oprah Online extend discussions after each live broadcast and connect viewers to a support network where they can talk to other viewers in an on-line community. Both web cites receive approximately 15 million hits monthly (“About”). Overall, people seem to be searching for more information about the big questions of life and death than what they learn in church pews. Films featuring communication with departed spirits as in Poltergeist, Ghost, Sixth Sense, Frequency, or Living With the Dead16 are not in the same genre as horror movies where zombies wobble along the streets in monster-stiff bodies. Movies and television emphasizing spiritual themes like “Touched by an ” often function as video counselors, consoling family members, or in some cases, sparing the comfort and clearing the air. The same is true for “Beyond” with James Van Praagh or John Edwards’ “Crossing Over,” television programs that showcase both men in the role of a translator of sorts: each listens to his spirit contacts who then talk to the of individuals formerly associated with members of the studio audience. Psychic ’s frequent appearances on the show carry a similar consoling effect. Fifty years ago, programs featuring live psychic readings would be exposed to a much more suspicious audience, one unprepared for the way these ideas challenge traditional principles of religion and reason. The Internet provides interactive many books and movies cannot: online access to psychic readings as well as free tarot and I-Ching divination, biorhythms, and advice. As of March, 2000, the search tool “Dogpile” listed over 3,286 sites using the word “tarot,” and over 5,000 using the word, “psychic.”17 One year later, Dogpile listed over 500 times that amount for the word “psychic”: 1,796,643. A survey of particular topics in World Cat, perhaps the most comprehensive library index in the world, lists a dramatic decrease in use of the word “occultism” between 1990 and 2000 and an increase in the use of words such as “spirituality,” “psychic,” “clairvoyant,” “parapsychology,” and “.” The popularity of alternative spirituality, of course, cannot be determined as easily as the number of hits tarot websites receive. Sociologist Stephen M. Clark says he questions whether people who consult tarot cards, seek psychic readings, or holistic healing methods can be labeled as New Agers because “[m]any who would call themselves New Agers are akin to churchgoers who are in it for the bingo and not for the worship” (97). New Agers vary in their religious beliefs; no distinct list of doctrinal precepts exists, and even if it did, one of the bases for the movement is to mistrust such attempts at dogma. One study, however, illustrates how dominant New Age practices are becoming. George Barna’s longitudinal study from 1991 to 1995 reports

15The web site lists “NTI Client Cume System, Persons 2+, Nov. ‘99 and Feb., May, July ‘00" as its source for the ratings.

16Living With the Dead, produced for television, is based on the life of James Van Praagh.

17The Internet has grown so much since the year 2000 that Dogpile and other search engines no longer list complete totals.

17 that although the New Age community is amorphous, “there is a small but stable core–roughly one out of every five adults–who are aligned with the belief patterns and lifestyle systems advocated by new age teaching” (28). Even though Barna’s (supported by Word Publishing, a Baptist press) could be overzealous in its attempt to either inflate or diminish the number of New Agers, his results do not seem out of line with the increasing pop spirituality trend in bookstores, magazines, TV, movies, and on the Internet. Researchers and religious leaders estimate that the trend of seekers looking for spiritual sustenance outside the boundaries of organized religion will continue (Bearden). Alternative spirituality has not replaced Congregationalism, yet its exponential growth how New Age may be meeting that the traditional monotheisms cannot. Although conventional religion still remains a powerful force in the U.S., particularly after September 11, the basis of spiritual practice today is splitting into two different camps with antithetical . In Omens of Millennium, Harold Bloom asks whether individuals “confront” what he calls “archetypal images” that have “an independent ” apart from themselves, whether they go through the outward motions of sacred practices, or whether they turn within, “to copy something that is already themselves, the best and oldest elements in their selves” (11). With these questions, Bloom’s statement encapsulates major religious debates since the second century. Bloom focuses on the difference between relying on the divine as external or as part of the self, themes we can use to identify the two main strands of religious practice: those who worship a God outside themselves and those who recognize their God within. These strands illustrate the principle disagreement between most monotheistic doctrines and New Age thought. In an atmosphere of extremism, religious multiplicity can foster negative consequences: some fundamentalist denominations resist religious pluralism to the extent that divisions between opposing doctrines create ground for of one or the other as “right” or “wrong” rather than just different. Despite the fact that the primary tenet of all Protestant churches is to protect and promote the freedom of individual believers to develop their own interpretations of spiritual truths, trifling divisions persist. On a broader scale, Catholics and Baptists, regardless of doctrinal differences, share more in common with each other now than with the beliefs of Christians in the first few centuries of the common era (Pagels xxii). Historian Elaine Pagels says that “nearly all Christians . . . Catholics, Protestants, or Orthodox . . .” claim the same three dictums: “First they accept the canon of the New Testament; second, they confess the apostolic creed; and third, they affirm specific forms of church institution” (xxii-xxiii). Fundamentalist doctrines differ according to literalist interpretations of sacred texts, yet the most basic opposition exists between and Literalism. Gnostic texts valued by early Christians, such as The Gospel of Thomas, The Gospel of Truth, The Gospel of Mary, and Thunder, Perfect Mind, teach that “the self and the divine are identical” (Pagels xx). The Gnostic Jesus is a spiritual guide, no more divine than his disciples; he “speaks of illusion and enlightenment, not of sin and repentance, like the Jesus of the New Testament” (Pagels xx). Also, according to the Gnostic , God is characterized as both male and female rather than strictly male. From the beginnings of Christian orthodoxy, anything attempting to threaten doctrine accepted as “truth” was labeled as heretical. As a result, many of the Gnostic Gospels were destroyed, and the penalties for increased especially after the Roman Emperor

18 Constantine enforced the mutual blending and domination of religion and with his armies (Pagels xxiii). Since 200 C.E., however, the concepts of patriarchy, sin, and the transcendent divinity of the Godhead have characterized the dominant elements of Christianity. Other forms of Christian doctrine contrary to these accepted tenets came to be viewed as false doctrine. New Age thinking challenges current Christian orthodoxy in much the same way. For instance, New Age philosophies, viewed through the eyes of most Christian fundamentalists, tend to be labeled as either “Satanic,” “irrational,” or classified as part of the false teachings of the Antichrist. In fact, Evangelical stereotypes of alternative spirituality are so restrictive that according to researcher Irving Hexham, “[o]pposition to the ‘New Age movement’ and anything which is identified as being connected with it, such as ecology, support for , or even , has replaced older social taboos like the cinema, makeup, and smoking as the criteria used to identify ‘true’ and ‘false’ Christians . . .” (156). These stereotypes function on multiple levels–not just in relation to New Agers. Recently, in response to an ad campaign urging Christians to buy “green” cars with higher miles-per-gallon ratings, televangelist Jerry Falwell mocked the sponsor’s concern by not only denying that global warming exists but calling it a “concept created ‘to destroy America’s free enterprise system and our economic stability’” (qtd. in Sorel and Lingeman).18 As Falwell’s statement shows, exclusive religion maintains such a powerful stronghold in America that reasonable social change or rational political involvement that is viewed as anti-nationalistic not only becomes subordinate to church doctrine and conservative politics but is labeled as “false.” During periods of cultural disruption, this power reaches such saliency that it overflows standard separations between church and state.

Effects from the Incremental Blending of Religion and Nationalism Globally, from the last half of the 20th century until the present, nationalism and religion have joined forces so often that the general citizenry accepts this union without question. In the U.S., the theoretical foundations of Christian teachings in particular have become so ingrained in daily life that their effects have become invisible. Scholar M. Thomas Thangara, in a “Forum” for Religion and American Culture notes that on a trip home to India in 1956, his brother, who teaches , questioned why Billy Graham visited the White House immediately on returning from India in order to brief the President about his visit (Chidester 28). Thangara, voicing his brother’s confusion, asks, “Is there really a separation of church and state? This separation looks unreal to a South Indian, at least from a distance” (Chidester 28). The links between nationalism and religion, and the pattern of exclusion practiced by both suggests the need for greater attention to how the ideologies of church and state can fuse . . . in classrooms, in the courts, in wedding chapels, and in terms of government --particularly after 9/11. One recent court case serves as an example of how some defenders of exclusive religion react against views they see as invasive. According to an Associated Press report, three Catholic families sued a New York School District in federal court for polluting the curriculum with “, occultism and New Age religion” (Fitzgerald). According to the reporters’ description of the court case, students in the district were asked to make symbolic gifts to the Earth for an Earth Day celebration, and as part of the celebration, students were told that the earth was overpopulated. In another lesson, fourth graders were asked to cut-out elephant heads representing the Hindu god Ganesh as part of an introduction to Indian culture. Although a

18The “What Would Jesus Drive?” ad was sponsored by the Evangelical Environmental Network.

19 teacher testified there was no religious basis for the cutouts, a priest from a Catholic university in Texas testified that the lesson violated part of the Ten Commandments, saying, “‘We’re not allowed to make images of other gods’” (Fitzgerald). The priest also added that the discussion of overpopulation dishonored Catholic teachings against birth control (Fitzgerald). Another part of the case included a charge that a visit by a teacher to high school students promoted spirituality. In terms of this , the priest claimed the exercise “was not proper for Catholics to participate in” because it attempts to alter consciousness. Even at the YMCA, he said, “They’ll use the physical benefits as a come-on but the spiritual elements keep getting introduced” (Fitzgerald). When interviewed after his court appearance, the priest was asked “if various Hindu, Aztec and Buddhist references could really amount to the promotion of religion in the schools,” and he replied that “‘[i]t’s exactly that mishmash that makes it New Age . . . Somebody is pushing something’” (Fitzgerald). Viewed as part of an errant counter-ideology, the Ganesh cutouts and worry dolls were labeled not only as invasive but also dangerous in the eyes of some church leaders and school board members who must have felt that these non-Western religious ideas represented a threat to Christianity’s dominance in American public life. Families who felt the school district violated their first amendment began court action in 1996. Three years later, the court agreed, rendering a decision in 1999 that students’ first amendment rights were indeed violated in the lessons that featured Ganesh cutouts and making worry dolls. The school district appealed to the U.S. 2nd Circuit Court, and the decision was reversed on March 27, 2001; however, the reversal was primarily due to the fact that most of the plaintiffs had moved out of the school district, making their claim moot (Appeals). The initial success of such a case in 1999 should cause concern, though, because it evidences the power that traditional religion often attains in America. The first amendment to the Constitution guarantees people living in the United States freedom of religious expression, and also that the government will not privilege one religion (or non-belief) above another or recognize one as more valid than another; however, legal trends since 1999, escalating with the George W. Bush administration, show that our governmental system is becoming less protective of this separation. Bush’s promise to extend government funding to faith-based groups directly conflicts with a 1879 Supreme Court ruling, Reynolds v. United States, stating that “[t]he [First] Amendment’s purpose . . . was to create a complete and permanent separation of the spheres of religious activity and civil authority by comprehensively forbidding every form of public aid or support for religion” (U.S. Court). Many of the early decisions of George W. Bush’s presidency have united government with either religious or corporate allegiances. His appointment of a White House Office of Faith-Based Initiatives is one example. In his January 2004 State of the Union address, Bush opened government funding for faith-based charities, promising to release “billions of dollars” for competitive grants. By providing grant competition, the government hopes to avoid the legal ramifications of church and state entanglement. Government representatives, at local and national levels, have used the symbol of the Ten Commandments as a protective shield. In the last few years, however, posting the Ten Commandments on government buildings or religious statues in public places has inspired several lawsuits. Perhaps the most egregious of the Ten Commandment cases involves the U.S. House of Representatives, which voted 248 to 180 on June 17, 1999 in favor of attaching a “Ten Commandments Defense Act Amendment” to a crime bill. If passed, plaques of the Ten Commandments could be posted on public buildings, including schools and courts (U.S. Court).

20 A bill of this sort would be unconstitutional because it would privilege a monotheism that places the Judeo-Christian view of God above all others. According to a reporter for the L.A. Times, “These 248 congressmen violated their oaths to support the Constitution by voting for a bill that clearly violates the 1st Amendment” (qtd. in U.S. Court).19 More recently, since the tragedies of September 11, 2001, the politicized rhetoric of justice and retribution in America has consistently been cloaked with righteous talk, vigils, and patriotic hymns–all of which have been further endorsed by the popular media. During the few days after the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks, President Bush declared a “National Day of Prayer.” In unified response, churches all over the world opened their doors to grieving worshipers; politicians and news editorials mentioned the name of God and the urgency of prayer. In another obvious link between religion and nationalism, the phrase “God Bless America” has now become a platitudinous, speech-ending hallmark of the Bush Presidency, which is an irony in light of the fact that some American citizens and government officials have reacted with heartless resignation to the bombing of Afghanistan, Iraq, and the possibility of “collateral damage.”20 This one-sided attention to moral and religious values resists alternative points of view, decrying them as unpatriotic and even dangerous. Another call to religious traditionalism bears mentioning, one that in the political atmosphere prior to the George-W. presidency would have seemed like an anomaly. In a story reported on September 28, 2001 by John Hanna of the Associated Press, Kay O’Connor, a legislator in the Kansas Senate, was quoted as saying that if women’s suffrage was an issue for today’s congress, she would not support it. Hanna quotes her as saying, “‘The 19th Amendment is around because men weren’t doing their jobs, and I think that’s sad . . . I believe the man should be the head of the family. The woman should be the heart of the family.’” An earlier report summarizes O’Connor’s claim that the 19th Amendment initiated a “decades-long erosion of family values” leading to a “societal shift that eventually encouraged women to trade homemaker roles for careers” (“Old”). O’Connor’s statement assumes working women are to blame for the erosion of family life, a simplistic generalization reinforced by fundamentalist churches and rooted in late 19th and early 20th century ideologies of virtuous motherhood. Interestingly, feminist historians have pointed out that child-rearing after the late 1880s became a national duty for increasing and training the citizenry: “population” became synonymous with “power,” primarily in terms of British nationalism (Davin 9-11). In many places across the globe, women, even in the 21st century, are viewed as “the principal vehicles for transmitting the whole nation’s values from one generation to the next” (Enloe 54). Objectifying women as value-transmitters is a result of an enduring patriarchal system that excludes feminist concerns. In Bananas, Beaches, and Bases, Cynthia Enloe describes how, in countries other than the U.S., nationalism “places a high value on anything indigenous,” and when conservatives aligned with the local government call feminism a “foreign” practice, they support a system structured to maintain women’s subordination (60). Furthermore, she says that “[s]ometimes this dismissal is

19See Dershowitz, Alan. “Ten Commandments Aren’t Gun Control.” 20 June 1999. . . Incidentally, the Supreme Court recently voted to disallow a trial for a “Ten Commandment” case. Justices Scalia and Rehnquist wrote dissents, which rarely appear in any other context than in official trials. Their written dissents suggest how difficult it is to separate religious values from “the rule of .”

20By “collateral damage,” I am referring to the term for the loss of non-military personnel (men, women, and children).

21 combined with a homophobic attack,” noting that women who push nationalist movements to reconsider women’s roles in politics and work toward ending violence are often called “‘lesbians’ by critics” (61). Traditional roles and homophobia, as Enloe and others show, have been used to buttress nationalistic goals, and because these concerns are value-based, they maintain strong links to dominant church doctrines. Religion has contributed to the proliferation of literacy, altruism, and personal development; however, these positive contributions have included exclusionary means of maintaining authority, ways of defining spiritual ethos to a single, Euro-Western composite that privileges those who are Anglo, male, Christian, and heterosexual.21 When gays and lesbians are harassed or murdered by strangers who dislike them because of their sexuality, patriarchal values and religious teachings are often at the heart of the crime (Comstock 67-69, 120-40). In the history of the world, more people have been murdered in the name of religion than for any other reason. Harvey Milk, an openly gay city supervisor in San Francisco, made a similar statement before he was murdered by Dan White, a dismissed supervisor on the same city council.22 Attempts at the trial to detract attention from viewing Milk’s murder as a hate crime succeeded. As a former San Francisco police officer and a practicing Catholic, White received a considerable amount of public support when he claimed that Milk collaborated with the city’s mayor to exclude him from public office. As a result, White was sentenced with voluntary manslaughter rather than first degree murder and served a prison sentence of only seven years and eight months. The family values O’Connor mentions have been vigorously promoted throughout the last few decades by fundamentalists and other worshipers from Evangelical congregations. In the late 20th and early 21st centuries, family values ordinarily refer to what believers associate with literalist interpretations of scripture and church doctrine. In general, these values signify the denial of gay/lesbian relationships as morally acceptable, which translates to the continuing denial of their political and personal rights. In addition to being “anti-gay,” another pervasive definition of family values operates within contemporary culture as an accepted yet invisible influence in gender subordination. Christian husbands take as Biblical imperatives their roles as head of the family and their wives’ roles as helpmates. Although nothing in the four gospels–and thus words of Jesus as recorded by those writers–discusses the lordship of husbands over wives, the way these churches use Paul’s writings makes this point clear. According to the Ephesians, wives must “be subject” to their own husbands, “as to the Lord . . . .for the husband is head of the wife, as Christ also is head of

21Only within the last few years have churches welcomed gays and lesbians–in many cases this acceptance is limited to singles rather than couples; in fundamentalist churches, potential members who are gay or lesbian face pressure to show contrition and openly repent from same-sex desires. In contrast, New Age philosophies resist strict heterosexual dualisms about sexuality and assist gay and lesbian seekers in finding a spiritual practice that allows them to worship openly, along with their partners, without fear of excommunication or aggression from church .

22Milk said, “The fact is that more people have been slaughtered in the name of religion than for any other single reason. That, THAT my friends, is true perversion,” spoken at a Gay Freedom Day Rally in 1978, the same year he was murdered.

22 the church, He Himself being the Savior of the body” (5:22-23).23 All Biblical citations, unless otherwise noted, are from the New American Standard version because it is easily accessible. However, I prefer the version of the Holy Bible edited by George Lamsa because it relies more closely on the Aramaic spoken during the first century. When the King James Version was translated in Europe, the Aramaic scriptures were unknown, and the Aramaic text, the Peshitta, is believed to have been used “four hundred years before the Christian Church was divided into several sects” (Lamsa viii). Aramaic is such an old language that, according to Lamsa, it was spoken as early as 721 B.C.E. (ix). When or if the meaning conveyed in the NAS differs slightly with Lamsa’s Biblical from the Aramaic Peshitta, I will use Lamsa’s version. Again, literalist ideology reinforces hierarchy and authority. The more churches emphasize these (most likely plagiarized) views from Paul’s writings, the more patriarchal their practices . . . and this is true of most Christian congregations today.24 Jerry Falwell, for instance, would view these principles as “Bible-based,” a phrase he uses quite often. But in actuality, rather than being the words of Jesus or Paul, they may actually be the words of a second century bishop who used Paul’s name to discredit Gnosticism.25 Given the importance of literalist interpretations of the Bible among fundamentalists and other traditional Protestants, oppressive stereotypes according to gender and sexual orientation will continue to fall on deaf ears until religious leaders and church members observe their attachment to traditional gender roles and erasure of women’s subjectivity as harmful. The recent announcement by the Pope concerning the sacrament of communion provides yet another example of how traditional dogma has lost touch with contemporary life. Prior to the announcement, the Roman Church practiced ecumenism to some degree by allowing Catholics to receive communion in non-Catholic churches. Now, communion can only be recognized as a sacrament if it is given under the Roman Church’s supervision. The announcement also declares that divorced Catholics who take communion are committing a sin. Those who follow the legalistic practices of a particular religion tend to be viewed as worthy followers (whereas those who do not follow church doctrine to the letter are often viewed as sinners or treated as pariahs). This “holier than thou” approach is replicated in the hierarchical structure of many churches. Pope John Paul makes clear that views of the “truth” should be left to its leaders: “The church,” he is quoted as saying, “is not a democracy, and no one from below can decide on the truth” (Spillane 6). The increasingly authoritarian style of these demonstrates at least some of the ways religious Literalism asserts more control during periods of rapid social change. Self-proclaimed conservative O’Connor may not have been so free with her opinions in a more liberal political and cultural climate. She may have been less likely to voice her

23Some Christians reading this excerpt may disagree with my position and suggest extending the quote to include Paul’s admonition to husbands. In that section, Paul asks husbands to “love their own wives as their own bodies” for “he who loves his wife, loves himself . . . just as Christ also does the church” (Ephesians 6:28-29). However, this passage only serves to reinforce maleness as the dominant subjectivity. Nowhere does Paul say that wives are to love their husbands as their own bodies or to love their husbands as themselves, in the same way that Christ loves the church. And, most importantly, husbands are not commanded to respect their wives even though wives are told to respect their husbands (Ephesians 6:33).

24Gerd Lüdemann maintains that the only epistles that can be attributed to Paul are Romans, 1st and 2nd Corinthians, Galations, Philippians, 1st Thessalonians, and Philemon (61). I am grateful to Freke and Gandy for the Lüdemann citation; see further references in note 11 in The Jesus Mysteries (294), (160), and (Lost 28).

25The bishop most likely at fault is Irenaeus. I will be discussing this point further in the next section.

23 conservatism prior to the September 11th attacks, yet her words mark another significant polarization of tradition and change; she attempts to unify without recognizing political, social, sexual, or cultural differences and, thus, reinscribes hierarchical values without regard to their effects or how those values might cause harm to others. The voting practices of Republican conservatives like O’Connor, particularly concerning abortion and gay rights, also mirror the pulpit proclamations of the religious right. The causal link is not much of a stretch for us to consider. “Faith” in America–in the sense of blind nationalism–and belief in conservative religious principles share similar ideological patterns, and both have become tyrannous during this recent and continuing episode of cultural shock. One of the effects of this trend is that American citizens seem to more readily rely upon institutional control. Bush told viewers that they would only see partial evidence of reprisal on TV because the attacks would often be covert. Covert tactics, divisive rhetoric, political ultimatums, and other appeals to authoritative knowledge meet very little resistance, if any, within a climate of reliance and absolutism. In addition to this governmental influences in the media, the right to personal privacy and other civil wane in confrontation with national security and majority opinion. For instance, the editor of , Matthew Rothschild, writes that at least three journalists were fired for being anti-nationalistic and criticizing the President’s actions on 9/11: Jackie Anderson in Utah, Dan Guthrie in Oregon, and Tom Gutting in Texas. Anderson was asked to resign after writing “a column that said, ‘War is not the only action available to us. Seeking justice is action. Making is action’” (Rothschild). Guthrie was fired for criticizing President Bush’s side trip to Nebraska on his return to Washington D.C. on September 11. The third reporter, Gutting, was assured by his publisher that he would not be fired for comparing Bush to a “‘scared child . . . . controlled by his advisers’” (Rothschild). But he was fired anyway, a few days after the column appeared. In addition to journalists, cartoonists have also been criticized; in some cases, newspapers pulled a strip if it seemed too far removed from nationalistic sentiment (Rothschild). University presidents have been censured and encouraged to apologize to the press for alternative views voiced by faculty. Over 100 quotes from faculty viewed as unpatriotic were listed in “Defending Civilization: How Our Universities are Failing America, and What Can Be Done About It,” a report published by the conservative American Council of Trustees and Alumni, which was co-founded by Lynne Cheney and Joseph Lieberman (American). According to the report, 92 percent of Americans were “in favor” of using “military force” whereas professors, teaching in an atmosphere of heightened patriotism, reacted in harsh contrast to popular opinion; views from academia, the editors say, ranged from “moral equivocation to explicit condemnations of America” (American 3). It is no secret that a majority of U.S. citizens supported both wars in Iraq and that the most recent invasion inspired an overwhelming display of American patriotism. In response to the public spirit, the red-white-and-blue fanfare has been so extreme that it seems as though American companies, businesses, and advertisers are using propaganda-style capitalism to sell patriotism. Especially since September 11th, a multitude of bumper stickers, pins, address labels, doctor’s offices, store windows, and even advertisements for Hershey’s Kisses all display the American flag. For generations, Americans have accepted the blending of government policy and religion without question. For instance, many national holidays tend to be oriented toward the

24 Christian calendar. Public and private school children say “The Pledge of Allegiance” and many follow the pledge with a prayer. A majority of Southern Baptist churches publish newsletters for their membership that include voting recommendations and for letter-writing campaigns. Perhaps it is not far-fetched to compare these actions to the February 2004 parliamentary election in Iran, where over half of the 8,000 mostly reformist candidates have been barred from election by ’s Guardian Council, a powerful group of twelve right- wing clerics intent upon re-institutionalizing strict Islamic principles. On a more general level, anti-abortion and anti-gay marriage legislation in the U.S. have become government concerns primarily because they are the dominant political concerns of a huge segment of the voting population--religious conservatives. Political action committees and lobbyists with conservative agendas are not just permitted to spread their weight in Congress and the White House, they are welcomed with open arms. Is that what democracy has become? Americans tend to believe that the entanglement of church and state happens elsewhere, in remote parts of the world, but all across the globe (including the U.S.), nationalism and exclusive religion have become so intertwined that most people either take the connections for granted or fail to think how each rewards attitudes that exclude cultural differences and alternative opinions. Some of these consequences I consider below.

Social Polarization Religion and nationalism, as we can see from the last section, often join forces to reject opposing ideas and the people who hold them. We can see many examples of this in ancient history. Greek historians explain that one of the ways Athenian culture defined itself was through degrading its immigrants. For example, in the period preceding and including Plato and Aristotle, Athenians were threatened by the influx of foreigners, and Gorgias, one of the most famous Sophists, was a Sicilian. Plato’s critique of Gorgias’s elaborated style and his charge that Sophistry erases the difference between truth and lying should be understood in context of Athenian . According to historian Jacqueline DeRomilly, foreign ways of viewing the world, in this case, came to be labeled as “magic,” inferior, or imprecise when aligned with Sophistic rhetoric (37). Tradition retains such a stronghold in many societies–in this case the Greeks’–that anti-foundationalist discourse and alternative views of life often become threatening. In fact, those who disagree with criteria most often labeled as normative are not only excluded but often viewed as unworthy. By labeling the style of rhetoric resulting from foreign influences as “magic,” these ancient Greeks allowed their descriptions of others not only to become divisive and stereotypic but marked by righteous superiority. During the 5th century B.C. E., defenders of Athenian identity took such pride in their own culture and language that “on the basis of the language itself and because of their command of it they distinguished themselves from other people, whom they regarded as blabbering barbarians” (Ijessling 10). As this example from Greek history shows, solidifying the Athenian way of life in the wake of social change became more important than treating strangers as equals; thus, rational views of cultural difference became warped in the context of a narrowly-defined Athenian identity. Defining the other as foreign to the group reinforces group solidarity, yet when nationalism and cultural identity become linked with claims about the supernatural, extremism becomes dangerous. Degradation of “the other” legitimates the “mystery” of group

25 identification.26 A similar situation has occurred historically in the U.S. with attitudes toward slavery, and, much later, cultural immigration, evidenced today by economic inequities stratified according to race and by restrictive policies concerning Mexicans, Haitians, and many others. We can see similar social patterns of exclusion in terms of sexual difference. In monotheism, women have generally been treated as subordinate except for a brief period during the early Christian church when Gnosticism grew strong enough to be labeled as heresy by the Roman church. The early Roman church established itself as the ultimate literalist authority in the second century during a period of intense nationalism, when the Roman Empire was often at war. The first two centuries in Rome, although generally peaceful, were headed by several bloodthirsty, cruel dictators, including Caligula, Nero, Domitian, and Commodus, an emperor more despotic than his father, Marcus Aurelius (who persecuted the Christians). In the second century, at the same time many of these persecutions occurred, the Roman church claimed its orthodoxy, deliberately undermining all other forms of worship it viewed as threatening. Mary Radford Ruether claims that anti-Jewish sentiments became the force for defining the authority of the Christian Church in Rome (181). Pagels makes a similar claim about the attitude of the Roman Church toward Gnostics in the second century. Her major point in The Gnostic Gospels is that the Church defined itself by institutionalizing particular ideas that would reinforce its power. Any Gnostic documents that challenged these ideas–particularly concerning the humanity of Jesus and balanced male/female approaches to spirituality--were dismissed as heretical and usually destroyed. Before the manuscripts at Nag Hammadi were found in 1945, Gnostic texts were difficult to find except through quotes from the Patristic treatises discrediting them. Gnosticism appeared as a threat to the church literalists for various , including its teachings about reincarnation, women holding positions of authority within the church, multiple acts of creation, multiple Adams, the creation as initiated by Sophia (the female counterpart of God), the humanity of Jesus, his intimate relationship with , and accusations that the Roman church was “false.”27 The principal enemies of Gnosticism were Bishops Irenaeus and Tertullian. Irenaeus, probably the most influential theologian in the second century, served as Bishop the period of Marcus Aurelius’s reign. According to Pagels and Gerd Lüdemann, Irenaeus is likely to have inserted anti-Gnostic verses into Paul’s letters in order to more fully eradicate Gnosticsm (Lüdemann 120-47, 201; Pagels 104).28 Pagels calls them “pseudo-Pauline” letters and notes a major contradiction: Paul’s writings, in general, are primarily Gnostic, yet his attribution of subordinate roles to women (in the Ephesians and other disputed letters) conflicts with Gnostic views of women as equals (63-65). In a letter to the churches at Ephesus and Colossae, for instance, using the husband/wife relationship as a symbol of Christ’s role as head of the church is a view the anti-authoritarian Gnostics would not have supported. Although Paul could have included passages reflecting cultural attitudes about

26The term “other” refers to any person or group of people who represent ideas that disrupt or challenge the presumed identity and dominance of the subject.

27Reincarnation blended well with early Christianity. According to Ian Stevenson, “Christians in southern Europe believed in reincarnation until the 6th century” C.E. (Children 33). Yet, after the Council of Nice in 553 C.E, belief in past lives was no longer considered acceptable (Stevenson, Children 33).

28Freke and Gandy further expose the of these Pauline letters (Lost 28 and Jesus 160).

26 women being silent in church and being subject to their husbands, the contradictions are so obvious in the passages concerning women that Paul’s authorship of them becomes suspect. In particular, historians view Timothy I and II, Colossians, and Ephesians–the central scriptures for Paul’s insistence on the subordination of women–as inauthentic.29 However, the secular authority of these academic researchers is not recognized by most Christians today, who refer to a “higher authority”–the view of God they perceive from their literal interpretation of the New American Standard or King James Version of the Bible. Rather than exploring the scholarship declaring the pastoral letters attributed to Paul as inauthentic, these Christians choose the safety of tradition and doctrine. In this case, just as in others, reasonable doubts concerning “holy writ” are unrecognized or viewed as false by literalist ideologies. Since the age of print, literalist interpretations of the Bible and other sacred texts have been used to justify condemning those who are deemed racially, ethnically, or sexually inferior; the source of the condemnation, however, is less connected to “authentic” texts than to the ways interpretations about their mysteries have become institutionalized.30 Scars from the history of exclusive religion are too deep to ignore. The history of mainstream religion in America as well as in other parts of the world illustrates a master/slave relationship between the white missionary-teacher-priests and the non-white, non-Christian others. Rather than follow the service-based teachings of their namesake, Christian leaders throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries, all “for the love of God,” seized native children from their families, forced them to speak English and deny their own language, cut their hair and replaced their native clothes with more “civilized” suits and dresses, all of which--if they survived the emotional trauma--transformed them into foreigners among their own people. Throughout history, religion has been used as a tool of domination—against indigenous communities, Moslems, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus, Christians and others--as a way of silencing differences of opinion and scientific investigation, and as an excuse for reinforcing political and social hierarchies of gender, race, class, ethnicity, and sexual orientation. Religion divides people, incites passions, and fuels hatred. Logic, reason, and compassion have no affect in light of beliefs that condemn others on moral and religious grounds. Such acts of cultural violence were sanctioned as God’s will because most Christians viewed their own salvation script as the one and only method for achieving spiritual fulfillment. Christian missionaries may be less harsh today, but the practice of converting non-Christians through methods of shaming and cultural assimilation still continues: often, colonizing and “Christianizing” go hand-in-hand.

29“Scholars generally agree that of the thirteen pastoral letters, only seven are authentic (Romans, I and II Corinthians, Galations, Philippians, I Thessalonians and Philemon), whereas the rest have been composed by later disciples in the apostle’s name” (Lüdemann 61).

30A few more examples of religious-based toward non-dominant “Others”: Frederick Douglass notes how the most cruel slaveholders were also the most religious, calling them “the worst” of all the slaveholders he had ever known (46); Billy Graham’s belief about “what [Jews] are doing to this country,” as he states on the Nixon tapes, was mentioned by the media, but the dualism between the public preacher and the private man seems to have had no effect on Graham’s reputation (Garment); in addition, Jimmy Swaggart, Jerry Falwell, and other evangelists visited in the 1980s “to support the apartheid regime of the National Party as a Christian cold-war bulwark against communism in southern Africa” (Chidester 5). These examples must be considered in within their individual contexts, of course, but righteous superiority is a problem that is rooted in the basic god/human dualism that most of the major religions endorse.

27 Religious exclusivism influences social polarization just as cultural turmoil empowers extremism, which, in both cases, decreases attention to “reasonable” social norms. History holds many examples of how, in the name of nationalism, one country’s citizens demonize another’s. Such demonization occurs primarily during episodes of intense social change, yet violence not only erupts between nations but also among citizens living in the same town. In a recent book, Neighbors, scholar Jan Gross describes how, in one day, on July 25, 1941, half of the Polish citizenry of Jedwabne died at the hands of their own Polish neighbors rather than German soldiers. Of the 1,600 Jews living there, only seven survived (Gross 16). During a town meeting, gestapo leaders suggested keeping at least one Jewish family in each profession, but the townspeople voted to kill everyone, saying, “We have enough of our own craftsmen, we have to destroy all the Jews, none should stay alive” (Gross 18). According to one of the witnesses, Manachem Finkelsztajn:31 “Not even women and children, or mothers with newborn babies, were spared” (Gross 64). Finkelsztajn describes an entire town resorting to violence too horrific to comprehend, and all the while, “[a]round the tortured ones crowds of Polish men, women, and children were standing and laughing at the miserable victims who were falling under the blows of the bandits” (Gross 64).32 Although these crimes are no doubt linked to ethnic and religious prejudice, testimony undeniably links this massacre to nationalism. In a final statement, the youngest of the tormentors claimed he was just doing his duty as a Polish citizen. Primo Levi writes about another similar example among prisoners in concentration camps in his memoir, The Drowned and the Saved: “There is not a prisoner who does not remember this and who does not remember his amazement at the time: the first threats, the first insults, the first blows came not from the SS but from other prisoners, from ‘colleagues,’ from those mysterious personages who nevertheless wore the same striped tunic that they, the new arrivals, had just put on” (20). Those in the camps internalized the Nazi’s prejudice against them. Hitler, as Levi explains, was not just a charismatic leader who hypnotized an entire populace; the people followed him because they believed in what he was saying. He was, according to Levi, a man who never changed nor concealed his ideas about “blood . . . land . . . the Jew as the eternal enemy, the Germans who embody ‘the highest form of humanity of earth” (178-79). Hitler, in this sense, was “a typical specimen of the large mass of the German upper middle class: a not fanatical but opportunistic Nazi” (Levi 178). Expressing a cultural mood similar to the attitude of Athenians toward foreigners, Levi describes how Germans believed that there existed only one civilization, the German; all others, present or past, were acceptable only insofar as they contained some German elements. Thus, whoever did not understand or speak German was a barbarian by definition; if he insisted on expressing himself in his own language–indeed, his nonlanguage–he must be beaten into silence and put back in his place, pulling, carrying, and pushing, because he was not a Mensch, not a human being. (92)

31Although this witness was Jewish, Gross explains how the testimonies could not have been tainted by one person’s word against the other. The massacres occurred in full view of everyone (89).

32The inhumanities witnesses recalled on that day were even more unthinkable than the Nazi’s method of using cyanide gas: children’s legs were tied together and their bodies thrown with pitchforks into the smoldering flames of a huge barn where most of the victims’ bodies were burned (Gross 20); a local teacher’s head was cut off and kicked around (Gross 96); a man’s eyes and tongue were cut out, leaving him to suffer for another 12 hours before he eventually died (Gross 16).

28 We may see the example among the Poles, concentration camp prisoners, and Nazis as unique; however, any ideology that encourages humans to see themselves as having divine authority over others cannot escape the possibility that their beliefs will suppress necessary cultural and social taboos and become dangerous. Being untethered from rational, cultural norms in this sense becomes dangerous also.33 In extreme cases within the last thirty years, the harm that “non- rational” religious fervor and ethnic prejudice can cause has become painfully obvious in terms of wars in Ireland, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Africa, and Israel, but also in terms of international terrorism. Allegiance to limited dogmas and presumed divine right have led to crusades, wars, genocide, and to neighbors killing neighbors because of religious and ethnic differences. Often the unholy union between religion and national (or cultural) identity produces disastrous results. Applying this concept to the ethnic conflict in Yugoslavia, Robert Wistrich explains, “For Serbs, Croats, and Muslims, it would appear that without unrestrained hatred of the other, there was no clearly defined national self” (8). The same is certainly true about the holocaust in Nazi Germany. In the period preceding World War II, Germany experienced economic problems and political unrest, creating a social atmosphere that became vulnerable to Hitler’s demagoguery. In addition, anti-Semitic prejudices sustained in particular by centuries of religious intolerance by the Roman church fortified the Nazi’s growing sense of Aryan superiority.34 What generally can be viewed as part of the rational domain–views of justice, citizenship, and scientific knowledge–were absorbed by the Nazi regime and transformed into a grotesque sense of nationalism that demonized others who differed from their own religious, ethnic, and social norms. Nationalism, religious fervor, and ethnic suspicions can fuse no matter how many years communities of mixed ethnic and racial groups co-exist in peace. The other, who eventually comes to represent cultural disruption,35 can become demonized to such a degree that church and state can no longer be called upon for the appropriate checks and balances. Morality, which is generally the root of church doctrine, functions as a discursive theme in cases where one nation, asserting a moral high ground, claims for itself a broad sense of entitlement and justice while constructing the other nation in immoral terms. For instance, President Bush frequently uses an “‘us’ versus ‘them’” pattern in his speeches, referring to U.S. policy as “good” and Iraq’s as

33An editorial by George Will in Newsweek not only introduced me to the book Neighbors by Jan Gross but helped me reflect on how extremism disconnects individuals from “rational” social practices. See “July 10, 1941, in Jedwabne,” Newsweek 9 Jul 2001: 68.

34From the third through the sixth century, beginning with the Synod of Elvira, it was against the law for Jews and Christians to eat together or marry. The next 500 years of church law lists repeated admonishments toward Christians for any friendly association with Jews (Grosser and Halperin 86). According to historians Paul Grosser and Edwin Halperin, there is little record between 500 and 1000 C.E. of popular anti-Semitism, so the abundance of such strict suggests that the common people did not share the same force of prejudice against the Jews that the church fathers expressed through their official pronouncements (86). In later centuries, marking individual Jews with a badge, horned hat, distinctive apparel or creating compulsory ghettos were all instigated by church law. For instance, as determined by the fourth Lateran Council in 1215, Jews were required to wear yellow or a conical hat (Nicholls 242-43). Also in the 13th century, Roman Catholic laws promoted the burning of the Talmud and other books. In some cases, the Jews themselves and their entire towns were burned (Nicholls 240).

35See Robert S. Wistrich’s Demonizing the Other: Antisemitism, , and Xenophobia. Singapore: Harwood Academic Publishers, 1999.

29 “bad” (Tisdall). A reporter for , Simon Tisdall, claims Bush is “the arch- exponent” of the morality approach, quoting him as saying, “‘We owe it to the future of civilisation not to allow the world’s worst leaders . . . to blackmail freedom-loving nations with the world’s worst weapons.’”36 In addition to moral high ground, the law, in circumstances where might overpowers rights, becomes just another instrument used more often to protect dominant ideologies and inspire war rather than enforce justice through peaceful negotiation, diplomatic pressure, or containment. Tisdall reiterates the Bishop of Oxford’s argument that “threatening to attack a sovereign state without a specific U.N. mandate, without demonstrating just cause, and without exhausting all chances of a peaceful resolution, the U.S. and Britain risk making an ever greater mockery of the law.” Furthermore, he says that the U.S. claim of self- defense under article 51 of the U.N. charter not only disrespects the integrity of the charter but presages “further acts of international aggression, perhaps by the U.S. against Iran, or India against Pakistan . . . .” (Tisdall). Late in 2003, nearly eight months after the latest U.S. attack on Iraq, President Bush admitted that the U.S. “had no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved in September 11th” (Harper). The news release seemed to be appropriately timed–as if the administration intended for it to become public long after the Iraq war was over and also well hidden by news of hurricane Isabel. As is evident from these reports from The Guardian and The , two of the most reliable human values that citizens depend upon to ensure accountability– morality and justice–are rendered unrecognizable by exclusive religion as it seeks to maintain its authority. Nationalism and religion often function as united ideological factions that support claims of social superiority, and when religious dogma and nationalism tend to merge, both become insulated from reasoned debate, dismiss differences of opinion, and develop strength through reasserting patriarchal authority. The two ideologies also tend to reinforce each other’s ability to condemn or attack mutual enemies they perceive as threats. Several examples throughout this section expose how political and religious dogmas confront the challenge of other views by generalizing complexities, and reinscribing the hierarchical status quo. And in each case, the discursive power ascribed to a mysterious or secret unknown enables these oppressions to become even more difficult to contradict.

The Diminishing Application and Effectiveness of Reason Challenging social movements that align exclusive religion and nationalism is particularly difficult since theocracies generally consider reason as subordinate to faith and tradition. The fourth warning sign–the suppression and diminution of reason--works in tandem with the other three by allowing acts of prejudice, social isolation, and exclusive thinking to remain unchecked or accepted as sacred law. Some might expect this statement to less true now than in the past, or, at least, more true in the Middle East or Africa than in the United States. However, scholars note that the influence of reason is no longer as prevalent nor as effective in America as it used to be. As Barry Brummett explains in Rhetorical Dimensions of Popular Culture, argument and its reliance upon reason is being replaced by info-tainment, primarily in the form of videos and

36As of this writing, after the U.S. attack on Iraq and during its rebuilding, weapons of mass destruction still remain undiscovered.

30 twenty-second “‘sound bites’” targeted for the evening news (xii).37 Live protests–for instance those resisting the war in Iraq–are one of the few opportunities people have for hearing alternatives to the mainstream news. According to Brummett, “few people go to halls or parks to hear speakers debate for an hour. Instead, we see political advertisements spliced between situation comedies, and we endure election year debates while waiting for the ball to come on. . . . Celebrity endorsements or the cut of a speaker’s suit may sway public opinion as much as finely crafted arguments do” (xii). The images we see in popular culture, regardless whether they apply to government or entertainment, are limited by one-dimensional sound bites; they tend to be mere advertisements in which the ends justify the means of persuasion. Similarly, in Justice and the Politics of Difference, Iris Marion Young observes a shift between people functioning primarily as citizens to being “client-consumers.” Part of this shift, she believes, is a privatization of the in which the government functions merely to protect and distribute resources. Public discourse, then, becomes a debate over who gets what rather than a discussion about justice. In this sense, reason either becomes lost in the vacuum of dying political discourses or subordinate to a myriad of private interests. In Rhetoric, Language, and Reason, Michel Meyer also argues that reason has become less identifiable or reliable in today’s world. But rather than perceiving the problem in relation to ideology and belief, he places it in the context of a current “crisis” of multiple opinions leading to an overwhelming “revival” of rhetoric in a restless world that renders “everything questionable, arguable” (35-36). Despite this revival, however, belief in the power of language to express rational explanations has reached an all-time low. According to Christine Brooke- Rose, “Never before have the meaning-making means at our disposal . . . appeared so inadequate, not only to cope with the enormity of the problems we continue to create . . . but simply to explain the world” (6). In fact, reason not only seems less effective but barely recognizable. As Meyer observes, a post-holocaust society can no longer find solace or security in reason:38 The economic, social, and political disruptions of our century have shaken the model of reason that our society has generalized at all its levels . . . . Auschwitz and the bomb have symbolized the destructive aspects of this overall rationality, which has led to a vision of the absurd from which we have not really departed yet. Rationality at its extreme has given way to irrationality and absurdity. (37) In current terms, the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, have enabled emotion and belief to overpower reason and ethics, inhibiting the ability for each to generate social and political reform. However much we may agree with what Brummett, Meyer, and Brook-Rose have said about reason, a dominant model of reason as logical argument and intellectual knowledge continues to persist, and this model needs to be expanded for today’s society. Based on intellect alone, reason fits within a discursive realm that is dislocated from what can be imagined,

37Brummett’s use of “sound bite” specifically refers to R. P. Hart’s The Sound of Leadership: Presidential Communication in the Modern Age. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1987.

38I will be complicating definitions of reason in the following pages because, in my interpretation, the term is not static but dependent on social context–similar to how “rationality” can be defined.

31 dreamed, intuited, or felt. For instance, the editors of The Oxford Companion to Philosophy view reason in contrast to “instinct, imagination, or faith in that its results are intellectually trustworthy. . . .” (Honderich). Tony Tanner maintains that in 19th century American Romanticism–as influenced by Thomas Carlyle and in the work of , , Walt Whitman and Mark Twain--reason came to be viewed as less than and separate from wonder, a division he says that Rousseau never intended in Emile (2-3).39 If we understand reason as a separate quality, one that functions merely as intellectual knowledge or logic rather than as part of the other guiding forces that enable our humanity, then the old model of reason as isolated intellectual knowledge has indeed become unusable. Although Meyer’s observation is an important one--and global and national crises have indeed contributed to the irrationality he describes--the of life, its abject unfairness, have often challenged the boundaries of reason and faith. The model of reason he claims has fallen may be one that never could be sustained. Yet given that some identification with reason as a sustainable resource is important, why do so many individuals today feel less in touch with it? In terms of Meyer’s statement that “[r]ationality at its extreme has given way to irrationality and absurdity,” forms of rationality–including methods self-preservation and concepts of reason–are more contextual than definitive. In other words, what may be unacceptable and irrational for some people may be acceptable and rational for others. For example, Americans are appalled at the treatment of Afghan women according to the cultural and religious tenets of the Taliban, yet the Taliban themselves, including many of the women who suffer as a result of their authority, view as acceptable the same conditions we consider overly harsh and oppressive. Prior to World War II, the goal of Jewish genocide and the calculated methods to enact it seemed rational to the Nazis, yet today we look in horror and shame upon such inhumanity. Rationality, then, is not based upon a standard of what reason is, but instead based upon what a particular cultural belief or ideological system defines as rational. Additionally, in each case, the basis of rationality relates to faith in the broadest sense: to those beliefs and practices that perpetuate a specific way of life. Belief structures both thought and reason. Because reason alone is an inadequate resource for understanding the violence on September 11, a majority of U.S. citizens since the attacks have turned to the foundational belief systems they feel will help them process these ineffable events. Many have relied upon the basics of their faith for solace and community, beliefs that not only complement nationalistic fervor but also, in many cases, widen the gap between what some groups label as “right and wrong” or “good” and “evil.” In such cases, religion, as a stronger counter-force, eclipses reason, thus gaining even greater influence during periods of cultural strife. Although our hyper- literate culture has produced remarkable participation in public discourse the last few decades, prolific communication has brought us no closer to , global economic security, or cures. We are no closer to solving the most profound questions of life, particularly those concerning creation, death, injustice, natural disasters, and other enigmas that science cannot yet understand. Myth and religion, in fact, were invented to fill the vacuum that results when we rely on reason alone to explain the incomprehensible. As sociologist Wade Clark Roof argues, “Culture has to do with making sense out of life and formulating strategies for action; and the

39I will be discussing Tanner’s statements in more detail later in Part II. In general, however, Rousseau believed that the experience of wonder depends upon a degree of understanding and mental curiosity.

32 ideas and symbols that people draw on in these fundamental undertakings are, implicitly if not explicitly, saturated with religious meaning” (5). On the one hand, the power of reasoned argument has diminished under the weight of ideology and passivity; on the other, prolific debate has led to a prevalence of doubt within active discourse communities, decreasing the capacity of reason to discriminate meaning within a mass of varying opinions. Argument often becomes indistinguishable from belief when ideology absorbs truth and reason into standard doctrine; furthermore, if too many varying opinions dominate, the discursive field inhibits the capacity for reason to resist ideological control. In either extreme, reason becomes ineffective or inactive. American society has become the fertile ground for corporate dynasties, unrestrained greed, and unquestioned allegiance to the increasing imperialism of the “George W” government. To extend Young’s discussion of citizens becoming client-consumers, the practices of belief and the fulfillment of desire dominate middle-class life in contemporary America to such an extent that these forces–no matter how rational–continually and increasingly dilute reasoned engagement with larger political, social, and economic frameworks. In addition, religious fundamentalism, which has increased exponentially within the last 50 years, has also rendered intellectual knowledge less effective by associating it with secular immorality and liberal . The effects of ideology and belief contribute to diminishing the effectiveness of reason within contemporary life. However, discussions about the limits of reason and language in the context of desire or emotion are certainly not new. Writing in the 17th century, claims in The Ethics that a strong emotion like unfettered rage cannot be controlled by logic or common sense but only seems to be assuaged by a much stronger counter-force.40 Placing his theory alongside social development over the last four centuries, we have seen how emotion, belief, desire, and consumerism, have subordinated reason. Most of the examples I include in this text focus on American culture and religion, which is my primary focus. However, rising attention to religious sectarianism, exclusive forms of fundamentalism, and unchallenged theocracy are global concerns. Just within the last few decades, changes in Islamic society have grown more intense; even a cursory glance of recent events suggests the potential for further conflict.41 The following examples are disconnected, yet they can be viewed in light of the four signs as warnings of impending danger and escalating social disruption. In terms of increasing attention to religion and nationalism and the development of stronger bonds between orthodoxy and sovereignty, nationalism has fueled the growing numbers of madrisas42 (or religious schools) throughout Islam. Between 1947 and 1975 “around 900 religious seminaries of different schools of Islamic thought had been established” but since 1979,

40See Propositions VI and VII in Book IV.

41As I have mentioned before, the cultural patterns I propose might apply to several nations and groups. For instance, increasing traditionalism, nationalism, and social demonization are also prevalent in conflicts between Israelis and Palestinians.

42 Madrisas, according to Najum Mushtaq, are part of Islamic tradition. Children go to these schools, usually housed in a mosque, to study the Qur’an and learn basic Arabic. Mushtaq explains that since the Afghan war, “many madrisas have become hatcheries for sectarian zealouts and ‘freedom fighters.’”

33 “2,000 new madrisas have been set up, most during the Afghan war” (Mushtaq). In addition, violent returns to Islamic traditionalism have made headlines in the last thirty years, including the Shiite revolution in Iran (marked by the regime change from the Shah to Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini) and the recent rise of the anti-Western Wahhabis in the Saudi Arabian government. The Taliban and the Sunnis, generally, are two very different Islamic sects, yet their exclusive doctrines are fundamentalist in the sense of how each rejects “unorthodox” influences and encourages a restoration of ancient traditions. Social dichotomization is increasing within Islam as well. Most likely occurring as a side-effect of religious zealotry, infighting among dominant sects has become a growing problem in the Middle East. Differences between Shiites and Sunnis have been commonplace for centuries; however, radical divisions among Sunni Muslims have increased. In Pakistan, for instance, Sunni sectarianism was a rarity before 1980 (Mushtaq). A native of Pakistan, Najum Mushtaq writes that “the first openly anti-Shia sectarian group” . . . is a branch of “the to which the Afghan Taliban also belong.” According to Mushtaq, this group’s outlook is “puritan” in that they wish to counter Western modernization (Mushtaq). Even more frightening is that they “oppose the use of reason to introduce (ijtehad) in Shariah (Islamic law), and do not believe Shias should be allowed to participate in politics” (Mushtaq). In post-war Iraq, where Shiites compose the majority of the population, Sunnis are generally forced to choose between siding with their traditionalist Muslim neighbors, the Shiites, or with the Americans. Under such conditions, infighting can only escalate. Religious traditionalism in Islam thrives as a result of strict social separations and national . Such social separatism restricts the exchange of knowledge only to what religious orthodoxy deems legitimate. As a case in point, the UN reports that 330 foreign books are translated into Arabic in an average year; in contrast, the 2001 total for books published in Spain exceeds the number of books that have been translated “for all Arab nations combined in the past 50 years” (Viviano 40). An ancient leader in science and , Saudi Arabia is now a shadow of its former self. Its largest library, the King Abdul Aziz National Library in Riyadh, contains less than one-tenth of the books and materials housed at the public library in Cincinnati, Ohio (Viviano 40). Restricting knowledge or invasive thinking, however, is not as easy as limiting library holdings. In order to be victims of social and intellectual isolation, people have to believe that their lives are better off without access to other points of view or ways of life. Religious extremism makes that possible. On a global scale, recognizing cultural differences and disengaging the oppressive tendencies of mystery, however subtle, become even more important in an age of rapid change and cultural turmoil, especially when intercultural conflict occurs between nations with differing religious views. Samuel P. Huntington emphasizes in his groundbreaking article, “The Clash of Civilizations,” that differences according to “history, language, culture, tradition and, most important, religion” will be the defining factor of future global conflict (25). Huntington, whose article about a new phase in cultural politics is required reading for many introductory courses in , was quite accurate in predicting the dangerous outcomes of the discord between two of the world’s most dominant cultures: at one extreme, American-capitalist-Christianity and at the other, radical Islamic fundamentalisms. The effects of such global clashes call even more attention to how particular church and state ideologies maintain their own authority by relying on extremes--hierarchy, erasure, and exclusion. Polarizing social differences into acceptable and unacceptable categories, as we observe from history, is the first step toward demonizing

34 outsiders. Just as ideologies function to separate groups of people according to nationalist and religious loyalties, cultural change further exacerbates these divisions. Rising cultural conflicts may inevitably produce further circumstances in which others who do not fit dominant cultural norms will be subjected to even more prejudice and demonization. By observing the warning signs (growth in religion and nationalism; stronger ties linking church and state; increasing social polarization, and the declining influence of reason), governments, citizens, and leaders may be able to generate an effective means of global diplomacy that would, ideally, prevent some of the conflicts that are now viewed as inevitable. In order to recognize and, possibly, prevent these social devastations from occurring, we need an effective counter-tradition, one that inspires us spiritually and incites emotion, a revolution that allows for reflection and inquiry regardless of ideological constraints. Nietzsche’s prognosis for societies today would most likely be what he observed in his own time–the need to examine existing foundations and release what no longer works so that all citizens can work together to invent a better world. The next chapter begins the task of critiquing foundations by exploring the social and theoretical frameworks that support exclusive religion, and Chapter Three delves more deeply into the discussion of reason I began in the previous section.

35

Chapter 2 Reading the Signs: Social Ills and the Excesses of Belief

“Because man is restricted and does not in any way understand what vast powers he has within himself–he tries to judge God according to his own restricted powers” (Skarin 116).

The signs of cultural strife I mentioned in the previous chapter reveal an overall pattern of social extremism. This extremism, however, is imbalanced in the sense that nationalism and exclusive religion seem conjoined to reinforce dominant values that disregard dissenting opinions, thus lessening the effectiveness of reason. The danger of this trend is that it is the nature of these ideologies to protect themselves and increase in power, and as nationalism and exclusive religion become more entrenched, the more difficult they are to recognize and confront. Given that some of the effects of social extremism are harmful, how should we begin to challenge social relations and ways of thinking that have become so cemented within “the American way of life”? Exclusive religion, of which fundamentalism is a prime example, attempts to provide security and purpose within a culture of increasing nihilism. However, religious practice functions ideologically; it sustains itself by replicating the needs it serves to meet. Although the psychological dysfunctions I noted stem from a variety of causes other than religious ideology, this fact should not diminish the importance of reading its cultural patterns. We need to investigate the discursive structures that make exclusive forms of nationalism and religion ideologically persuasive and also consider how some of the problems we see occurring in everyday life--including powerlessness, insecurity, loss of compassion, and social dichotomization–are rooted in dominant of metaphysical binaries separating what can be labeled as “human” or “divine.”

Perpetuating Insecurities Over the last few decades, many social researchers observe evidence of a growing sense of insecurity and search for meaning among a majority of citizens. Psychotherapist Rollo May, writing in 1969, recognizes this powerlessness as part of a cultural trend he describes as “schizoid” (14). Generally, May calls the post-1960 world an age in which people are “forced to turn inward”; they become “obsessed with the new form of the problem of identity, namely, Even-if-I-know-who-I-am, I-have-no-significance. I am unable to influence others” (14). Individuals search for meaning in the usual places–work, relationships, education, and religion– yet many remain unsatisfied. Feeling insignificant for an extended period, he says, results in an overall sense of apathy, which may then lead to violence (14). “For no human being,” May explains, “can stand the perpetually numbing experience of his own powerlessness” (14). Voicing concerns about the impact of contemporary culture on women in particular, New Age writer tells her female audience, “We are tyrannized by a belief that we are inadequate . . . Most movies do not love us, most advertising does not love us, and most rock and roll does not love us . . . . Like many battered wives, we look endlessly for love in places that have no capacity to love us back. We must consciously choose to do this no longer” (7).

36 Although Williamson paints a depressing picture, her statement about the tyranny of inadequacy can be applied to most people, including males. In a world where money, attractiveness, and achievement generally determine a person’s quality of life, a perceived problem with any one of these areas can have detrimental affects to an individual’s self worth. Inadequate self-esteem makes people more vulnerable to “image” buying: sports cars and clothing as evidence of social status or achievement. Poor self image also negatively affects a person’s opinions about other people because respect for the self is so closely tied to respect for others. In fact, violent crime and of inadequacy are linked, as psychiatrist James Gilligan explains in his book, Violence: Reflections on a National Epidemic. Feeling shame and being shamed, according to Gilligan, are primary causes of violence in American culture. In one example, Gilligan discusses a dramatic change in homicide rates for husbands and wives. Within the last ten to fifteen years, agencies providing shelter, legal help, and counseling support for battered wives have become more prominent and accessible for women. Given this fact, we would expect the rate of husbands killing wives to decrease, but as Gilligan explains, this is not the case; instead, the number of marital homicides actually doubled so that “twice as many wives were being killed as husbands” (131): It would be difficult to make sense of this paradoxical finding . . . except by concluding that a wife’s ability to leave her husband was being experienced by him as an intolerably threatening abandonment leading to murder. . . . Here is further reason to believe that many men are so deeply ashamed of their wishes to be loved and taken care of, which they equate with being infantile, passive, and dependent (as though there is anyone, no matter how mature, who does not need to be loved and taken care of), that their feelings of shame motivate them to repress and ward off these feelings, often by going to the opposite extreme. Those who batter and/or kill their wives are precisely the men who experience a life-death dependency on their wives and an overwhelming shame because of it. (131) Yet the more people seek love and self-worth without finding either, the more desperately they detach themselves from others. May substantiates this point by citing psychopathologist Anthony Storr, who believes that the detachment of the schizoid person functions as “a complex mask for a repressed longing for love” (16).43 May extends Storr’s point further, claiming that “the schizoid condition is a general tendency in our transitional age, and that the ‘helplessness and disregard’ . . . to which Storr refers, comes . . . from almost every aspect of our culture” (16). Cultural theorist Slavoj Zizek notices an atmosphere of social detachment and powerlessness emerging as well. An extreme Narcissism, he explains, is the logical result of “postmodern” subjectivity. The “postmodern” subject, he explains, is “not the exact opposite of the free subject who experienced himself as ultimately responsible for his fate,” but “namely the subject who grounds the authority of his speech on his status of a victim of circumstances beyond his control” (On 124). He supports this point with the following list of examples: Every contact with another human being is experienced as a potential threat–if the other smokes, if he casts a covetous glance at me, he already hurts me; this logic of victimization is today universalized, reaching well beyond the standard cases of sexual or racist harassment–recall the growing financial industry of paying

43See Anthony Storr, Human Aggression. New York: Atheneum, 1968, p. 85.

37 damage claims, from the tobacco industry deal in the USA and the financial claims of the Holocaust victims and forced laborers in Nazi Germany, and the idea that the USA should pay the African-Americans hundreds of billions of dollars for all they were deprived of due to their past slavery . . . This notion of the subject as an irresponsible victim involves the extreme Narcissistic perspective from which every encounter with the Other appears as a potential threat to the subject’s precarious imaginary balance . . . .” (124) The feeling of victimization, of being subject to circumstances beyond our control, as Zizek points out, stems from self-absorption, an internal withdrawal that treats the Other as a threat to our own self-preservation. In common with Zizek, throughout Love and Will May explores why so many people now are withdrawing into themselves. Rather than calling it Narcissism, he views it as a cultural longing for love that is linked to a widespread loss of compassion. Most members of technological society, he says, have lost their will to care: “Care is important because it is what is missing in our day. What young people are fighting, in revolts on college campuses and in the sweep of protests about the country, is the seeping, creeping conviction that nothing ; the prevailing feeling that one can’t do anything” (May 292). Of course May published his book during a decade of campus protests against the Viet Nam war, and one year after the death of Martin Luther King and Robert F. Kennedy, a time when many people in the U.S.–not only college students–felt a sense of hopelessness. Although despair and helplessness overwhelmed America immediately after the September 11th attacks, no more than a few days passed until national and religious fervor began to surface. When a society experiences cultural trauma, many people rely on structure; they renew their interest in common beliefs and tradition in hope of finding comfort, something to satisfy their need for connection with themselves and others. Under these conditions, the need for community and shared values, then, can be defined as an even more intensive search for uniformity which, ironically, fuels exclusivism. Professor of religion Darrell Fasching explains that “[t]he vision of conquering the world for Christ has intolerance toward the alien and the stranger built into it. It thrives on the desire for a world of uniformity” (26). Fasching posits the idea that such a quest for uniformity is counter to basic Judeo-Christian ideals, and maintains that the linguistic dispersion at the Tower of Babel shows God’s displeasure for ethnocentrism. Prior to the moment of their language confusion, the citizens of Babel, “took great comfort in uniformity . . . . They drew strength from the fact that everyone shared the same language and the same ” (Fasching 28).44 The Nazis, Fasching says, also shared a belief in uniformity (28). In On Belief, Zizek emphasizes this point even more strongly, explaining that what this all-inclusive attitude (recall St. Paul’s famous “There are no men or women, no Jews and Greeks”) involves is a thorough exclusion of those who do not accept inclusion into the Christian community. . . . The Christian motto “All men are brothers,” however, means ALSO that “Those who are not my brothers ARE NOT MEN” (capitals in original, On 143). i〉ek’s point here seems extreme, but in the case of exclusive religion, “enemies of God” are labeled as infidels, heathens, and demons. Those who believe they have God on their side) as

44For this story of Babel, see Genesis 11:1-9.

38 opposed to their enemies who “believe wrongly” or defend an “unjust” cause) can only continue to replicate the binary that structures their own ideology of religion. Exclusivism necessitates an intense desire for social or religious uniformity which could be considered on a grander scale as a form of cultural egotism. The ideological basis of exclusive religion is the same framework that supports nationalism. This shared framework explains how the two tend to merge during a period of intense social change. Fasching describes the powerful underlying both religion and nationalism as the basis supporting what people would be “willing to kill for”: Fundamentally, religion is about what people hold sacred, what they value most, or treat with ultimate concern. Around the globe what people typically hold most sacred is their way of life. It is what they are willing to die for, and more tellingly, what they are willing to kill for. Killing is wrong, it is generally thought, unless you are protecting your life–not just your biological life but your way of life. When that is the case then killing is considered a heroic virtue. We call it patriotism and think it most noble–at least as long as it is on behalf of our own patrie or “fatherland” and not somebody else’s. (29) Generally, the search for uniformity is a search for foundations, something people can trust to be true even though several of the main principles supported by church and state have proven to be inconsistent, unfeasible, or false. But as Fasching makes clear, the power that underlies our human need for self-preservation and connection is very strong, strong enough to overcome moral codes against killing.45 Religion and nationalism rationalize morality and justice in this way. Given the inhospitality Fasching describes, why have fundamentalism and other exclusive ideologies become so pervasive within American culture? One reason is that these churches preach and assurance in an era filled with anxiety and doubt. If people feel lost (not merely in the sense of being categorized as part of the “unsaved”), then fundamentalism, Roman Catholicism, or other literalist doctrines provide them a comforting sense of security and companionship.46 If church members receive affirmation from the pulpit, from government representatives, and from a large number of Christians in American society that believing what their church teaches is the only way to achieve salvation, then these teachings reinforce a strong sense of egotism. If, concerning something as important as religious belief, “Person A” is right and everyone else is wrong, then “Person A” is an innocent victim when others interfere. Furthermore, as the world grows more chaotic, “Person A” claims his/her self- righteous innocence with greater intensity. The idea of God as pleased only by an image of himself is very much like the experience of Person A. Exclusive religion only recognizes an image of its own principles as valid, and this attitude constricts spirituality as well as human relationships. God, we are told, is jealous and higher than any other gods. He must be placated by sacrifice. His laws are to be strictly

45The idea of self-preservation is prominent in modern . Among others, ’s exploration of the unconscious, Jacques Lacan’s theory of the “Real,” and Julia Kristeva’s study of the process of abjection all uncover powerful aspects of the mind and body that either manipulate or block processes of rationalization.

46I am labeling Roman Catholicism as exclusivist given the recent announcement in April 2003 by the Pope that partaking of communion in non-Catholic churches would no longer be an acceptable practice for Catholics.

39 followed because His is the only pathway to higher realms which only those who stay on the right path are allowed to enter. This image of the Divine is also an image of human egotism. So it is not surprising that the God created by exclusive religion mirrors some of the worst elements of human character. I am oversimplifying the context surrounding “Person A’s” situation, but the underlying politics of exclusivism have created and continue to nurture the social psychoses that May and Zizek discuss as well as the social ostracism I mention in Chapter One.

Perpetuating Dependencies In answer to the increasing sense of powerlessness and insecurity social researchers recognize among Americans, the politics of exclusivism offers congregants a vast array of experts and leaders. Often, when people are confronted by something so powerful and mysterious as religious faith, they rely on those whom they respect, or external sources, to provide answers; unfortunately, this creates an atmosphere of dependency and passivity. Dependency on experts, according to sociologist Elisabeth Lasch-Quinn, has been a hallmark of modern culture since the 19th century and has continued to increase within the last few decades, especially since the dismantling of the civil rights movement (xiii). As Naisbitt and Aburdene discuss in Megatrends 2000, fundamentalism often “spells out the answers for people–so they need not make decisions alone” (279). Scholars who study cultural trends in religion explain that within Evangelical circles, over approximately the last two decades, “we can identify a vast array of experts and secondary institutions: church growth consultants, church-based institutes, para- church and special purpose organizations, and extended networks targeting the spiritual needs of young Americans, many of whom have effectively grown up unchurched” (Roof et al., 133-34). Churches have also become increasingly institutionalized. This tendency has been noted particularly by international scholars as they observe religion in American culture. A South Indian, M. Thomas Thangaraj, observes how every religious/theological difference leads invariably to a new religious association or corporate entity. For example, devotion to Krishna (one of the incarnations of God according to ) does not define a community in India. But in the United States, such a devotion to Krishna leads to the International Society of Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON). (Chidester 30) Community bonds require a shared sense of unity and values, and as churches develop community, they also reinforce reliance on experts, doctrinal precepts, definitions of truth codified by sacred texts, and at the same time, legitimize their own expert status by incorporating or institutionalizing their influence. The tendency for people in some religious communities to follow leaders and experts has become painfully evident in terms of suicide bombings, unprovoked attacks on bystanders in Ireland, and female circumcision. Similar patterns of this “group mind” occurred in relation to cult-based murders in Uganda, Texas, Jonestown, and with Heaven’s Gate: • The People’s Temple in Jonestown, Guyana, November 1978: 900 church members led by Jim Jones killed themselves by drinking a mixture of cyanide and Kool Aid. • in Waco, Texas, April, 1993: in response to David Koresh’s claim to be the Messiah, 100 people stockpiled weapons and food in preparation for the Apocalypse; over 75 people submitted to Koresh’s suicide order after federal agents attacked the compound.

40 • Heaven’s Gate in San Diego, February 1997: a religious sect of 39 people committed suicide in expectation of joining extraterrestrials in a multi-planetary . • The Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God, Kabumba, Uganda, March 2000: over 900 members were found dead in what appears to be the largest, cult-inspired mass murder in recent history. As horrific as these cases are, we need to keep in mind that cult-like beliefs often share the same kinds of religious values as mainline churches. Seekers in each of the “doomsday” cults practiced a form of exclusivism. They became vulnerable to and were fascinated by charismatic leaders who claimed to hear the voice of Jesus and the Virgin Mary; the main difference between these groups and charismatic forms of Christianity is that members of Heaven’s Gate claimed to hear messages from extra-terrestrials and Koresh claimed to be the returning Messiah. As evidenced by the results of these cult-inspired deaths, the move toward the mystical–in spite of its benefits–also has an ugly side. Although many people believe members of cults to be irrational or brainwashed by false belief systems or misguided leaders, many of those involved would not be considered ignorant or illiterate by today’s standards. Unfortunately, however, the ability to understand and communicate information through reading, writing, and speaking does not necessarily safeguard people from being victimized or duped. The propensity for individuals to become involved in an uncritical acceptance of new concepts sometimes has less to do with the concepts, though, than it does with the attitudes and approaches of the new believers.47 In addition, fear of doctrinal impurity and the perpetual legalism expressed among most traditional congregations reinforce an atmosphere in which cults not only become necessary but thrive. People have absorbed the cultural belief that questioning any type of religious faith, especially traditional doctrine, is too invasive, too secular. In such cases, adherents of any faith can become susceptible to what could be harmful propaganda. The proliferation of religious cults within the last few decades suggests that alternatives to traditional religion have become reflections of the expansive integration of spirituality and belief in the supernatural within every aspect of American culture. In the 1970s, after the appearance of several alternative religious groups (or cults), many fundamentalist Christian counter-cult movements gained ground in their efforts to protect the authority of Biblical doctrines and church teachings. Even in the secular sense, the vivid presence of Hare Krishnas at airports and on street corners–with their shaved heads and colored robes, introduced a new form of culture shock to the American public. Families whose children became involved with this movement and others (for instance scientology and the headed by Reverend Sun Myung ) attacked these groups, accusing them of having changed the personalities of their sons or daughters. Secular and traditional religious leaders initiated “deprogramming” methods to reverse the presumed psychological damage. Such fears may have been warranted, especially in light of cult tragedies in Guyana, Uganda, San Diego, and Waco. As particular

47Not every spiritually-focused group that separates from organized religion encourages unreflective passivity. In fact, according to the Institute for the Study of American Religion, the word “cult” should not generically be considered pejorative (Institute). The definition of a cult varies rhetorically, depending on whether social , Christian counter-cult ministries, or anti-cult secularists use the term. Social researchers identify a cult as a group that falls outside traditional belief systems and cannot be considered part of a mainline church (similar to Roman Catholic or Baptist, etc.) or sect (similar to Quaker or Mennonite). In the 1920s, researchers began to claim that cults were much different in orientation and belief structure than sects and churches, which both follow patterns familiar to Western belief systems.

41 ideologies–religious or otherwise--grow more distant from cultural and scientific “ checks,” the more dangerous they become. At particular points in history, human usurpation of divine will has resulted in as well as murders. Danger appears to be more likely when people view themselves as having divine purpose and others as inhibiting “God’s will” in the world, as unworthy non-believers, or much worse–as an evil force that must be exterminated. Although our culture relies too much upon personal belief, persuasive credibility rests on more than just testimony. People tend to believe another also in terms of that person’s social position, institutional affiliation, and personal reputation–not to mention race, gender, age, and physical condition. Our what we believe to be true. I am not suggesting that society should ignore the benefits that expert knowledge provides, but I agree with Luce Irigaray’s point of using caution. She warns that The more patriarchal cultures consolidate their power, the more systems of exchange and communication are cut off from individual truth and become the business of specialists and experts alone. This is one of the causes of the difficulties of the modern world. The majority of people no longer know what’s true. They give up their right to judge for themselves. They go along with those men or women whom they think know more, whether acceding to supposed capabilities in the social or cultural domain, or, more insidiously, consenting to the manipulation of role models in advertising, sections of the media, art, etc. . . . (Je 28) Irigaray explains that when a culture becomes absorbed by the limited construction of truth as defined by “specialists and experts alone,” individuals tend to give up their ability to think for themselves. Generally, religion reinforces the idea that humans cannot be trusted to be smart enough or responsible enough on their own. They must, by necessity, turn to God or father figures or institutions for guidance. The unfortunate payoff of this way of thinking is that followers do not have to be “adults.” Life is easier when we are told what is right and what is wrong, when we do not have to accept responsibility, when we expect institutions to take care of us and tell us what to believe about the past, present, future, heaven, hell, and the afterlife. Literalism is, in fact, just another form of relying on an expert–in such cases, whatever text the religious sect chooses as the “word of God” is the ultimate authority. Congregations do not usually question or, much less, debate the advice they receive, especially if the advice is prefaced with “As it is written . . . .” A phrase posted on a message board outside a community church sums up this credo: “God said it, I believe it, ‘nuff said.” Although the saying circulates among Evangelicals as an expression of their faith, it reinforces a strictly literalist way of thinking, one that limits inquiry, resists alternative views, and reinforces passivity. Churches are not the only places where people rely on experts; yet, at this moment in history, it seems that exclusive religion combined with the stress of social change makes people so vulnerable to what other people say is right that they no longer know what is true for themselves. In addition to creating an atmosphere of dependency, religious exclusivism also promotes concepts of self-erasure, viewing the self as irreversibly connected to earthly desires that must be replaced by God-absorption. People who practice this kind of holiness tend to see themselves as separate from the world and, as a result, make few attempts to understand or accept alternative viewpoints and the differing social/cultural lives of others. The structures of Judeo-Christian religious tradition, generally speaking, promote a concept of the deity as detached and untainted by human failings. In Jewish theology Yod-hey-

42 vod-hey is the ineffable, indefinable presence that must remain separate from humankind. Part of what shapes the secular/spiritual division in these contexts is that organized religion designates God–even in spirit form--as higher than and external to humanity. Individuals can invite Jesus Christ (as part of the ) “into their hearts,” a union of seeker and Spirit that parallels the Christian idea of marriage–with the husband as the spiritual head and the wife as submissive helpmate.48 The Christian concept of God-dwelling-within-us designates a hierarchical relationship with God as leader and the human subject as the subordinate who must deny the self, especially in terms of personal desires classified as ungodly. Tracts most often handed out by fundamentalists to others they classify as “lost” include a two page chart: each page depicts the throne of a person’s life, but on the first page, seated on the largest throne in the is “Self,” the example of a person who is not in submission to God’s leadership; on the other page, a symbol of the cross takes the place of “Self” on the largest throne and displaces it to the side. Displacing the self, or ego, in this sense is what many Christians perceive as making room for God’s direction. They often cite Galatians 2:20, which says “I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me, and delivered Himself up for me” (RSV). And in the words of C. S. Lewis, “Human will becomes truly creative and truly our own when it is wholly God’s, and this is one of the many senses in which he that loses his soul shall find it. . . . From the highest to the lowest, self exists to be abdicated and, by that abdication, becomes the more truly self” (91, 137).49 In Christian teachings, human qualities become , sinful, in comparison with the of God. A common bumper sticker conveys this point: “I must decrease. Jesus must increase.”50 A subtle distinction exists between following what might be God’s will versus following reductive teachings in church doctrine. When I was a child in a Baptist church, the lyrics to the hymn “At the Cross” included the phrase, “for such a worm as I.” Since then, the words have been modified to “sinner such as I,” but despite the minor change in the song, the ideology of self-loathing remains dominant among many Christian fundamentalists. Concepts of human will as anything positive just do not exist in contexts such as these; acts of creative human spirit cannot modify or restructure divine purpose. Separation between what people consider as human and divine resists change by reinforcing the gap. How many times have Christians heard from their respective pulpits that the world is becoming more corrupt, violent, materialistic, and sinful? The worse the world gets, it seems the less Christians can do . . . thus, only God can fix things through a massive purification process: Armageddon and its aftermath. Following the “what would Jesus do” credo leads many believers to practice altruism and social activism, yet does not tend to encourage the kind of person-to-person connections

48The seeker/spirit dualism is another way of illustrating the common analogy that the church is to Christ as wife is to husband.

49I am aware of this C. S. Lewis quote thanks to Lizabeth A. Rand who called attention to it in her article, “Enacting Faith: Evangelical Discourse and the Discipline of Composition Studies,” College Composition and Communication, 52.3 (2001): 349-67.

50The image of the letter “I” is next to a “lesser than” sign (<) while the word Jesus is represented by a cross next to a “greater than” sign (>).

43 that promote respect for major differences in belief. Instead, many Evangelical conversion tactics tend to promote fear of difference, shame, and self-loathing. Human egos often need the realities of life to teach compassion, cooperation, and humility, yet measuring the success of people’s spiritual lives according to a theory of selfhood that requires relative invisibility plays havoc not only with human psyches but with personal and public responsibilities. Believers would argue that if more people allowed Jesus to control their lives, the world would be a better place. But people tend to rely upon the feeling of religious experience and the sense of community they receive rather than working toward social change. If humans rely so much on God’s control of their lives, then a natural consequence might include viewing themselves as powerless or thinking God will take care of everything–without any human input or mutual dialogue. A similar point could be argued in terms of Judaism. Jewish teachings valorize God far beyond human comprehension and activity while Christian doctrine anthropomorphizes God and demotes individuals to worthless souls. In both cases, individual identity becomes sublimated to the point that it can only be purified by holy dispensation. The culturally-dominant view of original sin–the concept that all humans are inherently sinful and can only be saved by divine grace–all too often reinforces the tyranny of inadequacy. Even the words to the famous song, “Amazing Grace,” tell us we are “wretches” without it.51 Fueled by widespread belief in the dualism between divine goodness and human deficiency, the concept of sin countermines not only our personal sense of worth but also our cultural psyche. Personal reflection cannot be effective in a culture that grounds the source of rationality and truth in metaphysical terms that separate mind, body, and spirit, or in a culture that polarizes divine holiness and human failings. According to the majority of Christian doctrines, the only solution to being born in sin is to be subjected to a higher religious authority. One recent thought-for-the-week posted on the marquee of a local church captures the gist of this theological position in just four words: “God reads knee-mail.” Although many believe humility is a positive character trait, the believer’s posture, on bended knee, suggests that worthiness and guidance must be dispensed from on high, separate from lower human needs. Practicing their faith within an exclusive framework, followers are capable of wisdom and discernment, but decisions must be in line with church teachings or particular interpretations of sacred principles. In Catholic churches, for example, the Holy Spirit, the priest, Jesus, Mary, and various saints function as intermediaries between petitioners and God, which becomes a necessity due to the shared belief in the condemnation of sin. Prior to the distribution of the host, Catholic worshipers recite in unison, “I am not worthy to receive. . .”–which is just one more confirmation of how the belief in sin reinforces shame. Generally, in Protestant churches, Jesus and the Holy Spirit serve as the only intermediaries. In both dogmas people are not viewed as having the quality of soul that permits them direct access to God or even to their own spirit; each person must have an intercessory–either Christ or a priest or both. Such religious practices create or reinforce feelings of low self-worth.52

51“Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me.”

52Although thinking oneself as exclusively linked to God could be quite a boost for the ego, many believers “give God the glory” for the connection. In general, because Jesus “saves” people from sin, redemption does not rely on any degree of human worth.

44 Exclusive doctrines so powerfully demote individual agency that seekers release their ability to make decisions for themselves. However, many Christian churches have a built-in defense against this charge. They follow a doctrine called “the priesthood of the believer,” a teaching that promotes a person’s right to abide by a different interpretation of scripture than what the church promotes. Yet, after having spent nearly 25 years as an active member of several Southern Baptist churches, I had never heard of any church members claiming their own divinity, or of anyone questioning the most basic tenets of the faith such as the doctrine of original sin, salvation from sin through Jesus, or the literal existence of hell. Alternative interpretations usually surface concerning minor elements such as the definition of a word, or the context of what a specific teaching might mean as it is applied to lived experience. In my opinion, the doctrine of “the priesthood of the believer” fosters very little independent thinking in exclusive versions of Christianity. In fact, it allows just enough freedom to make people believe they are not being controlled, thus further strengthening exclusivism’s coerciveness. The pseudo-autonomy we recognize in exclusive practice supports what Louis Althusser observes as one of the primary components of ideologies. According to Althusser, ideologies–of which religion is one of the most powerful--socially subjects who, under the influence of dominant beliefs, mistakenly misinterpret their constructed status as autonomous and authentic. This false sense of autonomy can only serve to intensify the mystification that belief already sustains. Belief constructs rationality and world view much like an optical illusion frames our vision. Many people are familiar with visual illusions such as a black and white picture of a vase that can also be viewed (by focusing on the background) as a silhouette of two faces. Similarly, the head of a young woman in a feathered hat, if viewed differently, also becomes an old woman with a large nose. People aren’t “wrong” when they see the young woman versus the old one. The picture contains both perspectives holistically. Yet, the mind views the images as a single picture; it cannot see both scenes from the same perspective because they only become visible one at a time. The physical image as it appears on the page remains static; however, while both versions of the picture are mutually exclusive, they are also interchangeable. This kind of optical illusion teaches us that perspective can fool us into thinking one image can present the whole, even if we only see part of it. Like the optical illusion, people view religion in different perspectives based on their experiences. Individuals seem to find comfort in viewing one perspective; this perspective presents a common viewpoint most people within a particular culture share. The problem, though, is when people allow one view to control their lives so much that it influences them into believing others are living in . In this way, limited perspectives in the religious sense share the same characteristics as oppression and prejudice. This exclusive way of thinking claims morality and reason on its own terms and falsifies alternative moralities and views. So, as the analogy of the optical illusion shows, one perspective can block another. Individuals who are persuaded by the answers exclusive religion provides tend to see how their faith gives them a sense of community among people who believe as they do, guidance and leadership in times of social change, and structure as a basis for security and self-development. The alternative perspective many do not see, however, is that the exclusive nature of their faith can also produce cultural egotism, foster social passivity and dependency, and create an atmosphere of self-loathing. The signs that appear as a result of exclusivism, as I have mentioned before, are ideologically-based and thus widely integrated into nearly every

45 component of our culture. In the next chapter, I explore the discursive structures supporting ideologies and how these structures contribute to the two most dangerous effects I mentioned in Chapter One–social dichotomization and the displacement of reason.

46 Chapter 3 Ideology, Belief, and the Diminution of Critical Reason

“Without signs, there is no ideology” (Volosinov 44).

Reason must be our last judge and guide in everything . . . . if reason must not examine their truth by something extrinsical to the persuasions themselves, inspirations and , truth and falsehood, will have the same measure, and will not be possible to be distinguished. [italics in original] (Locke, XIX 14).

Personal and cultural defense mechanisms such as the trend toward uniformity, the need for preserving a specific a way of life, and a large-scale inward retreat away from others who are perceived as threatening, all contribute to religious exclusivism; they are also factors that define ideology. Michael Ryan defines an ideology as “a defensive operation . . . . a response to the power of forces that, if they were not channeled in ways conducive to hegemony, would push the society toward an altogether different distributive arrangement, one antithetical to those currently in power” (112). In addition to fostering defensive operations, another tendency of ideologies is to reinforce hierarchies of meaning. To use the previous chapter’s optical illusion as , differing concepts split into incompatible scenes so that one view remains static or more important while others remain unrecognized. As Slavoj Zizek discusses in The Sublime Object of Ideology, people may be well aware that another viewpoint exists but the power of their belief, the degree to which they are imbricated within ideologically-based social relations, makes alternative views seem irrational. According to i〉ek’s discussion of belief and ideological fantasy, and Herbert Marcuse’s analysis of operationalism, we learn that ideology appropriates its own version of reason to manipulate belief and maintain control. Social fields become so saturated with exclusivist ideologies that critical reason has generally become inoperable or displaced. When exclusivist ideologies prevail, the traditional function of reason as a solution to extremism and corruption is rendered ineffective because the multiple or opposing views required by reason tend to be nullified. Often these ideologies nourish an atmosphere in which reason can no longer function critically or dialectically. Reason, as it currently functions, will continue to be undermined by the excesses of exclusive belief. Although we cannot purge the social field of ideological discourse, it may be possible to disengage the oppression it sustains by revising and updating the basic beliefs that reinforce one- dimensional thinking. Similar to Marcuse and Burke, I argue that beliefs are not only too strong to be swayed by reason but influential in disengaging the variety of viewpoints necessary for critical reflection. So, since belief limits critical reason, social transformation requires expanding the functions of critical reason to disengage the negative effects of belief as well as replacing the old myths and values with less harmful ones. As Neale Donald Walsch explains in The New Revelations, ingrained behaviors cannot be changed over the long term without changing the belief that supports the behavior (16). Speaking in terms of the postmodern, I am aware that power and ideology have multiple locations and, in most cases, nonexistent borders. However, human beings live according to foundations of belief. Beliefs can change on an individual level (as my own did, for instance), yet the basis of religious belief that has become dominant within Euro-Western culture at present has remained fairly constant for approximately

47 the last 20 centuries. Changing entrenched beliefs about reason and faith, then, may be a slow process, yet one that many people believe is long overdue. Although Zizek does not offer a counter-tradition as a solution, his work provides a thorough critique of the ideological formations that allow belief to limit reason. Beginning with a common misconception stemming from classical Marxism, Zizek maintains that the traditional view of ideology as false consciousness is insufficient to account for “why we are so unable to shake so-called ideological prejudices” (Sublime 48). The traditional view, or Marxist view, holds that distortion forms the essence of ideology; Zizek reminds us that Marx’s statement in Capital, translated as “‘they do not know it, but they are doing it’”53 sums up this view. Marxism presents critique (or reason) as a solution, one that seeks to unmask the “hidden kernel” or “commodity-form” that leads to the distortion and, therefore awaken individuals to how the ideological field is being distorted (Sublime 28). However, Zizek explains that the proposed solution, the idea that we can isolate the particular sources of distortions, unmask them, and, afterward, exist in a post-ideological society, is too naïve (Sublime 28). According to Zizek, ideology reproduces as long as it is false, and “the moment we see it ‘as it really is,’ . . . it changes into another kind of reality” (Sublime 28). The sources of false consciousness cannot be isolated or ever totally eradicated. This is why, he says, “we must avoid the simple of demasking, of throwing away the veils which are supposed to hide the naked reality” (Sublime 28-29). To supplement his point, Zizek cites Peter Sloterdijk’s work on cynicism (Sublime 29).54 Sloterdijk says ideology operates cynically, and to illustrate this idea, Zizek extends Marx’s statement to read, “they know very well what they are doing, but still, they are doing it” (Sublime 28). In other words, the traditional critique of ideology fails for a variety of reasons: because merely being aware of how we participate in our own subjection to the system is not enough to foster change, and because many of us either choose to do nothing or else have almost no resources for resisting it (Zizek, Sublime 29). Basically, the reasons Zizek gives to explain why traditional critiques of ideology will continue to fail could be listed under a category labeled as “the problem of belief.” First, he says that belief can exist as something “exterior,” something that is embodied in the relations between people (Sublime 34). One example he gives is of the Tibetan prayer wheel. A person may write a prayer on a hand-held wheel (or use one with a standard prayer already written on it) and spin the wheel to activate the prayer without literally thinking of it or saying it: “The beauty of it all is that in my psychological interiority I can think about whatever I want, I can yield to the most dirty and obscene fantasies, and it does not matter because . . . whatever I am thinking, objectively I am praying” (Zizek, Sublime 34). Religious rituals, masses, ceremonies, and traditions function this way. Using ancient and modern sources--the Greek chorus and canned laughter--as examples, Zizek also shows how belief and emotions can both become objects that can be transferred as something “exterior” to us. Referring to Lacan’s point that “the most intimate beliefs, even the most intimate emotions such as compassion, crying, sorrow, laughter, can be transferred, delegated to others without losing their sincerity,” Zizek debunks the myth that belief comes from an inner wellspring of truth untouched by social influences (Sublime 34).

53“Sie wissen das nicht, aber sie tun es.”

54See Sloterdijk’s Kritik de zynischen Vernunft, Frankfurt, 1983 (translated as Critique of Cynical Reason, , 1988).

48 Transference becomes an important concept to consider in light of ideology because it shows us how belief can bypass a subject and derive its agency directly from the ideological field, empowering the system’s ability to discredit or ignore alternative opinions. Another reason Zizek associates with why traditional ideology critique tends to fail is how people believe something without supporting reasons for it (Sublime 37). To support this claim, he uses an example from Blaise Pascal, who expresses how people tend to believe that “‘truth can be found and resides in laws and customs . . . and take their antiquity as a proof of their truth (and not just of their authority, without truth)’” (qtd. in Zizek, Sublime 38).55 So, if an idea has existed for a long time, people are more likely to think of it as “true.” It is the same with authority: truth is not a necessary requirement for something that sounds authoritative since, by its own authority, it appears “true.” Some of the dominant social needs I discuss in the previous chapter–the desire for connection through sameness, the need for preserving a specific a way of life, and a fear that outsiders threaten this way of life--relate to these three constructions of belief. For example, when people who participate in exclusive religion rely on the inerrancy of the scriptures, they are placing their belief in something that is ancient and authoritative and believing it is true because of these qualities; to these followers, “the Word of God” exclusively speaks through the one text their religion promotes. In this case, they seek homogeneity in terms of specific interpretations of scripture and common values associated with these interpretations–for instance, that divorce is unjustified under most conditions, that conversion or ritual is a necessary requirement for spiritual development, that is wrong, and that the scriptures are so authoritative (and so ancient) that the events recorded in the sacred texts are more accurate than historical records. Any claim that a text viewed as holy might be errant or inconsistent would naturally threaten a unified vision of it as true. Therefore, in resistance to claims that their holy text might be flawed in some way, adherents would more staunchly defend it because the text itself has become an exterior representation not only of belief but of a way of life that must be defended against “false” claims coming from outside the faith. In these examples, belief becomes externalized and is represented by holy scripture. “Truth” is defined and inspired by the Word, which is the ultimate signifier, carrying its authority beyond the reach of reasoned debate. These components of belief work in tandem to support what Zizek calls “the fantasy which regulates social reality” (Sublime 36). “Fantasy is,” according to Zizek, “basically a scenario filling out the empty of a fundamental impossibility, a screen masking a void” (Sublime 126). The void he mentions is a reference to a “pure” signifier (or sign), something that represents more than itself yet is also non-existent or unattainable (Sublime 97). Zizek provides several examples, and I will discuss two that demonstrate the range of his theory; the first based on the ad campaign for Coca-Cola, and the second based on the figure of “the Jew” as a “pure” signifier within the context of anti-Semitism. Most advertisements work because people desire the unattainable, unexplainable “thing” the product is thought to represent. Coke, for instance, promotes itself as “ thing.” As Zizek explains it, Coke “connotes ‘the spirit of America,’ and this ‘spirit of America’ . . . is then condensed in Coke as its signifier, its signifying representative; what we gain from this simple inversion is precisely . . . that ‘unattainable something’ which is ‘in Coke more than Coke’ . . . .” (Sublime 96). The spirit of America is, of course, unattainable via a Coke bottle. In fact, given

55i〉ek cites Pascal’s Pensées. Hammondsworth: Penguin, 1966.

49 the breadth of what America is and how it is changing, particularly in international contexts, isolating and defining its “spirit” would be impossible. Belief in an unattainable “something” sustains a particular ideology because belief can only be non-experiential; neither support nor deny it. The other example Zizek uses to illustrate how ideological fantasy can regulate social reality is the “displacement” and “condensation” associated with the construction of Jewishness by anti-Semites. He explains that social antagonisms become displaced from the social field onto a symbolic figure of “Jew” who comes to represent these conflicts: “the basic trick of anti- semitism is to displace social antagonism into antagonism between the sound social texture, social body, and the Jew as the force corroding it, the force of corruption” (Sublime 125). Within an ideology of anti-Semitism, Jews become an overdetermination, a symbol of more prejudice than the concept of “Jew” could possibly contain. Common prejudices against Jews, then, are not only displacements of the intense conflict that signals and accompanies cultural turmoil, they are also false symbols of Jewishness that, as i〉ek’s explains, “have nothing to do with Jews”: “The proper answer to anti-semitism is therefore not ‘Jews are really not like that’ but ‘the anti-semitic idea of Jew has nothing to do with Jews; the ideological figure of a Jew is a way to stitch up the inconsistency of our own ideological system’” (Sublime 48). This condensation of social antagonisms heaped upon the figure of “the Jew” attempts to hide the antagonistic fissures that occur as a usual function of social relations (Sublime 126). The “Jew” is not a block to social progress or a scapegoat for its failures. As Zizek explains, “society is not prevented from achieving its full identity because of Jews, it is prevented by its own antagonistic nature, by its own immanent blockage, and it projects this internal negativity onto the figure of the Jew” (Sublime 127). In general, ideological fantasy is an attempt to create uniformity through the construction of a symbolic “other” positioned as threatening to the accepted way of life and excluding this “other” from the fold. Zizek and Marcuse pose different theories about the general functioning of ideologies, yet both describe similar outcomes. For Zizek, the “pure” sign–one that represents a social element–forms the basis for ideological fantasy. For Marcuse, the linguistic sign structures the ideological dimension. Each writer views ideology as a self-validating operation that mitigates against change, individual agency, and active resistance. For instance, one of i〉ek’s main points is that ideological fantasy displaces social antagonism and prevents multiple views. Social antagonism, what Zizek observes as common among social relations, may encourage an atmosphere of cultural difference and critique. The problem occurs when dominant ideologies displace these antagonisms onto a socially excluded other and further restrict social interaction. Likewise, Marcuse maintains that in post-industrial societies, ideology, functioning at the operational level, absorbs multi-dimensional or “transcendent” modes of communication and thought.56 Just as ideological fantasy overdetermines signs, according to Marcuse, the elements of magic, authority, and ritual that already tend to permeate language function at an accelerated level within the ideological field, often restricting meaning to a single dimension and depriving discourse of the mediations required for (Marcuse 85). Reason diminishes when the dialectical play between fact and counter-fact condenses to a single dimension. In Marcuse’s words, “Without these mediations, language tends to express

56The word “transcendent” in Marcuse’s text implies a meaning that can exist outside of ideological containment.

50 and promote the immediate identification of reason and fact, truth and established truth, essence and existence, the thing and its function” (85). To support his claim that ideological discourse limits meaning, Marcuse describes how the authoritarian system–including defense laboratories, governments, managers, efficiency experts, and advertisers “induce people to do, to buy, and to accept” by using a short-handed style that condenses the structure of the sentence, leaving “no ‘space’ . . . between the parts of the sentence” (86). We see common slogans everywhere that follow this pattern: “Choose life”; “Freedom costs.” Regardless of the fact that positive words like “freedom” and “life” lose substance in both contexts, each of these slogans reflects dichotomies and negates their alternatives: choosing life suggests that the alternative is choosing death. Although accepting the cost of freedom implies an alignment with capitalism and the expense of war machinery, the main idea is sacrifice–Americans must give up some of their luxuries, pay more than usual for the price of gasoline, etc., for the temporary inconvenience of war. The phrase “freedom costs” suggests the loss of human lives, yet this phrase could be interpreted as meaning that loss of life has become a necessary means of ensuring freedom. In fact, New Hampshire’s state motto, “Live free or die,” echoes this very point. In another form of the short-hand slogan, according to Marcuse, “[t]he noun governs the sentence in an authoritarian and totalitarian fashion, and the sentence becomes a declaration to be accepted–it repels demonstration, qualification, negation of its codified and declared meaning” (87). As an illustration, he cites the following sentences: “‘peace is war’ and ‘war is peace’” (88)–statements that leave no space for negation. As a way of deflecting critique, it has become common practice for the current administration to continue to substitute simple images for more complex concepts. The substitution of “freedom fries” for “French fries” in the Capital cafeteria after the French opposed U.S. intentions of attacking Iraq reinforces a “we’re right and you’re wrong” approach to foreign policy. Substituting the word “freedom” for “French,” disassociates France with the idea of freedom as Americans see it, an idea which could be extended to viewing France as an untrustworthy ally that is not even worthy of naming. Many American restaurants joined this bandwagon by refusing to offer French wines on their menus. The government could provide sensitive leadership that not only considers dissenting opinions but respects the ethos associated with their source. Instead, it reinforces practices of exclusion and defiance. Another example of how the government deflects critique is the PATRIOT Act, an acronym for “Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism.” This Act redefines civil liberties by allowing surveillance beyond prior legal limitations; granting immunity from FISA wiretapping restrictions; monitoring foreign students; and requiring mandatory detainment of suspected terrorists (United). Critics of the Act say that it undermines civil liberties, but regardless whether their claims are true, its name–representing love and devotion to one’s country–cloaks its real purpose: to empower the government to break privacy laws. The same is true for the naming of the “Healthy Forest Act,” which is designed to prevent excessive wildfires by destroying old growth. Yet, in this case, the government grants lumber companies freedom to cut down the largest, oldest, and most profitable trees. The titles of these Acts short-circuit the oppositional functioning of critical reason by appropriating an idea the public would view as positive. Another example of an “authoritarian” kind of sentence is the Christian invocation/motto we often see on bumper stickers: “Know Jesus, know peace. / No Jesus, no peace.” Statements

51 like this reduce alternatives and reinforce binaries. As Marcuse shows, the rhetoric of operationalism would rather impose truth or falsehood than investigate it (103). Writing in the 1950s and 60s, Marcuse shows insight in predicting the power of images over concepts (95). In the new millennium, we experience more images–in magazines, commercials, billboards, television news, entertainment shows, shopping centers, video games, newspapers, flyers, posters, and print ads than ever before. A concept, according to Marcuse, differs from an image in the sense that a concept “transcends” the image; it suggests more than what can be seen or viewed from “immediate appearance”: “all cognitive concepts,” he says, “have a transitive meaning: they go beyond descriptive reference to particular facts . . .” and “beyond any particular context of facts . . . .” (106). Just as images sometimes fool us into believing we are seeing “the thing itself” (for example “airbrushed” models on magazine covers), operationalism reduces concepts to a “false concreteness” (Marcuse 106-07). Much of the American public has become so passive and under-informed that they accept misinformation and unsupported generalizations without question, and this is largely the result of ideological forces that reduce critical reason to operationalism. Contemporary rhetorician William Covino discusses the common problem of intellectual, social, and religious gullibility in his book, Magic, Rhetoric and Literacy. Using Paulo Freire’s view of “magic consciousness” for support, Covino creates a list of qualities that characterize one-dimensional thinking (quoted verbatim from Covino):57 1. The uncritical acceptance of facts, without the critical ability to see them in relationship with other facts, explicated in the natural-historical-social world. 2. The tendency to see other forms of thought as invasive. 3. Perception of oneself as “belonging to” a fixed world rather than “entering into” a transformable world. 4. Perception of transformative structures, such as industrialization, as magical phenomena. The “action” of such a transformative structure is not met by “reflection.” 5. “A diffuse, almost magical belief in the invulnerability and power of the oppressor.” (113-14) Covino’s list helps explain the ways of thinking that can influence a person’s resistance to intellectual critique. All five points seem applicable to the behavior of adherents who join cults, but Freire’s perception of “magic consciousness” can be applied to other contexts. How often do literalist congregations engage in magic consciousness when they listen to sermons about the role of women or the sinfulness of homosexuality? How common is it in classrooms today for students to accept facts uncritically? Covino uses examples from the media, describing the National Enquirer as the epitome of American “magic consciousness” and extending his argument to a critique of as well as New Age discourse (121). However, this list–especially the uncritical acceptance of facts--could apply to all levels of the media and to all levels of religious and political discourse. Returning once again to Marcuse’s discussion of operationalism and Kenneth Burke’s concept of mystery, I suggest that many believers are so caught up in the atmosphere of authority that surrounds Christian fundamentalism that they passively accept spurious generalizations for

57Covino cites Freire’s Education for Critical Consciousness (pgs. 102-6) and of the Oppressed (p. 50) as sources for this list.

52 complex truths. According to Irving Hexham, a self-proclaimed Christian, Evangelical readers of poorly researched criticisms of the New Age movement have difficulty questioning suspicious claims (162). Hexham observes how readers become passive when they rely on secular opinions to legitimate their religious views: Many Evangelicals like to think of themselves as a ‘prophetic’ minority guided by the Bible to stand ‘outside’ or ‘above’ secular culture. In reality the majority of Evangelicals are more like timid sheep who only dare embrace an issue when they are sure they have the approval of the secular world. (153) The need for “secular” approval suggests that the Christians may be following the most common reactions–from comedians to popular scientists--who reject alternative spirituality. Part of the problem is that these audiences are conditioned within and beyond the church to accept the critiques they read by Christian writers as valid without questioning or searching for alternative views. When ideas only become acceptable if they coincide with orthodox truth, reason can no longer be effective. Due to an overall lack of critical engagement with discourses considered authoritative, belief continues to define not only how nationalism and religion function but how they reproduce the sameness of their own authority. Concepts require reflection in order to resist the uniformity and reduction of operational discourse. Reflection presumes both identification (a basic, common understanding as a place to begin) as well as difference (comparing an idea or thing in relation to other ideas and things). The process of reflection cannot function without creating comparisons, differences, and exclusions. One of the side-effects of the intellect, says 19th century philosopher Henri Bergson, is that it limits and separates itself from what it sees as external. The mind forms subject/object patterns such as mind/body and self/world. Part of the process of becoming an analytical thinker, according to Bergson, includes separating concepts and making distinctions. For instance, in Creative Evolution, Bergson argues that logical thinking creates divisions, and the boundary between concept and matter grows wider as a consequence of intellectualization: The more consciousness is intellectualized, the more matter is spatialized. Thus the same movement by which the mind is brought to form itself into intellect, that is to say, into distinct concepts, brings matter to break itself up into objects excluding one another. (189) The intellect attempts to structure understanding by breaking larger parts into smaller ones, and the underlying structures of intellectual thinking are usually limited to what people can understand discursively–or as Bergson argues, to what the intellect can effectively compartmentalize. Bergson explains that the intellect can only repeat what fits into its conceptual ability to understand: “the natural function of the intellect is to bind like to like, and it is only facts that can be repeated that are entirely adaptable to intellectual conceptions” (200). As an exaggeration of the usual function of language, operational discourse often restricts meaning to the repetition of signs. In The Crack in the Cosmic Egg, Joseph Chilton Pearce explains this tendency: “The broad stream of semi-conscious belief cannot see any possibility but imitation of those actions already given form. This limits possibility to a priori modes of social acceptance, harmful or not” (109). The key word in Pearce’s statement, here, is belief. Focusing on cerebral processes alone are not enough to disempower ideological fantasy. Ideology depends upon signs, and because language is social by nature, the natural tendency of language is to migrate toward the ideological.

53 Socially and linguistically, the tendency of ideological discourses to reinforce imitation and sameness not only prevents alternative opinions that support reason, it also prevents recognition of non-dominant subjectivities. Exposing an important critique of ideologies that the other writers–all white males–have left unsaid, Luce Irigaray refers to how ideologies suppress opinions in order to maintain authority as “phallogocentrism.”58 Phallogocentric or ideological discourse systems disallow equal participation from those who do not fit the model of a idealized humanist subject. Even now, Irigaray explains, women in the most advanced civilizations of the world have no subject-status, no “role . . . marked off” for them “in the organization of property, the philosophical systems, the religious mythologies that have dominated the West for centuries” (This 67). Nearly the same is true for those who are not white or heterosexual. The exclusive framework is so persistent in its erasure of positive, non-dominant perspectives that Irigaray, among others, seeks to disrupt the discursive machinery–to remake language practices into more heterogeneous forms and, therefore, break the bonds of homogenous phallogocentrism that have limited the production of knowledge as well as the personal, cultural, and religious freedom of both women and men (This 78). The generative processes of language and writing, are, according to Irigaray, often inhibited by hierarchical, static, male-dominated (or phallic) practices. She maintains that the current exchange of ideas, rules, and commodities reinforces a socio-cultural standard of maleness in which the phallus “as emblem and agent of the patriarchal system” seems to claim itself as “the ultimate meaning of all discourse, the standard of truth and propriety . . . .” (This 67). Women, too, she says, can fall into the trap of assuming their meanings are standards of truth and propriety; for example in I Love to You, Irigaray criticizes some women for practicing “egological feminism” (2): By showing no concern for the rights all women need–including the young girls of today and tomorrow, and women of other cultures–the decisions of such groups unnecessarily perpetuate (even accentuate through misunderstanding) injustice against the female gender. (2-3) Generally, Irigaray uses the categories of male and female as representations of two socio- cultural modes. Although her arguments for an ethics of sexual difference suggest polarization or essentialism, the sexual difference she posits promotes plural, fluid, or non-dualistic interpretations of language and male and female existence. Her view is that balancing patriarchal dominance with other meanings, other ways of knowing (constructed by, for example, women and people in other cultures) would redefine and expand the former “ultimate meaning” to account for truths that had been labeled as irrational or previously unrecognized. Although Irigaray writes about sexual difference, religion, psychoanalysis, and male/female communication styles (much different topics than Marcuse’s), her critique of phallogocentrism is very similar to his discussion of operationalism. So, it is not masculinity or men per se that Irigaray wishes to rescript but the tyranny of a dominating ideology (represented by the Phallus)

58Irigaray coins the term “phallogocentrism” as a short-hand way of referring to discourse systems that are hierarchical and competitive because they only recognize ways of speaking, writing, and living that reinforce the dominant paradigm. Rather than allowing for gray areas and multiple subjectivities at once, phallogocentric systems create sharp (yet fictional) divisions between subject and object, right and wrong, physical and spiritual, masculine and feminine, etc.

54 over what is considered to be its opposite–active, respectful exchange of cultural differences.59 In addition, Irigaray’s critique of phallogocentrism shows how women have been and may continue to be denied the recognition and privileges of reason–even in its limited form. Rescripting operational discourses in the manner Irigaray suggests will continue to be a difficult challenge. Respectful exchange of cultural differences requires a different form of reason than what operational systems produce. This alterative form must also be more than a mere intellectual exercise. Bergson argues that intellectual thought is necessary for human functioning, yet the process of living involves so much more than the analysis and compartmentalization of objects. To him, the intellect . . . is awkward the moment it touches the living. Whether it wants to treat the life of the body or the life of the mind, it proceeds with the rigor, the stiffness and the brutality of an instrument not designed for such use . . . . The intellect is characterized by a natural inability to comprehend life. [italics in original] (165) How can an awareness of cultural differences be sustained, given that cognition has “a natural inability to comprehend life”? Religion, nationalism, and other ideologies rely on the human need for more than what the intellect can provide. Belief fills that gap, which is growing wider. Within operational discourse, reasoning becomes de-sensitized; the life of context reduces to binaries and simplistic slogans. These binaries resemble the process of difference that reflection and reason require, but polarization carries very little effect in a culture that is increasingly dominated by religious and political extremes. As a result, the ideas promoted by exclusive religion, nationalism, and other ideologies seem rational and legitimate. Detaching reason from emotion, values, and other functions of life empowers ideology and inhibits critical thinking. Expanding the traditional scope of reason is central to understanding and transforming ideological fantasy and operationalism. As part of that process, it is important to consider how concepts of reason have developed in relation to support exclusive religion. Although views of reason throughout history are quite varied, they have generally held one idea in common–the association of higher mental processes with the Divine. As a result, divisions between mind, emotion, and the body became more prominent, broadening the gap between whatever came to be called human, instinctual, or sinful and what came to be viewed as omnipotent and divine. Although faith and reason have generally been at odds throughout history, hierarchical constructions of reason actually support an abstract, transcendent view of the divine that is the basis of exclusive religion. In the next section, I explore how the rise of monotheism and patriarchal power displace reason.

Reason Dis(re)membered Reason has been a contested and changing concept for centuries. Ancient rhetoricians viewed reason as a controlling force, but one that does not create sharp divisions between the mind, body, soul, emotions, or desire. In the third volume of The History of Sexuality, Michel Foucault cites a definition of reason in Epictetus’s Discourses. According to Foucault’s

59Margaret Whitford’s Philosophy in the Feminine, Jean-Joseph Goux’s chapter “Luce Irigaray Versus the Utopia of the Neutral Sex” and Naomi Schor’s “This Essentialism Which is Not One: Coming to Grips with Irigaray” historicize claims of Irigaray’s essentialism and place them in a critical perspective. See Engaging With Irigaray, edited by Carolyn Burke, Naomi Schor, and Margaret Whitford, New York: Columbia UP, 1994.

55 interpretation, reason allows a person to make “free use” of the self and “‘is not to be understood as a substitute for natural faculties that might be lacking; on the contrary it is the faculty that enables one to use, at the right time and in the right way, the other faculties’” (qtd. in Care 47). In one sense, reason frees individuals from being controlled entirely by an instinct to survive, particularly in relation to security, food, and sex. Instincts and desires, however, are integrated and become part of the reasoning process. Although in the Republic Plato divides the soul into three parts, including reason, emotion, and desire, the parts are not mutually exclusive. In fact, the model philosopher, or lover of wisdom, is aptly named according to his desire for knowledge. K. W. Harrington argues that “Plato’s most frequently expressed position is to see a cooperation among the three parts of the soul, with man’s reasoning faculty guiding the functions of the lower psyche, rather than denying the demands of the other two parts” (80). He also maintains that in the Phaedrus, “the charioteer is concerned to guide and control his two horses rather than to beat either of them to death” (80). In Plato’s analogy of the charioteer, reason, the horse on the right, can be called upon to balance situations when emotion, instinct, or desire-- represented by the horse on the left--overpower a person’s thoughts and habits.60 Although the two horses struggle with each other, the unruly horse eventually submits to the guidance of the “noble” one.61 Plato’s work, as Harrington presents it, does not deny corporeality but affirms it as a cooperative element of other aspects of being. It is important to notice that the charioteer holds both horses with the reins, keeping them in balance despite the ups and downs that the unruly horse wages in its journey toward the realm of wisdom, beauty, goodness and other qualities that compose the nature of the divine (246e). Spiritual development, throughout its many forms and religious strands, generally presumes that the lower human appetites, represented by the dark horse, need to be controlled and placed in balance by the lighter horse.62 According to Plato’s analogy, the charioteer and both horses form the “composite” of the soul (246a; Loeb 471). We can make the presumption that the unruly horse will not be excluded from the higher spheres; under the guidance of the charioteer, both journey as equals. In some cases readers may judge the unruly horse to be less important than the noble one, yet in the following passage, desire and self-control are equally valuable when each is in balance. Specifically, Socrates says that one of the disadvantages of being a non-lover is that his affection which is alloyed with mortal prudence and follows mortal and parsimonious rules of conduct, will beget in the beloved soul the narrowness which the common folk praise as virtue; it will cause the soul to be a wanderer upon the earth for nine thousand years and a fool below the earth at last. (256e)63

60I’m referring to the third speech in The Phaedrus (the second speech given by Socrates).

61The sexual connotations of his discourse, however, show readers that desire cannot be entirely restrained by reason; compromise can result from a tension between both.

62Plato’s concept of reason and desire also connects to subjectivity as Mark McPhael explains in his discussion of the racism underlying the image of the dark horse.

63Plato sets up an implied contrast of affection guided by both parts of the soul. The non-lover, in this case, is overly reserved, unloving, paying too much attention to decorum. Plato associates this quality with being “mortal,” unlike the gods. If his affections were, instead, guided by his soul, they would be loving and flow more freely. 56 Thus, when desire is over-regulated by self-control, the result becomes a kind of one- dimensionality, a “narrowness” often mistaken for virtue. One assumption we could make from this image in the Phaedrus is that a balance between reason and emotion is necessary; one cannot function successfully without the other. Following Aristotle, reason becomes primarily associated with persuasive argument and scientific proof. In his categorization of irrational and rational desires, Aristotle creates a sharp distinction between the two by associating the irrational with the body and the rational with the mind.64 Likewise, his categorical interpretation of reason limits it to the confines of logos and logic. At least 25 centuries later, his intellectual view of reason is still viewed as synonymous to logos, in remote contrast to its rhetorical partners ethos and pathos. J. H. Freese translates these three terms, from Aristotle’s Art of Rhetoric, as “good sense, virtue, and goodwill” (II, I, 4-7). Although each has unique qualities, with logos generally taking the lion’s share of the credit and the profit for legitimizing the other two, separations between each of these three persist more so in theory than in practice. For Plato, desire, emotion, and reason are integrated in order to assist humans in their evolution as divine beings. Whereas for Aristotle, logos is earthly; he views the integration of reason with emotion and desire as merely a persuasive tool–not a spiritual one. Aristotle presents “truth” (which is often synonymous with reason) as contingent, or on the level of and persuasion. By categorizing truth as separate from the divine realm, his theories may have diminished concepts of reality and human potential and, at the same time, increased attention to the realm of the gods as a place for the gods alone and, thus, unreachable for humans. Several scholars discuss how Aristotle’s view of rhetoric excluded the possibility of reality as being unnamable, plural, or stylistically fluid, qualities which, previous to Aristotle’s emphasis on sequential logic, were usually associated with the work of Gorgias and other Sophists (de Romilly 70, McPhael, Kalamaras). De Romilly, for instance, says “the very structure of Aristotle’s Rhetoric offers a clear proof” that “most of the traditional parts of rhetoric were gradually absorbed by logic and thereby lost their importance” (70). Susan Jarratt explores the historical context of Greek Sophistry and makes a similar point about Aristotle’s influence. According to Jarratt, ideas about knowledge and discourse were more “fluid” “the century before Aristotle established his categories and exclusions” (Rereading xix). With the exception of the last half-century, virtue, goodwill, desire, and emotion have generally been absent from discussions of rhetoric. Although Aristotle’s approach may have contributed to an excessive focus on reason and logic, religious beliefs that associated reason with the Divine intensified this focus. In Europe, the church fathers who studied ancient rhetoric devoted very little attention to mortal matters–with the exception of using pathos and ethos in sermons to inspire soulful conversions among parishioners. Writing at least 500 years after Aristotle, Plotinus says in The Third Ennead that reality consists of a variety of systems, and in the purest of the realms, the word reason is synonymous with divinity and the intellectual sphere: “The Intellectual Sphere [the Divine] alone is Reason, and there can never be another Sphere that is Reason and nothing else . . .” He describes reason as a mediator of all spheres and systems, somewhat similar to common definitions of God/ess.

64For example, he views the body’s desire for food, taste, and sexual pleasure as irrational and labels what is rational as “those desires . . . which are due to our being convinced” (Art I, xi 5-6).

57 In a world where reason orders matter--which is a mediated concept of reason unlike another immanent divine realm he describes--the soul, a subordinate to Divine Reason, becomes the governing principal: “Its two extremes are Matter and the Divine Reason; its governing principle is Soul, presiding over the conjunction of the two, and to be thought of not as laboring in the task but as administering serenely by little more than an act of presence.” The definitions of Reason and Soul, as Plotinus uses them have the same function; the only difference here is in degree. In the pure, unmediated sphere Plotinus imagines at the top of this hierarchy, Divine Reason becomes the ultimate facilitator, a concept that links to the idea that the highest form of thought can only come from a God/ess that is separate from human life. The rise of Christianity and Christian applications of Neoplatonism supported a hierarchical view of the divine and human realms. The belief that faith is more important than reason dominated Europe for ten centuries after Justinian closed the philosophy schools in 525.65 Preparing the way during the prior century, St. Ambrose solidified the Roman Church’s stronghold over the emperor, thus elevating the power of church over state. In addition, St. Augustine, Ambrose’s student, later asserted that the mind is subject to vice unless it is “renewed” and “impregnated with faith, and so purified” (City, Book 11, Ch 2), privileging the guidance of faith over mind and body.66 Although Augustine reclaimed the ancient philosophies of Plato for the Roman Church and recognized the importance of applying reason to living a Godly life, he maintained that reason alone is too weak to discover divine truth: “the frail comprehension of man cannot master [the] . . . wonders of God’s working” (City, Book 21, Ch 5). Belief in the polarization of mind and body, or reason and desire, has always been one of the dominant features of traditional monotheism. In the writings of many philosophers following St. Augustine, definitions of reason reveal a stark mind/body dualism. In the 15th and 16th centuries, with the rise of science and education in the and the later Reformation, the dominance of faith over reason declined. In the next century, Descartes asserted that true knowledge comes from human reason alone. Somewhat like the view of reason Plotinus imagined prior to Christian influences, further promoted a compartmental view of reason in which pure reason is also a governing principle, structuring knowledge and experience so that it can be comprehended. Other rationalists of the Enlightenment tended to elevate reason also, claiming it as the fundamental source of knowledge separate from what can be discovered through sense experience, the emotions, or external authority. Just as Divine Reason came to be viewed as superior to human reason, human reason also came to be viewed as superior to the “lower” physical, emotional, and subconscious states.

65Exceptions to this include the philosophies of Boethius in the late 5th Century (who was executed by the Emperor Theodoric), and Johannes Scotus Eriugena (John the Scott) in the 9th Century. Disagreeing with the dominant theology of his day, John the Scott believed that reason was more important than and that God and nature were identical (see his “On the Division of Nature” and Pseudo-Dionysus).

66The direct quote is as follows: “[S]ince the mind itself, though naturally capable of reason and is disabled by besotting and inveterate vices not merely from delighting and abiding in, but even from tolerating His unchangeable light, until it has been gradually healed, and renewed, and made capable of such felicity, it had, in the first place, to be impregnated with faith, and so purified. And that in this faith it might advance the more confidently towards the truth, the truth itself, God . . . .” (City, Book 11, Ch 2).

58 Although the questioning of authority during the Age of Reason proved to inspire political revolutions and to criticize religious ideology that did not survive minimal tests of logic, the ongoing conflation between reason and divinity needs further critique–primarily due to the persistent belief in the traditional, monotheistic view of God as detached from human life. Plato’s image of the chariot in the Phaedrus suggests the importance of balancing reason and desire as well as valuing a holistic view of an individual’s mental, spiritual, and physical states. Yet, until recently, these ideas have not had much effect in terms of historical monotheism, Enlightenment philosophy, and the . For centuries, the intellectual and spiritual components associated with reason and self-control were viewed as being detached from emotions and the body, creating a gap between what is considered rational and irrational. Associating reason with the divine and the irrational with the human replicates the same social separations as religious legalism. Each relies upon received knowledge from an abstract, transcendental subject. I am not arguing that an overall belief in God promoted the association of reason with the divine, only that the view of God as a transcendent Being fused the two. In some cases, human access to God may be granted through the figure of a divine mediator, through practicing Talmudic law or following the Qu’ran. For each, the written Word–or religious law--becomes equated with holiness, power, and sovereignty. The Qu’ran, for instance, privileges the separation between the written signifier and divine signified so much that it forbids images to be associated with worship. The Mosaic tablets, carried across the desert in the Ark of the Covenant, eventually occupied the holiest spot in the first temple. In each tradition, the strong links between words and images--or signifers and their signifieds--became stretched to abstraction in the creation of a transcendent Other. Throughout history, as views of the divine became objectified and holy, humans came to view themselves as unworthy and, thus, separate from God. From a monotheistic point of view, when God’s law, God’s power, God’s message becomes anthropomorphized as an unchanging, pure, ultimate sign, other sacred laws, powers, and messages can only be viewed as imitations. Like i〉ek’s example with Coke, the anthropomorphic view of God/ess attempts to represent the unrepresentable. Exclusive religion relies on the “Divine Father” image which, due to its status as a pure signifier, is overdetermined (just as its “opposite” is also overdetermined). God the Father is viewed as the pure source of wisdom, love, power, and righteousness; humans, on the contrary, are viewed as ignorant, somatic, and powerless. If we perceive a Supreme Being as pure signifier, a symbolic representation of humanity must follow, creating–at least for most of the American public who claim to be Christian–a self-fulfilling “sinner mentality.” The ideological figure of humans, then, becomes a symbol of more sin than the concept of man or woman could contain. Christianity purifies itself of this symbolic problem by promoting salvation as a solution. Non- Christians absorb the blame of humanity’s corruption; however, those who become believers no longer sin habitually or out of ignorance. They live “a new life in Christ.” “God” as the ultimate signified, comes to represent the whole, which ironically creates divisions of religious perspectives that tend to condemn alternative points of view. Explaining that “the Other constitutes a love of sameness that has no recognition of itself,” Irigaray identifies the tendency of patriarchal culture to mask difference unreflectively. Furthermore, she says, this “love of sameness . . . is raised to the dimension of a transcendent that ensures and guards the whole world entity. In this way God functions as the keystone of language, of sign

59 and symbol systems” (Ethics 112). The Divine as pure signifier, then, represents how phallogocentrism functions in the extreme, reproducing itself rather than recognizing alternative points of view. Furthermore, this idea of “sameness” or, in other words, an unmediated sphere of reason, supports a hierarchical view of the universe in which the pure signifier or Divine Logos reigns in transcendence. Although Irigaray’s work is not primarily theological, she writes about religion frequently and expresses her opinions on divinity and its sex-linked distinctions in several previous works, including Amante Marine; Je, Tu, Nous; This Sex Which is Not One, Sexes and Genealogies, and Speculum. In Je, Tu, Nous, for example, she describes women’s detachment from divine subjectivity as a truncation of their selfhood and connection to other women: The loss of divine representation has brought women to a state of dereliction, which is felt all the more because sensible representation is our primary method of figuration and communication. It has left us without a means of designating ourselves, of expressing ourselves, between ourselves. It has also separated mothers from daughters, depriving them of mutually respectful mediums of exchange. It has subjected them to a reproductive order–natural and spiritual–that is governed symbolically by men. (111) I believe that few women today are conscious of the exclusions Irigaray mentions: the lack of female representations of divinity, the mistrust of “feminine ,” and other kinds of sensory-based knowledge.67 In fact, it seems more common for both women and men to see ministers and priests as God’s representatives and congregations as submissive receptacles of divine guidance. Irigaray takes this point to its most extreme implication, saying that women are viewed as having “no soul”: Women take part in the divine becoming, in the engendering of “God.” But that mediation is often forgotten. Women serve the apparition of the god but do not appear themselves as divine. As mothers of God, as servants of the Lord, yes. As consorts of the god, as incarnations of the divinity, no. In fact women have no soul. (Ethics 106-07) As Irigaray points out, in relation to their status in most religious orthodoxy, women are viewed as having “no soul” unless they serve a function in relation to men. The impact of male- dominant religious beliefs upon social practices in many regions of the world cannot be overestimated. In terms of this impact, maintains that “the basic thing that all patriarchal religions are about is taking over the symbolic power of giving birth.” She illustrates her point with examples from a man “who is a historian of architecture and is certainly not a feminist.”68 Steinem’s reading of this historian’s work emphasizes what many people already

67Some scientists are discovering that the brain is not the only center of “knowledge” within the human body. Neural pathways extend to the stomach as well as the heart. See Chris Mercogliano and Kim Debus, “An Interview with Joseph Chilton Pearce,” Journal of Family Life, 5.1 (1999), and Rollin McCraty et al, “Electrophysiological Evidence of Intuition: The Suprising Role of the Heart,” Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine, 10.1 (2004): 133-43.

68Steinem does not mention the author’s name, and after I wrote her requesting information, she said she does not remember the source. But with or without a textual reference from a historian, the information here rings true to the design of every Christian church I have visited–including Gothic cathedrals in Germany, large Catholic and Baptist sanctuaries in the United States, and even modest chapels.

60 know through general observation: that the curved ceilings, side and center aisles, front sanctuaries and outer vestibules of many churches resemble the ovarian, uterine, and vaginal symmetry of a woman’s reproductive organs. She mentions that this resemblance is not only true with Episcopalian and Catholic churches but also Hindu temples.69 For example, from the church entrance, the aisles, the shape of the area surrounding the altar and the location of the pulpit, Steinem emphasizes the author’s discussion of the discursive and architectural resemblances between a woman’s womb and the church building itself: He said, of course, there’s always an outer entrance, the labia majora, a little area, vestibule, the words are even the same. Labia minora--there’s always a vaginal aisle that comes up the center. Then there are two curved ovarian structures on either side. And then there’s the altar, where the miracle takes place–which is the womb, basically. At this point, Steinem uses the details to create her own, powerful description of the major purpose of patriarchal religion and its affect on both women and men. Near the altar, she says, is where men say, in various ways, in different religions, “Okay you were born in sin because you were born of woman, this inferior creature. It’s a nasty break, but if you obey all the rules of the patriarchal religion and agree to be reborn through men, symbolically, we will sprinkle imitation birth fluid over your head, and we will give you a new name and you will be reborn through men.” (Steinem) Male appropriation of the act of birth functions hierarchically and masks the sexual differences between women and men. Similar to Kenneth Burke’s theory that mystery reinforces hierarchy and uncritical belief in authority, church doctrine that follows a masculine mode not only reasserts the subordination of women but protects its oppressive policies under sanction as divinely inspired church law. If a church policy is viewed as divinely inspired, it becomes indelible to external review; its authority, then, remains unquestioned as long as the denomination remains true to its founding principles. Many congregations, it seems, either unconditionally accept the patriarchal system as standard or fail to see how extensively these religious ideologies limit people’s daily lives, words, thoughts, and spiritual beliefs. Revolutionizing male-dominated, non-reciprocal worship styles of mainstream dogmas is, in fact, one of the most profound aspects of Irigaray’s feminist discourse. Views of a male divinity transcendent from human form and representative of ultimate truth, in Irigaray’s opinion, reinforce a cultural imbalance that privileges patriarchy and opposes the integration of sexual difference. She says that when paradise represented in the Garden of Eden became reduced from “the flesh of the visible” to “the perspective of the knowledge of good and evil,” a dramatic change resulted, transforming the world of the senses into something forbidden (Ethics 164). The legacy of the fall means living with an excess of dichotomies, judgments, self- detachment, and abstraction (Ethics 164), all of which support a subject/object modality

69Although in Europe, medical knowledge of the internal structure of a woman’s body was less abstract after the 17th century, the Pantheon (built in the early second century) and St. Peter’s Basilica (built at various stages between 1506 and 1667) illustrate the womb model (see photos in Dupré, 63). Some churches from the 13th century were built in terms of a cross-like structure that also resembles the outline of a woman’s ovaries and vagina (Santa Maria Del Fiore, in Florence, and the cathedral at Chartres, for instance). Several contemporary churches also imitate the cross and/or womb-like design–for instance Kresge Chapel at MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts, St. John’s Abbey and University Church, in Collegeville, , Cathedral Basilica of St. Louis, and San Francisco De Asis, in Taos, New Mexico.

61 stemming from the sublimation of the corporeal. The separation, however, is not static. According to Irigaray, it degenerates constantly into “social crises, to individual illnesses, to schematic and fossilized identities for both sexes, as well as to a general sclerosis of discourse . . . .” (Irigaray, Ethics 135). As cultural disruptions continue, the need for a divine Other, separate from earthly problems, grows even greater. A common view of the function of spirituality is that it facilitates human transcendence from the world. But what substitutes for “the world” is, in most cases, the all too human, forbidden qualities of the senses that, historically the Roman church and most of Western culture from early history through the 20th century associate with others deemed as inadequate or subordinate. Philosopher Genevieve Lloyd further explains that the idea of “[t]ranscendence,” in its origins, “is a transcendence of the feminine,” and “a repudiation of what is supposedly signified by the female body” (101, italics in original). In I Love to You, Irigaray describes this gap in no uncertain terms: “It would seem, then, that human kind has not reached the age of reason. It is still suspended between divinity and animality. As if man were the divine for the female animal realm” (36). Monotheism has indeed contributed to reducing women’s status or reinforcing their subordination in many cultures. Yet we cannot exclude the possibility that, in addition to the impact of religion, the social subordination of women might also be connected to rapid cultural changes that reinforce social insecurities. To expand Irigaray’s statement, mankind has not yet reached the age of holistic reason, including the holistic balancing of the intellect and intuition, or holistic concepts of divinity that would perceive God/ess as equal to life and humans as divine co-creators of their world. Writer Ursula Le Guin mentions the limitations of viewing the Divine as the supreme resource of rationality in Dancing at the Edge of the World: “The father tongue is spoken from above. It goes one way. No answer is expected, or heard” (149). Unlike this example, holistic reason does not silence other voices; instead, it listens, expects, and inquires. Yet, the concept of holistic reason cannot be applied to dominant conceptions of God/ess that remain entrenched in Euro-American culture. Due to the effects of cultural turmoil and the politics of religious exclusivism, reason and divinity exist in a realm of mono-dimensional meanings. Like Le Guin, Foucault illustrates a similar point about the problem of mono-dimensional views of truth in his book This is Not a Pipe, a study of paintings by the early 20th century painter, René Magritte. Through his paintings, Magritte politicizes the separation between signifier and signified in attempt to create new meanings as alternatives to discursive patterns that resist multiplicity. Foucault writes, Just as in Sausurean words do not “refer” to things, in Magritte’s Surrealism the painter’s images do not really “resemble” anything whose sovereign presence would lend it the aspect of a model or origin . . . . Magritte’s involves deploying largely familiar images, but images whose recognizability is immediately subverted and rendered moot by “impossible,” “irrational,” or “senseless” conjunctions. (This 7-8) In attempt to break any possible static representation of meaning concerning his paintings, Magritte’s work ranges from superimposing a carrot on a wine bottle, juxtaposing a rock and a cloud, an easel fading into a landscape, and a pipe floating above the phrase “Ceci n’est pas une pipe.” Obviously, Magritte’s work suggests that meaning cannot be concrete, unchanging, or contained within a single image, sign, or word but a complex system of intimations in flux.

62 Foucault discusses how the painting’s words and images illustrate many oppositional and ghost- like meanings that are true and not-true all at the same time (This 49): the relation of language to painting is an infinite relation. It is not that words are imperfect or that, when confronted by the visible, they prove insuperably inadequate. Neither can be reduced to the other’s terms: it is in vain that we say what we see; what we see never resides in what we say. And it is in vain that we attempt to show, by the use of images, metaphors, or similes, what we are saying; the space where they achieve their splendor is not that deployed by our eyes but that defined by the sequential elements of . (qtd. in Harkness 9)70 The reality of language is that words and images create an excess of meanings that sometimes enriches, malfunctions, or splinters in new directions. Foucault’s point is that our tendency to expect seamless meaning is false. I would add, however, that Magritte’s paintings disengage one-dimensional thinking and inspire wonder–what Foucault calls “splendor.” Wonder opens meaning for exploration whereas mystery shuts down alternatives and rests on a single, authoritative unknown: belief. Integrating reason and wonder inspires creative ideas that overstep ideological constraints. Chapter Four begins with a discussion of wonder (as discussed by Irigaray, Jean Luc Nancy, and others), which is followed by an illustration of how New Age discourse engages wonder as a way of deconstructing the negative effects of operationalism and mystery.

70Harkness quotes from Foucault’s The Order of Things (New York: Pantheon, 1970), a of Les Mots et les choses.

63

Part II: Exploring Wonders

64 Chapter 4 Revolutionizing the Discourses of Reason and Faith

We are perishing for want of wonder, not for want of wonders. - G. K. Chesterton

As I mentioned in the introduction, the phrase “signs and wonders,” used frequently in the old and new testaments, tends to appear in two opposite contexts–either the miraculous or the counterfeit. The phrase also appears as an excerpted verse on the title page of Parmahansa Yogananda’s Autobiography of a Yogi: “‘Except ye see signs and wonders, ye will not believe,’” from John 4:48. The introduction offers no explanation as to why the famous Hindu yogi included this puzzling inscription. Throughout the book, Yogananda often records instances in which his mentor produces a miracle or performs an out-of-body illusion so as to be in two places at the same time. His mentor also seems to know everything an instant before it happens, and, in contrast, Yogananda sees himself as impatient and inept. The inscription, then, may be his way of suggesting that--just like the crowd Jesus admonishes in the original story--he often has difficulty believing without these signs and wonders as proof. In one case, however, Yogananda’s experience erases his doubts. He explains that after he has meditated for hours with no “breakthrough,” his master enters, assuring him, essentially, that he will achieve his heart’s desire. The mentor then leans over and touches Yogananda’s chest with his finger, an act that, we are told, opens the yogi’s mind to . Yogananda explains, My body became immovably rooted . . . Soul and mind instantly lost their physical bondage and streamed out like a fluid piercing light from my every pore . . . . My sense of identity was no longer narrowly confined to a body but embraced by the circumambient . People on distant streets seemed to be moving gently over my own remote periphery. The roots of plants and trees appeared through a dim transparency of the soil; I discerned the inward flow of their sap. The whole vicinity lay before me. My ordinary frontal vision was now changed to a vast spherical sight, simultaneously all-perceptive. (142) Both outwardly transcendent and inwardly rich, his vision connects not only his soul but his mind to atoms, people, plants, and trees. Notice that he refers to his “sense of identity” as “no longer . . . confined to a body,” yet, at the same time, his body is “immovably rooted.” At the end, he claims his sight to be “all-perceptive”–a term most congregationalists would associate only with God. Even though this description of a single meditation is unique to Yogananda, the concept of wonder it illustrates provides an alternative theoretical basis for countering the negative effects of exclusive religion. Yogananda’s experience could be more broadly applied as a model of spiritual development that does not require God/ess to be a separate Being. In the following pages, I present this model and the concept of wonder associated with it as offering greater potential for social transformation than what we have observed from dominant religious traditions for well over a dozen centuries. Yogananda’s experience awakens his senses to a kind of human awareness and connection with the world outside himself that most church doctrines ignore or view as irrational. The ideological constraints that fortify conventional religion actually depend upon the gap between divinity and humanity. In order for the major denominations to survive, humans must always be considered erring and unworthy creatures subject to God’s sovereignty and grace. The fact that 99% of the American public believes in God is not enough to justify the

65 need for churches. Churches exist because the major religions have constructed a God who is a Being. If God is a sovereign “Who,” then S/He would most likely require something of his or her subjects–they must not only obey divinely given laws but also, according to most Evangelicals, believe that humans are incapable of pleasing God or achieving divinity on their own. What is important about Yogananda’s account here is his self-transformation; this vision marks a significant change from his view of himself as an inept student to one who sees better than Superman–since this X-Ray vision not only pierces through soil and into the roots of plants and trees but also expands peripherally. With increasing intensity, Yogananda feels, sees, and becomes part of everything around him. His senses become finer and he experiences a sense of “being” rather than “knowing.” After this point in his life, Yogananda witnesses within himself the wonders he has only seen others experience. For him, the mystery that formerly isolated the impermeable, incomprehensible divine sign disappears. Because such divine beingness resists containment, it challenges the boundaries of signification and views of received knowledge–often rendering them invalid or insufficient. According to Paul Tillich, views of a personal God fail to account for the material structure of the physical universe and destroy “any meaningful idea of God” (130). He prefers the concept of a transpersonal God as “the ground of being” (41). So, if God/ess is “Beingness” rather than a sovereign entity, how does this affect human agency? Armstrong’s discussion of Tillich’s theology emphasizes that a transpersonal view of God restores our social connection to life and our personal connection to ourselves: “Participation in such a God above ‘God’ does not alienate us from the world but immerses us in reality. It returns us to ourselves” (History 383). Even within a powerful ideological field such as exclusive religion, a sense of wonder, or beingness, can cause the divine/human binary to collapse temporarily. The following example is fiction, yet it is a model of how Yogananda’s vision can apply to a conventionally religious context. In a passage from ’s Death Comes for the Archbishop, Father Vaillant says, “The miracles of the Church seem to me to rest not so much upon faces or voices or healing power coming suddenly near to us from afar off, but upon our perceptions being made finer, so that for a moment our eyes can see and our ears can hear what is there about us always.” (50) Yogananda’s experience did not come from afar; his perceptions were “made finer” so that his eyes could see and ears could hear what is always there around him–finding the extraordinary in what previously seemed unremarkable. Traditional monotheism reinforces the dualism between heaven and earth; however, New Age theories challenge this binary by disrupting the divine/human opposition and asserting a mystical sense of oneness between the (or God/ess) and human life. Erasing the divine/human binary challenges the realm of the mysterious that previously suppressed knowledge and subjectivity. The authority maintained by mystery functions primarily to preserve the system and render questioning suspect. Reason and critical thinking, of course, involve inquiry, considering multiple sources, , comparisons, and reliability, but mystery–functioning in the extreme–prohibits exploratory thinking. Returning to Burke’s definition, “mystery” can refer to “shutting the eyes”–the opposite of exploration (Motives 123).

66 Because wonder is exploratory, as in the case of Yogananda’s revelation, it counteracts the negative qualities of mystery. In this case, wonder can combine with reason (or “mind” as Yogananda describes) in order to recognize alternative viewpoints, resist dichotomization, and challenge ideological containment. Wonder also lacks the appropriative manner of signification that elicits unity and sameness; in fact, it resists signification by inspiring a sense of awe that defies definition. Several critics and philosophers have written about the power of wonder. As Tanner mentions in The Reign of Wonder, Rousseau’s interpretation of wonder depends “on the interpreting mind” (3), whereas Carlysle’s dismisses analysis (7-11). The American literary tradition from the Transcendentalists through the 20th century, according to Tanner, tends to follow Carlysle’s emphasis on the importance of wonder. Emerson, who held Carlysle’s work in high esteem, valorized wonder to such a degree that, to him, it exceeded the constraints of philosophy to become “almost a way of life” (Tanner 10). Although Tanner says that he is “not trying to suggest that American writers’ interest in and use of these ideas was in any sense unique and without parallel,” he observes that “‘wonder’ was put to much more far-ranging uses in American writing than in any other literature” (10). Westward expansion influenced this specific trend as well as a new emphasis on naturalness–in terms of greater attention to nature as well as the pre-analytic state of awe experienced by children, which developed as a contrast to the 18th Century’s emphasis on order, reason, and analysis. Although Wordsworth’s poetry also equates this innocence with wisdom, addressing a child as a “philosopher” in “Intimations of Immortality,” Tanner asserts that from Emerson and Whitman and continuing, to some extent, on through Fitzgerald, the new American Romanticism became obsessed with a rejection of analysis as the primary revelation of truth. In addition to Tanner’s general that Emerson and Rousseau observe the relationship between “the act of seeing and the thing seen,” wonder, according to both Rousseau and Emerson, involves viewing wholes in connection to and as compilations of parts. For example, Tanner cites an excerpt from The Confessions in which Rousseau describes how different observers study plants: “Others, at the sight of these treasures of nature, feel nothing more than a stupid and monotonous admiration. They see nothing in detail because they know not for what they look, nor do they perceive the whole, having no idea of the chain of connection and combinations which overwhelms with its wonders the mind of the observer” (Tanner 3).71 Similarly, in the Emersonian concept of “The Oversoul,” the identity of each human is the soul of the whole; the wise silence; the universal beauty, to which every part of the particle is related; the eternal ONE. And this deep power in which we exist and whose beatitude is all accessible to us, is not only self-sufficing and perfect in every hour, but the act of seeing and the thing seen the seer and the spectacle, the subject and the object are one. (246) Although Emerson makes a broader assumption than Rousseau about the connection between the observer and the observed, the importance of the fluid relationship between universals and their particulars is clear. The blending of human with “the eternal ONE” is another way of describing Yogananda’s vision, for Emerson describes humanity as being one with nature–with all of life– which is how many mystical traditions describe divinity.

71Tanner’s reference is Rousseau’s Confessions, edited by William Glaisher, London, 1925, p. 524.

67 Returning again to the contrasting meanings of the word “mystery” or “muein”: “‘to initiate into the mysteries,’ and . . . ‘to shut the eyes’” (Burke, Motives 123), the reference to initiation correlates with the concept of wonder or the miraculous. Although terms like mystery, wonder, and the miraculous are inexact and blur into each other, each word is an attempt to capture a sense of the unknowable and indefinable. In combination with each other, signs and wonders (or miracles and wonders, based on a more exact translation of the Aramaic text) can stretch us toward new growth, new thoughts, and new actions through a refinement of what is already part of ourselves. Irigaray’s discussion of wonder relates to this concept of divinity also. She calls it “the encounter between the most material and the most metaphysical . . . the forgotten ground of our condition between mortal and immortal” (Ethics 82). In relation to subjectivity, wonder is “a mourning for the self as an autarchic entity . . . .” (Ethics 75). If we understand the word “autarchic” to mean “sovereign,” then wonder could be a yearning for a kind of selfhood that is free to exist without limit, free to express a sense of beingness beyond egotism, shame, or constraint. Following Descartes, Irigaray says that wonder is the “first of all the passions”; because “it is the motivating force behind mobility in all its dimensions,” we need wonder in order to be moved (Ethics 73).72 Because what we encounter through wonder is always new to us, it resists assimilation, appropriation, and “reduction to sameness” (Irigaray Ethics 75). What causes wonder is, as she says, “our attraction to that which is not yet (en)coded, our curiosity . . . vis-à- vis that which we have not yet encountered or made ours” (Ethics 75). Since wonder appears first to us, prior to emotions and concepts, it may be a constructive way of nurturing an atmosphere of mediation and difference as long it remains balanced: excessive curiosity should be supplemented by critical reason and understanding, whereas a lack of wonder indicates an absence of intellectual engagement (Irigaray, Ethics 79). Making a similar point about how wonder resists ideological stasis, Jean Luc Nancy explains, “Wonder itself is a kind of sign without signification, and the sign--the index or signal- -that signification is verging upon its limit, and that meaning is laid bare” (67). In contrast to operational reason, wonder cannot be drawn toward permanent definition or universals; its meaning is empty yet limitlessness and impossible to ground as final. Because of its emptiness, subjectivity can be “opened” to other forms rather than only what is constructed ideologically. Also, what Irigaray describes as the space between the material and metaphysical, Nancy explains as a dispersed zone that is “irreducibly material and absolutely spiritual,” a “community of meaning” without signification (66). In what he perceives as a time of cultural crisis, Nancy’s discussion of wonder serves as a basis for progressive change. He argues for a return of meaning (which indicates an openness, a sense of wonder about life) rather than a return to meaning (which implies a move backward to a pre-existing, static definitions and significations) (xi). The difference Nancy mentions between returning to pre-existing traditions or exploring open meanings compares to the established view of God as a Being versus views of God/ess as Beingness. It also compares to the dichotomization of exclusive religion and New Age mysticism today. Although New Age writers have revived ancient texts (and, in this sense, reinitiated a return to meaning), what some call “the wisdom of the ages” is exploratory and can

72She refers to René Descartes, The Passions of the Soul, from The Philosophical Works of Descartes, Vol 1, trans. E. S. Haldane and G. R. T. Ross (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1931; reprinted, Dover, 1955).

68 be recognized by its openness to new concepts. As “the Lord” says in the : “even / a man who asks about yoga / goes beyond formal religion” (Section 6, stanza 44). This theme of going beyond “formal religion” could not be more in line with the primary impetus of the New Age Movement. The term “New Age” was relatively unknown over 50 years ago even though some authors were using it. , for example, refers to the term in the title of one of her books (Discipleship in the New Age, first printed in 1944), telling her readers, “The New Age is upon us and we are witnessing the birth pangs of the new culture and the new civilisation” (74).73 Before that, in 1935, New Age Bible Interpretations by Corrine Heline was published in California by the New Age Press. Until around 1987, what we now call New Age books were catalogued under the heading of “occult” or “parapsychology.” Those terms are used less often now, and national bookstore chains categorize New Age sections with a wide range of topics including but not limited to alien abduction, Native American spirituality, Zen Buddhism, past lives, angels, tarot cards, and the I-Ching. From its beginnings the New Age Movement has attracted adherents who seek alternatives to the traditional view of God and human life. However, because of its “flaky” image and negative publicity, many, like and others, distance themselves from being associated with the “New Age” label.74 Critiques of “New Age” or alternative spirituality abound in many circles–from the halls of academia to church pews. Literary scholar Harold Bloom claims that New Age texts are often vacuous (19). Others, like social critic Wendy Kaminer, view them as irrational, self-aggrandizing, and misleading. Many radical Evangelicals associate New Age teachings with devil-worship; even the Harry Potter series has been labeled by a few as “Satanic.”75 In each case, the language of the critics resorts to operational constructions–dichotomy, reduction, and containment. Regardless of the New Age Movement’s “palm-reading-psychic-in-the-tent” reputation, some of what scholars and others used to dismiss concerning New Age texts may actually provide a range of important phenomena, including mistrust of exclusive meanings, critique of institutional power and authority, an expanded

73Wouter Hanegraaff mentions in a footnote that one researcher, Christoph Bochinger, disagrees that Bailey uses the term “New Age” first and credits William Blake with the first use of it in his preface to Milton in 1804 (qtd. in Hanegraaff, 95-96). Blake, then, according to Hanegraaff’s reading of Bochinger, inspired other writers whose ideas seem in line with New Age philosophies, and those writers have not only cited Blake’s work but also the texts of those who discuss Blake . . . and so on. As his source, Hanegraaff cites Bochinger, “New Age” und Moderne Religion: Religionswissenschaftliche Untersuchunger, Chr. Kaiser: Gütersloh, 1994.

74See Wilber’s article, “Baby-Boomers, Narcissism, and the New Age,” Vajradhatu Sun (October/November 1987). I also think Harold Bloom’s claim to be a Gnostic could place him in the New Age category.

75Although I am referring to the work of popular Christian author Caryl Matrisciana, I don’t wish to overgeneralize about fundamentalists here. Michael G. Maudlin, an online executive editor of Christianity Today, says he believes book-burning Potter critics only represent a small percentage of Christian readers. Maudlin’s essay, “Virtue on a Broomstick,” presents a fair discussion of varying Christian responses, noting that Charles Colson and Richard Mouw, a Seminary President, view the J. K. Rowling texts positively. He also cites a newsletter article by Lindy Beam, a writer employed by the organization, Focus on the Family, headed by James Dobson. Beam, he says, does not condemn the books, but warns parents that reading the series might “de-sensitize” children to witchcraft. In addition, the New Age category encompasses many different spiritual traditions and should not be viewed as synonymous to witchcraft, which is often used as a reductive label for or Wiccan beliefs.

69 approach to reason, and an integrated view of selfhood. A more detailed discussion of each subtopic follows throughout the rest of this chapter.

Mistrust of Exclusivity and Dualistic Thinking According to Wade Clark Roof, people of the baby-boomer generation tend to be “fluid in their allegiances” (8), and although this tendency may account for a general of anxiety in America, the growth and success of the New Age Movement is largely due to spontaneous reactions against widespread belief in binaries that not only attempt to entrench sharp distinctions between mind, soul, and body but also contribute to stereotypic judgements about others. However people seem to categorize New Age ideas, and whether or not “New Age” is a definitive category, its philosophies are indeed very adaptive to many kinds of spiritual traditions associated with mysticism and esotericism. For instance, New Agers who claim Buddhism as their primary spiritual practice would refer to themselves as Buddhists rather than New Agers; the same is true for many people who are Unitarian, Presbyterian, Methodist, or Catholic. New Age approaches easily combine with other methods of personal spiritual development. One unifying element between the variety of seekers who could be called New Agers–while ignoring clear-cut distinctions scholars researching the movement may prefer–is their expansive view of divinity as already part of everything that exists, including themselves, which challenges the traditional view of God as holy and, thus, separate from secular life. The expansive view of the divine, by extension, implies a certain skepticism of sin and its power to separate humans from God. Social critics and historians of religion have traced New Age influences to a variety of figureheads and historical trends.76 In spite of the relatively new emergence of the movement itself, the term “New Age” is a actually a misnomer since the philosophies upon which it is based are very ancient.77

76A few scholarly discussions of the New Age Movement are surfacing in book form. The first of these was published in 1989 by Mary Bednarowski: New Religions and the Theological Imagination in America. Although the Movement seems to be a relatively a new subject of scholarly interest, and (like many books about controversial topics in religion) might be viewed as suspect, anyone who consults the work of Wouter Hanegraaff, James R. Lewis, Gordon Melton, or Antoine Faivre would no longer have these doubts. Hanegraaff, who teaches in the department of theology , Utrecht University, Netherlands, has published a very thorough, nearly 600-page survey of this movement and its dominant themes, particularly in the perspective of its European roots and influences. Faivre, a professor of religious studies in Sorbonne, has published extensively on the history of a variety of theosophies and their influence upon . For a more thorough understanding of the complex and influences than I could possibly present in these pages, I suggest reading Hanegraaff’s New Age Religion and Western Culture, Faivre’s , Imagination, Tradition: Studies in Western Esotericism, and also Modern Esoteric Spirituality, a book Faivre co-edited with Needleman. Also see Perspectives on the New Age, a series of essays edited by Lewis and Melton, and Not Necessarily the New Age, edited by Robert Basil. Although I cite these scholars as necessary, what I present in this chapter offers ideas that Hanegraaff, Lewis, Melton, and Faivre have not yet discussed (at least in the texts I’ve mentioned above).

77Early translations of the Upanisads and the Tao Te Ching broadened Euro-American perspectives of non-Western religion and culture and inspired the beginnings of New Age thought in particular. The initial appearance of English versions of Hindu scriptures, according to Andrea Grace Diem and James R. Lewis, influenced the transcendentalists, particularly Thoreau, who “read Charles Wilkins’ translation of the Bhagavad Gita on a regular basis during his stay at Walden Pond” (54). The philosophies of Transcendentalism and those that underpin the New Age Movement have some of the same roots. As listed in the WorldCat database, the first publication in English of the Tao Te Ching appeared in 1868, ninety-nine years after its first French edition. It is not a coincident that the 70 In many of these sacred texts from antiquity, as well as in their contemporary re- interpretations, the divisions between spiritual and corporeal worlds are critiqued as false or presented as nonexistent. Views of the self as divine and transpersonal rather than strictly physical also predominate many ancient texts. Overall, the tendency to contextualize opposites in these texts reflects a general distrust of perceiving reality as having anything but permeable boundaries.78 For instance, common elements in Pythagorean and earlier Egyptian thought included a belief in the unmediated harmony of mind/spirit/body/earth, a belief in the transmigration of the soul, and the metaphysical connection between numbers and the structure of the universe. These tenets formed the basis of the “Black African cosmic principle of harmony,” called “Ma’at,” or what Dinawa calls “the African equivalent of the Chinese Tao” (30)79: To the worshipers of Ma’at, the universe is the result of the union of complementary elements–cosmic unity in diversity; the procreative embrace of the sky and earth, past and future, the immortality of the womb and the tomb, even the upper and lower kingdoms of . Even today, Zulus echo this ancient understanding in the declaration, “I am river, mountain, tree, love, emotion, beauty, lake. I am cloud, sun, sky, mine, One with One. (Dinawa 30) These principles, according to Dinawa, “are still woven in and through traditional communities of today’s Black Africa”: “Love of children, valuing fertility, extended families, societal good before individual desire, caretaking [of] the environment, festivals for agriculture, rites of passage, and honoring ancestors and elders” (31). To know Ma’at was to believe in the sacredness of speech; “an orator well-versed in the principles of Ma’at connected the past to the present,” practiced harmony, and “unified himself with his audience” (Dinawa 32). The blending of natural and supernatural worlds is a dominant theme in the ancient Mayan text, the Popol Vuh, which relates a story about the beginnings of the earth and how humans developed from gods. The gods are not entirely benevolent, and neither are the humans; however, at one point in the text, between Parts III and IV, the gods begin to act like humans and the humans develop god-like qualities. The writers of the text (scripting the alphabetic version from hieroglyphics) explain that these new people saw perfectly: “As they looked, their knowledge became intense. Their sight passed through trees, through rocks, through lakes, through seas, through mountains, through plains” (Tedlock 147). The gods, however, took these powers away from the humans fearing that they would become too much like themselves, yet the yearning for humans to become great continued throughout the history of the Quiché people (Tedlock 58, 148). Dennis Tedlock explains in his introduction to the Popol Vuh that in the

popularity of the Tao has also progressed simultaneously with the New Age movement itself; since the 1960s, reproductions of the Tao multiplied by a third, and between 1988 and 2000, ten to twenty-three versions were published each year.

78Despite the equanimity many ancient texts show toward women, some of the incorporated male/female roles and symbols reinforce cultural standards of female subordination. At least one passage in the Upanishads, for example, recommends that a husband beat his wife “with a stick or with his fists . . .” if she should refuse his sexual advances (Brhad∼ranyaka Upanisad 6.4.7). Wife-beating, however, does not correspond with “the grandest thought” of what humans can be; thus, this passage within the Upanishads would be one that New Agers would reject as useful.

79C.W. Ceram, in Gods, Graves, and Scholars describes the Mayan sense of beauty as primarily mathematical also.

71 tablets believed to have been created during the Classic Mayan period (around 600 C.E), the middle panel switches from divine characters to human ones, which according to Tedlock, is an example of how myth and history blend in Mayan (58). By way of comparison, Tedlock says that the Egyptian Book of the Dead would need a second half devoted to human deeds in the land of the living, and the Hebrew Testament would need a first half devoted to events that took place before the fall of Adam and Eve. In the case of ancient Chinese literature, the Book of Changes, which is like the Popol Vuh in being subject to divinatory interpretation, would have to be combined with the Book of History in a single volume. (59) The breadth of the Popol Vuh illustrates a balance between the physical and metaphysical, and as these two ancient examples show, the unity of the spiritual and material worlds and as well as between humans, gods, and nature resists exclusive dualisms between divinity and humanity. In common with these other ancient examples, a dialogue about the self being one with the “Whole” appears in the Brhad∼ranyaka Upanisad, the oldest of the Upanisads, and occurs between Y∼jñavalkya, a teacher, and Maitrey♣, his wife. After explaining that love for spouses, children, wealth, power, others, and gods all extend “out of love for oneself,” Y∼jñavalkya tells her “it is one’s self (∼tman) which one should see and hear, and on which one should reflect and concentrate. For by seeing and hearing one’s self, and by reflecting and concentrating on one’s self, one gains the knowledge of this whole world” (2.4.4-5). In the next passage, he takes this philosophy further, describing how the physical and spiritual self are one with the earth and , or the Whole: “The radiant and immortal person in the earth and, in the case of the body (∼tman), the radiant and immortal person residing in the physical body–they are both one’s self (∼tman). It is the immortal; it is brahman; it is the Whole” (2.5.1). Although Patrick Olivelle notes that the terms ∼tman and brahman have no simple definition, he explains that ∼tman usually refers to either the physical body or “some ‘spiritual’ core of a human being” (lv). Brahman, he says, “may mean ‘a formulation of truth,’ the Veda, or the ultimate and basic essence of the cosmos” (lvi). The final Upanisad maintains that ∼tman and brahman are one, which, on one level, could refer to a person becoming aware of his or her place in the world or purpose in life. In the broadest sense, it could suggest oneness between “life” and whatever we might identify as its Creator. Olivelle interprets this passage as an “equation . . . between }tman, the essential I, and Brahman, the ultimate real” (lvi). In addition to the Upanisads, New Age philosophy also relies on the Tao Te Ching as a source for redefining religious practice based on transcendence.80 Ellen Chen explains in her translation and commentary that the Tao is not “religious in the commonly accepted meaning of human transcendence of the world” but rather “a work of fundamental ontology calling humans back to the remembrance of the ground for the peace and harmony of all beings” (24). Her interpretation of Chinese historian ’s view of the Tao echoes this point: In his Outline of the History of Chinese Philosophy, Hu Shih praises the Tao Te Ching author as a revolutionary who produced the first work in China able to liberate itself from an anthropomorphic or religious concept of heaven to

80Like the Upanisads, the Tao Te Ching has survived many centuries, first appearing in print somewhere between 600 B.C.E. to 220 B.C.E. (Chen 4-5).

72 propound a pure opening the way for the development of the ideas of universal law and science in ancient China. (23)81 Throughout the text, the Tao represents inexhaustible creation (42.1, 45.1, 51.1) and movement (4.1-2, 40). As the ultimate source of Being, without boundaries or substance (21, 39, 51), it can only be objectified through its complement, “te,” or nature. Identifying the Tao as a Supreme Being or assigning a name, like “God,” to the Tao would be reductive. In fact, the Tao Te Ching says that the Tao “is an image of what precedes God” (4.3). Because alternative spirituality regards several ancient texts as sacred and deconstructs the idea of God/ess as a Supreme Being, many traditional worshipers view New Age beliefs as sacrilegious. Equating New Age ideas with Satanism is a common view voiced by Caryl Matrisciana, a Christian writer who critiques alternative spirituality in her book and movie, Gods of the New Age. A primary component of her critique is to align New Age teachings with the serpent’s temptation of Eve. Matrisciana maintains that the serpent influenced Eve to question God’s authority, “disobey his ultimate wisdom,” and “doubt herself and her understanding of what was morally right” (Gods 22). Authority and obedience are called for in a system of law or in contexts that require submission to the absolute control of another. Matrisciana says that the serpent caused Eve to doubt what she knew to be “morally right”: “After destroying reason, he went on seducing Eve through her five senses . . . to ‘touch the fruit’–to ‘taste’ it” (Gods 22). Eve’s sense of reason, Matrisciana says, was intact as long as she remained obedient and compliant. Yet “right” and “wrong”--like “good” and “evil”--only came to be after Eve’s thinking changed to create such exclusions and dichotomies. God became the ultimate authority, existing as a law outside Eve’s understanding and way of life after she tasted the forbidden fruit. Although a New Age interpretation would claim that the story about the tree of knowledge shows the power of dualism rather than the sin of disobedience and doubt, Matrisciana and, in fact, most other Christians view the story of Eve’s choice as a lesson of her vulnerability to sensual pleasure and willfulness to disregard God’s command. The snake in the story–a representation of Eve’s questioning self–not only exists outside of her mind but, according to Matrisciana, ravages her sense of reason first and then appeals to her desires. The spirituality Matrisciana endorses requires unquestioning belief in the supremacy of God and the subordination of human nature. Although Matrisciana is just one representative of Christian fundamentalism, her points illustrate how exclusive religion dichotomizes the world into zones of good/evil and reason/sense. Most Euro-American ideas about what counts as reasonable and moral come from literalist interpretations of the Bible. These interpretations have maintained an exclusive reading of God’s message to humankind that has remained static for several centuries. As Neale Donald Walsch explains in The New Revelations, viewing God as a Supreme Being leads to dangerous assumptions about what God says (or said), what pleases or displeases Him, and to what degree those who fail to obey or please God should be condemned (29-33). Such social imperatives lack compassion and encourage divisions within families and wars between cultural groups. Although an anthropomorphic view of the Divine pervades organized religion, it has become more of a problem among groups who believe their view of God is the only correct one. This is particularly true of religious fundamentalisms that have grown more

81See Hu, Shih. Chung-kuo che-hsueh shih ta-kang (Outline of the History of Chinese Philosophy). 1919. Shanghai: Commercial Press, 1938. 53-59.

73 powerful, exclusive, and violent since the 1970s. As a new type of religiosity proliferating within Islam, Christianity, Judaism, and other major religions, fundamentalism is “highly political” as well as “literal and intolerant in its vision” (Armstrong 390). Armstrong calls fundamentalism a “fiercely reductive faith” in the sense that it has transformed “historical phenomena as Christian ‘Family Values,’ ‘Islam’ or ‘the Holy Land’” into “a new form of idolatry” (391). Belief, particularly religious belief, is so powerful that it constructs behavior. For example the idolatry Armstrong discusses seems a natural outcome of objectifying God into an image. Taking this focus on belief a step further, if compassion and respect for others were core beliefs of the major religions, we should see increasing and uncompromising evidence of kindness and harmony. Instead, the principle belief that sustains monotheistic religion is in the superiority of one view of God over another. Likewise, the belief that human nature is essentially corrupt produces what the belief expects–shame and disharmony. Sin is the convenient excuse used by conventional Christianity for why peace and harmony would never be possible. Organized religion has not been effective enough in fostering compassionate, peaceful societies. However, if people are willing to replace harmful beliefs about God with new beliefs that reduce conflict, a world without hunger and war might no longer be impossible. How might this utopia become a reality? More people are recognizing that patriarchy is not fulfilling its “promises,” and discontentment with excessive institutional control is swelling. This “divine discontent” will tend to produce a healthy skepticism that will likely seep into a variety of social networks. Science will expand exponentially rather than be restricted by exclusive ideologies; it may even be guided by wonder to such a degree that will pale in comparison to new discoveries. Without exclusive rules about who God is and what kind of people God favors most, people will become more sensitive to and respectful of others and the world around them. A general sense of entitlement and ownership would decline. People will be more free to understand another’s point of view or way of life as important contributions to a greater good. Because individuals would see divinity within each other and in life itself, violence and abuse of natural resources would decrease: Why hurt my brother when he is part of me? Why allow my sister to be hungry when she is part of me? Why wage war at all, since our job as a nation is to be jointly responsible with others for nurturing the global community?

Revolutionizing Institutions The changes brought about by the New Age Movement have been spontaneous reactions and cannot be traced to a single source. Unlike the major dogmas, mystical spirituality progresses slowly and, in the beginning stages, grows in isolation. As a result, New Age has been criticized for paying too much attention to personal growth and not enough to cultural difference or social activism. Its goals could be considered utopian: non-violence, respect for the natural world, transforming oppressive binaries, spiritual integration with the divine source, and synchronizing the mind/body/spirit connection. However, its oddness and idealism make it a much more prominent target than the dominant monotheistic traditions. Despite the comic that depicts New Agers as “flaky” and gullible, people inspired by alternative spirituality often delve deeply into its philosophies. Unlike traditional views of religious practice that fail to construct communication with the divine as a two-way conversation, Walsch deconstructs the gap between the physical and metaphysical. He asks the

74 question, “How does God talk, and to whom?” And he receives an answer: “I talk to everyone. All the time. The question is not to whom do I talk, but who listens?” (Book 1, 2-3). In Conversations With God, Book Two, Walsch describes the kind of paradigm shift that would be necessary to reverse some of the growing social problems in the United States.82 The following is part of his dialogue, written in the voice of “God”:83 “As greed replaced greatness in the American character, there was less room for compassion for the least among the people. The less fortunate were told it was their ‘own damned fault’ if they didn’t have more. After all, America was the land of Opportunity, was it not? No one except the less fortunate found it possible to admit that America’s opportunity was limited, institutionally, to those already on the inside track. In general, these have not included many minorities, such as those of certain skin and gender . . . . Each person must take responsibility for herself or himself–that is undeniably true–But America–and your world–can truly work only when every person is willing to stand responsible for all of you as a Whole.” (89-90) In previous years, since many New Agers are middle-class whites, the Movement has been charged with a certain ignorance concerning its sense of social privilege. Although Walsch does not position himself as privileged per se, in his introduction to Book 1, he reveals an awareness of himself in relation to others: I need now to say that I am–having read and reread the wisdom contained here– deeply embarrassed by my own life, which has been marked by continued mistakes and misdeeds, some very shameful behaviors, and some choices and decisions which I’m certain others consider hurtful and unforgivable. Though I have profound remorse that it was through others’ pain, I am unspeakably grateful for all that I have learned, and found that I have still yet to learn, because of the people in my life. I apologize to everybody for the slowness of that learning. Yet I am encouraged by God to grant myself forgiveness for my failings and not to live in fear and guilt but to always keep trying–keep on trying–to live a grander vision. I know that’s what God wants for all of us. (Book 1) This sense of remorse is not what many readers have come to expect from the stereotypical white male. In New Age Politics, first published in 1978, focuses one of his chapters on “white racism in the United States” (41). Although the atmosphere is changing–as evidenced by the texts by Walsch and Satin–judgements about the blindness of social privilege have not been altogether false, especially concerning New Age consumerism and the appropriation of indigenous culture and sacred teachings.84

82In this book, “God” discusses several controversial topics concerning sexuality, education, sexism, religion.

83Walsch sometimes varies the pronoun for God from He to She. In the audiotapes and CDs, Edward Asner and Ellen Byrsten alternate reading in the voice of God. In these conversations, God says that rather than perceiving the creator as male or female, it is much better to perceive the relationship between the deity and humans as “that- which-gives-rise-to” and “that-which-is-risen” (Book 1, 30).

84For a good discussion of the New Age appropriation issue from a Native American writer’s perspective, see Wendy Rose, “The Great Pretenders: Further Reflections on White ,” in The State of Native America: Genocide, Colonization, and Resistance, Annette Jaimes, ed, : South End Press, 1992, 403-21.

75 Although many writers of texts that have gained importance in the New Age Movement identify a cultural shift between blind belief in institutional control and the growing necessity of critiquing unchallenged authority, the movement’s prominent authors and lecturers (as far as we can tell from written sources) have not proposed a return of land to various tribes of American Indians and have not expressed a political awareness of the issues of sovereignty, , and conditions of reservation life. Although no poll exists to gauge the percentage of New Agers who voted in 2000 for and his Vice Presidential Candidate, Indian rights and environmental activist Winona LaDuke (an Anishinabé), the political platform was conducive with the New Age agenda concerning ecology, human rights, and mistrust of connections between government and industry. Although this shift cannot solely be identified with New Age culture, it should not be considered as separate from the social forces that cultivated the movement’s emerging themes. In The Aquarian Conspiracy, illustrates the political power underlying this new cultural “conspiracy”: All our high priests–doctors, scientists, bureaucrats, politicians, churchmen, educators–are being defrocked at once. Rushing in where angels fear to tread, we are challenging old laws, proposing new ones, lobbying and boycotting, wise now to the hidden powers of democracy. (Ferguson 226) Several authors of books that share themes with the New Age Movement write primarily because they are social activists. Starhawk, for example, often leads demonstrations informing the public about arms control, weaponry, and the dangers of nuclear power. More recently, she demonstrated in Washington D.C. against attacking Iraq. In Dreaming in the Dark, she critiques “power from without” as the source of most estrangements, particularly in terms of a dualism between people and nature (5). These estrangements, she says, are a matter of false perception in which people see the world as segments of unrelated, “nonliving” parts (5): For though we are told that such issues are separate: that rape is an issue separate from nuclear war, that a woman’s struggle for equal pay is not related to a black teenager’s struggle to find a job or to the struggle to prevent the export of a nuclear reactor to a site on a web or earthquake faults near active volcanoes in the Philippines, all these realities are shaped by the consciousness that shapes our power relationships. Those relationships in turn shape our economic and social systems; our technology; our science; our religions; our views of women and men; our views of races and cultures that differ from our own; our sexuality; our Gods and our wars. (4-5) When people do not see themselves as “part of the world” but instead as “strangers to nature, to other human beings, to parts of ourselves,” the hierarchical systems currently in force gain greater power by default (Starhawk 5). Starhawk argues that the hegemonic frameworks in culture that maintain “power over,” have a long history, beginning with a “shift from matrifocal, earth-centered cultures whose religions centered on the Goddess and Gods embodied in nature, to patriarchal urban cultures of conquest, whose Gods inspired and supported war” (5). The teachings of Yogananda, the Dalai Lama, Thich Nhat Hanh, and Walsch, on meditation, compassion and non-violence have also been influential in inspiring people toward political action against oppression and in seeking world peace. Others, such as Joan Borysenko, , Wayne Dyer, Caroline Myss, Andrew Weil, and Jon Kabat-Zinn work toward educating the public about , health, diet, stress-reduction, healing, and meditation. Walsch has founded an activist group called “Humanity’s Team,” and “The

76 Conversations With God Foundation”–both non-profit organizations. He also co-founded “The American Renaissance Alliance” with Marianne Williamson, a non-partisan political action group that seeks to reconnect individuals to the political process. Many recognized intellectuals, professionals, and activists whom the public would not normally classify as New Agers lead workshops at the Omega Institute for Holistic Studies, a non-profit educational center based in New York with additional workshop locations all over the world. In 2002 Anita Hill, Eve Ensler, and Eileen Fisher shared a leadership team with Iyanla Vanzant for an Omega-sponsored three day summit/retreat for women called “Women and Power.” That same year, Marge Piercy conducted a workshop for Omega called “So You Want to Write,” and Rabbi Michael Lerner–co-chair of the Tikkun Community–led a week-long workshop on helping participants “develop and sustain a network of people committed to progressive spiritual politics.” Every year, Omega sponsors a “Century of the Environment Conference” featuring prominent professors and scientists such as Bill McKibben, Paul Hawken, Juliet Schor, and Frances Moore Lappé. Again, we need to keep in mind that the people who set the movement’s major trends do not necessarily claim to be part of the movement itself, which has branched into several respectable subdivisions. For instance, the May through October 2002 issue of The Omega Institute’s list of workshops and retreats includes the following areas: mind-body transformation; body-centered approaches to spirituality; yoga; career, leadership, and community; native wisdom and shamanism; intuitive development; professional training; nature and the environment; music, rhythm, and voice; dance and movement; theater; fine arts; sports and play; writing and language; relationships; a variety of workshops on sexuality, and also sessions designed specifically for women, children, gays and lesbians. Omega is not the only foundation that offers workshops, of course, but it is well-established, large, and well-known. Beginning with its incorporation in 1977, in 1982 it grew to 3,000 attendees; in 1999, over 200,000 participants attended retreats and sessions offered at centers all over the world. The power of the Movement, however, should not be approximated so much in terms of the number of its gurus and institutes but in terms of the impact of its wide-ranging influence. Yoga is so common now that it is offered in nearly every recreation center and health club in America. Meditation, once considered by Westerners to be a strictly mystical practice, has split into many varieties, including breathing exercises--a common approach to enhance well-being and relieve stress. Routine counseling therapy has also changed, sometimes with equal attention to healing the soul as well as the mind and emotions.85 In addition, alternative medicine, initiated by New Age approaches to mind/body health, continues to be on the rise (Holden), especially in terms of the widespread use of natural herbs and holistic approaches to healing. The influence is so abundant and, in some cases so diluted, that it is difficult to draw dividing lines between what can be classified as New Age or not. Because New Age practices are unstructured and resist the worship routines of congregationalism, some critics claim that the New Age Movement promotes a superficial approach to religion. In Ethics for New Millennium, the Dalai Lama writes that when he observes people converting to a religion “outside their own heritage,” he notices that “quite often they adopt certain superficial aspects of the culture to which their new faith belongs” (330). In

85Wendy Kaminer complains that New Age healing methods have become so common that counselors sometimes use spiritual approaches without seeking permission from the patient (7).

77 these cases, he says, people’s spiritual practice “may not go very much deeper than that” (330). He suggests that before changing faiths, people ask themselves: “Am I attracted to this other religion for the right reasons? Is it merely the cultural and ritual aspects that are appealing? Or is it the essential teachings? Do I suppose that if I convert to this new religion it will be less demanding than my present one?” (329-30). The Dalai Lama may be referring to some Americans who have become pseudo-Buddhists–not individuals who truly change their lifestyles and spiritual practice, but people who try on a new religion like a new shirt. Many Native Americans have noticed the same thing with New Agers who seem more like Indian “wannabe’s” than genuine seekers who have respect for sacred grounds and share a common nature-based belief system. When people who identify themselves as New Agers truly seek self- and self-development, the exotic and unusual eventually loses its appeal. Instead, practical texts that reinforce the concept of self as divine or progressing toward greater awareness have become more standard among serious seekers. In fact, mystical awareness requires more time, attention, and reflection than most traditional approaches require. Although modern day mystics do not usually attend “church” per se, they incorporate a mixture of spiritual practices, including meditation (often for an hour a day or more), reading a variety of sacred texts and New Age books, attending conferences, practicing dream interpretation, and discussing what they learn within a community of other seekers.86 According to Armstrong, mysticism requires hard work: Mystics often insist that human beings must deliberately create this sense of God for themselves, with the same degree of care and attention that others devote to artistic creation. It is not something that is likely to appeal to people in a society which has become used to speedy gratification, fast food and instant communication. The God of the mystics does not arrive readymade and prepackaged. He cannot be experienced as quickly as the instant ecstasy created by a revivalist preacher, who quickly has a whole congregation clapping its hands and speaking in tongues. (397) Ideological power thrives within a society in which fast-food thinking and dependence on authority for “answers” predominates. Creating a sense of God for the self, as Armstrong explains, is a long-term process that includes critical and creative thinking. Prepackaged religion cannot adapt to individual and social needs; nor can it inspire thinking that would challenge its agenda. In contrast to doctrines that rely on conversion and dogma, approaches to spirituality that foster continued self-development and an integrated approach to reason hold more promise for social change. , , Alice Bailey, and other thinkers whose texts and philosophies continue to sustain the movement do not offer superficial advice or an easy, one- way path to enlightenment. Although New Age idealism and consumerism have often clouded other, more significant messages, balance seems to be the theme at the core of the New Age Movement now. In addition, spiritual transformation requires not only a major change in thinking about religion but also consistency in practice, so the differences between those who are interested in new ideas for the sake of curiosity and those who work intensely on spiritual development is becoming more obvious; these differences have become apparent in the growing scope and increasingly complex subject matter of New Age texts. Unquestionably, the New Age

86I know at least three people who, when their schedules will allow it, meditate from one to five hours per day.

78 Movement is undergoing revolutionary changes, and the effects of these changes have primarily been associated with deconstructing mystery and blending reason with wonder.

The Balancing of Reason and Wonder in the New Age Movement The first and most basic change occurring in the movement in recent decades is declining interest in the exotic or unique and greater attention to integrating a reflective, common-sense kind of spirituality that seeks to improve everyday life. Although some writers suggest meditation and periods of silence are important to self-development, the general consensus is that the today’s spiritual seekers or even those we might call modern-day mystics grow more through experiencing life than if they were to live in a remote hermitage, far from human interaction. Writing over a century ago, Helena Blavatsky, the founder of the influential Theosophy movement, argues that the Yogi “who acts with the sole idea of finding a nirvanic refuge against reincarnation” and a Christian hermit “who acts with the unique idea of saving his soul are both absorbed in egocentrism rather than holiness. In her opinion, these people may be living a religious life but not necessarily a spiritual one because they “think only of themselves” and, thus, “show themselves profoundly indifferent to the fate of mankind whom they fly from and desert” (“Le Phare”). Blavatsky does not stand alone on this point; some of the Movement’s harshest criticism comes from within and also has a long history. Another noticeable emphasis in the message of recent New Age texts is that “mystical delirium” can be abused and overemphasized. As Armstrong discusses in A History of God, many mystics throughout the centuries have expressed the importance of using reason in tandem with faith, including two Muslim philosophers--Yahya Suhrawardi, from Iran, and Abu Nasr al- Farabi, from Turkey (230). Even though mystics use alternative methods of approaching the divine within, ranging from music and dance to painting and architecture, Armstrong insists that “mysticism requires intelligence, discipline and self-criticism as a safeguard against indulgent emotionalism and projection” (396). Disciplinary safeguards are common in organized religion. Church buildings, the social decorum of worship services, and the standards of doctrine provide borders that inhibit some emotional excesses; however, relying on personal experience alone has no boundaries. In Initiation, Elizabeth Jenkins writes that among those seekers who traveled with her, all agreed that giving too much attention to psychic development as opposed to spiritual and personal development could lead to the “abuse” and “seduction of power” (214). Similarly, Julianne Everett explains in Heart Initiation that “[a]s we spiritually evolve, we often become more interested in the subtle [or psychic] planes than we are in the material . The Christ Consciousness, however, must be reflected through the whole of one’s existence in order that Thy Kingdom [can] come and Thy Will [can] be done on Earth as it is in heaven!” (Everett, Emphasis in text 54). Developing intuition, as Jenkins and Everett note, is part of spiritual development, but focusing too much on what will happen tomorrow or in the remote future can cause a person to forget about paying attention to the present, where personal growth really takes place. Practicing intuitive Laura Day recognizes a pattern among seekers within the New Age Movement, particularly in how they can become overly dependent on psychics and other professionals for advice. In her book, Practical Intuition, she urges her New Age readers to balance their inner and outer spiritual practice by learning more about their own intuitive senses and their local communities:

79 We’ve relegated our physical, spiritual, and emotional bodies to doctors, psychiatrists, and churches or political/ideological organizations. We go to channelers to ask the angel Gabriel what we already know and could see if we would look within ourselves to where the answers lay. We do all of this at great cost and often outside of or at the most distant parameters of our community. I’m not saying that all these professionals and institutions don’t have a place and provide a service, but we use these services while not even knowing our neighbors. . . . If I had one message to share with you in this book, it would not be “You are intuitive.” It would be We are all more capable of giving help than we realize. (Emphasis in text, 175-76). Day’s message reiterates Madame Blavatsky’s criticism of egocentrism. In both cases, these writers encourage individuals to participate in service to mankind and live active spiritual lives in connection with others. The development of a greater spirit of service and upon a wider scale was a key theme of the New Age Movement since its philosophies started to coalesce in the mid- 20th century. Bailey, for instance, tells one of her students in 1944 that he must spend more time in service and less time focused on himself: Your service at present is vertical and concerns those who are with you upon the upward way–your group brothers, your personal friends, and yourself. For you serve yourself unduly, my brother, and at your stage of unfoldment this should not be. You render to yourself too much service, too much thought, too much care and too many things. Your service should become horizontal and expandingly inclusive, for the hour of the world’s emergency is upon us and who can meet that need but those who know! And you, my brother, know! (568) Her emphasis on “horizontal” service, again, predates Day’s concerns that some people become absorbed in self-development to such an extreme that their participation in a local community suffers. Attempts to balance the New Age movement have come from many sides. In addition to the advice the Dalai Lama gives about developing a spiritual practice that goes beyond the superficial, John Randolph Price, author of two New Age books, The Superbeings and The Angels Within Us, calls for seekers to pull themselves away from the dreamy, I-am-not-of-this- world mentality and develop a more grounded and practical approach to spirituality. In the following example, Price discusses feeling “out of place” among New Agers at a planning meeting for an upcoming seminar: Some of the participants were floating somewhere near the ceiling (figuratively speaking), another was perched in a lotus position atop a grand piano, while two more were kneeling in a corner staring into each other’s eyes. And this was supposed to be a business conference! There is no judgment implied in saying that these people were not in this world (they would agree), and things didn’t get any better when we began discussing arrangements for the program. Both subtly and directly everything related to “materiality” was attacked. I guess I should have asked them what they considered Earth to be. (208) Price uses this example to explain how people try to hurry their spiritual development by denying “the things of this world” (208). His view is that this fast-track version of spirituality only leads to “spaced-out consciousness and a degree of negative non-conformity” which ultimately deter them from service (208). In contrast to his experience of this committee with its

80 head in the clouds, Price and his wife also felt out of place at a party attended by a majority of “traditionalists” (208). He describes how the men and women segregated into “herds,” and how he and his wife felt uncomfortable as the males jockeyed for dominance in conversations. Although “both herds were certainly in this world,” he says, “for the most part their heads were in the sauce” (208-09). Price presents two extremes in his account of both of these experiences, and from these examples it is clear that many people who share the spiritual practices and beliefs of the New Age Movement seek community and strive for healthy personal development for themselves and others. The two extremes in Price’s narrative illustrate the negative effects of dualistic approaches to language and religion. Dominant religious practices promote a continued separation between the “” and the “real.” The New Agers who attempted to loose themselves from the chains of materiality seemed to practice a dichotomy. For the committee group, non-attachment became a substitute for Godliness, far removed from the present moment as well as from the realities of everyday life.87 The segregation of males and females at the party, on the other hand, is an example of what Irigaray and others have adamantly expressed about the side-effects of phallocratic discourse. Dominant discursive structures fortify a view of the world that dichotomizes social relations and continues to reinforce the dualisms they create. Subject/object polarities may be too entrenched in culture to reverse; however, the challenges brought about by the New Age Movement, particularly in terms of revolutionizing reason and faith, mark a beginning toward subverting them. In addition to critiques that the New Age Movement is Satanic, uninvolved in social change, and superficial, many ideas about reason prompted by alternative spirituality have sparked criticism from academics and others. Such criticism is, once again, not entirely unfounded, especially in cases where attention to intuition is overemphasized and analysis is under emphasized. For instance, social critic Wendy Kaminer describes the current pop spirituality trend as an overindulgence in irrationalism, a matter which she believes the public should more actively examine and resist. While maintaining that other people’s faiths or reading habits are not our business, Kaminer insists that “the possible public consequence of their inclination to believe is everyone’s business and merits everyone’s concern” (17). Kaminer’s claim derives from her readings of best-selling New Age texts. As she explains in her critique of ’s Celestine , John Mack’s Abduction, and Sophy Burnham’s A Book of Angels, the authors themselves often claim that rational thinking too often results in judgement, reinforces a self/world dualism, and inhibits compassionate understanding. Most common in New Age books, according to Kaminer, is the displacement of reason in favor of experiential knowledge: “This is a familiar message,” she says, “[t]he truth lies in what you feel, not what you ‘know in your head,’ much less what you can prove . . . .” (107-09). Further evidence of this tendency in popular New Age texts is Deepak Chopra’s point that logic becomes dysfunctional in the cases of spiritual teachings: “If you try to apply the kind of logic that says A causes B, which causes C, the explanation will not work, because these [spiritual] coincidences are too far-fetched and too personal” (Way 120). Yet over-dependence on personal

87Because New Agers focus on the past and the future sometimes to their own detriment, “living in the present moment” has become another spiritual concept embraced by the New Age Movement. Change happens only in the present, and transformation, according to Gordon Melton, functions as the central theme of the movement (Melton, Encyclopedic 113).

81 experience, Kaminer says, is “at the heart of the irrationalism that confronts us today” (4). As Kaminer mentions in her book-length assessment of New Age ideas, “[s]pirituality authors who are generally forgiving of most human foibles (suggesting that people aren’t bad, only less evolved), take a hard line on intellectualism” (107). She cites the introduction to James Redfield’s companion guidebook for The Celestine Prophesy, which suggests that readers “‘break through the habits of skepticism and denial’” (qtd. in Kaminer 107).88 Sophy Burnham’s descriptions of angelic visitations and John Mack’s interviews with alien abductees show how personal experience raptures audiences into believing stories that their reasoning would normally question (Kaminer 111). We need to remember that New Agers--in common with believers–are not immune to the effects of mystery, operationalism, and the problem of belief. Rejection of worldly wisdom is, in fact, one of the bases for many Christian doctrines also. Among a variety of religious views, differences in the meanings of skepticism, secular knowledge, reason, and spiritual wisdom often remain vague; they also can change, depending on pulpit agendas and fears that doctrinal purity might be compromised by alternative views. In the first three chapters of Paul’s letter to the Corinthians, Paul maintains that “the wisdom of this world is foolishness before God” (3:19): 19. For it is written, “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and I will do away with the understanding of the prudent.” 20. Where is the wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the learned89 of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? 21. Because all the wisdom which God had given was not sufficient for the world to know God, it pleased God to save those who believe by the simple gospel. (Lamsa, I Cor. 1:19-21). In the context of this letter to believers in Corinth, people cannot know God by relying on worldly wisdom alone. In contrast to their own ideological embeddedness, many Christians see as ideological and their own belief as “freedom” from sin. However, the idea that knowledge alone–without emotion or spirit--is not sufficient for human development is a common value that many people today share, regardless of their values or faith. The problem associated with exclusive religion, though, is not its quest to combine reason and faith but its failure to recognize alternative points of view. As I have argued earlier, countering ideology with operationalism–the form of reason it reproduces–will only serve to strengthen both. Operational reason, especially during episodes of rapid cultural change, needs to be expanded and combined with other elements that can counteract the constraints of belief. Some of the “irrationality” Kaminer discusses reveals the degree to which a transformation of reason is already occurring. A vivid example Kaminer doesn’t mention appears in Deepak Chopra’s The Way of the Wizard. Chopra’s narrator describes a scene in which Merlin runs around “brandishing a huge butcher’s knife like a madman” (30). When the boy, Arthur, asks him what he’s doing, Merlin replies, “‘Don’t you think this way?’” (Chopra,

88Quoted from James Redfield and Carol Adrienne, The Celestine : An Experiential Guide. New York: Warner, 1995, pages xi and xiii.

89The NAS uses “debater” instead of “learned,” which reveals a correlation between learning and engaging multiple views.

82 Way 30). When Arthur’s reply is “No,” the speaker describes Merlin’s lesson on rationality as follows: Merlin suddenly stopped. “Ah, then I must be mistaken. My impression was that all mortals used their minds like knives, cutting and dissecting. I wanted to see what that was like. If I may say so, there is a good deal of violence hidden in what you mortals call rationality.” The wizard’s mind is like a lens that gathers in what it sees and lets everything pass through without distortion. The advantage of this kind of awareness is that it unites, whereas the rational mind separates. The rational mind looks “out there” at a world of objects in time and space, whereas the wizard sees everything as part of himself. In place of “out there” and “in here” there is only one seamless flow. (Chopra, Way 30) Although Chopra exaggerates the scene with the butcher knife, his main point is that traditional analysis distorts and becomes dysfunctional in the extreme. Only the kind of thinking that gathers “without distortion” is privileged or even viewed as proper (Chopra, Way 30). On the surface, it seems as if Chopra belittles critical analysis, but a closer look shows us that what Chopra is saying compares to what Marcuse writes about operationalism. Operational reason, according to Marcuse, is what remains of critical reason after it is constrained by ideology. Since most of what we know has ideological foundations, operationalism is pervasive. Under its influence, ideas tend to flow from a single dimension of meaning that supports the truths or values an ideology recognizes and excludes views that threaten its foundations. One- dimensional thinking results when ideology prevents exploration or truncates transcendent references to ideas.90 In Chopra’s example, when the rational mind “unites,” it flows, becoming open to exploratory thinking that could challenge ideological barriers. The emphasis on wholeness here relates to one of the most common generalizations about New Age rhetoric--its promotion of unwrinkled unity–which is similar to charges that it ignores cultural difference. But this concept of unity has increased in complexity throughout the last few decades. For instance, Walsch lists the idea of “disunity” as one of the ten major illusions humans accept as truth, but as he describes it, “Unity in the absence of Disunity is nothing” (Communion141). He rejects monolithic unity, saying that “[i]n the absence of any separation, ever, Oneness is noneness” (Communion 141). His use of the word “separation” echoes the language Bergson uses for the function of intelligent thinking. Ideology and operational reason tend to function through the filter of belief; this belief, or mystery, as Burke identifies it, cannot be transformed by traditional methods of using persuasion because belief suppresses the basis of reason. In dominant ideological frameworks, the discursive practices reinforced by belief produce phallogocentrism, dichotomization, and social divisions. Although many beliefs support social relations, conventional religious beliefs, in particular, structure multiple zones of communication across many social boundaries. The Judeo-Christian ethic incorporates a variety of religious doctrines, yet this differentiation only distinguishes differences between beliefs. Reason has very little, if any, impact. Carlos Castaneda’s The Art of Dreaming provides another example of the uselessness of traditional approaches to reason in the world of altered consciousness. Castaneda’s mentor-

90I am using the word “transcendent” as meaning outside the boundaries of one-dimensional thinking, similar to the way Marcuse uses it in One Dimensional Man.

83 figure, don Juan Matus, tells his student that the world of the sorcerer is a world of intent that cannot be reached through the reasoning mind: “Like any rational man, you think that understanding is exclusively the realm of our reason, of our mind. . . . Sorcerers believe that if one would intend that statement for the body, the energy body would understand it in terms entirely different from those of the mind” (23). The teacher, in this case, is not denying that rationality can be useful, but he draws a distinction between the mind and the “energy” of intent, which seems to be a feeling or an image more so than a cognitive statement. Medical science is now becoming aware that mind, body, emotion, and belief are interdependent and contribute to healing holistically. Castaneda’s discussion of the energy body and intent may seem far fetched, yet the combination of thought and intention (or the “energy” of thought) has been fueling the self-help movement for decades. Although the texts Kaminer mentions can be interpreted as emphasizing personal experience at the expense of rational inquiry, practicing personal spirituality that does not fit within a specific dogma is necessary for revolutionizing operational forms of reason. Personal experience or viewing spiritual ideas from a position of wonder can encourage exploration outside the boundaries of exclusive religion. In fact, such exploration cannot occur without it. The impetus of the New Age Movement now, however, is integrating personal experience– whether we call it intuition, imagination, or meditation–with critical thinking. Some spiritual leaders and New Age writers have recognized the need for combining reason and intuition to be so important that they describe spirituality as superficial without both. The Dalai Lama has always maintained that Buddhists use reason as a guide for interpreting spiritual truths. Current New Age authors are now echoing this point. Elizabeth Jenkins’ story about her spiritual journey to the Andes Mountains recalls her mentor’s advice to use her full mental capabilities, her intuition and her intellect. Her teacher, an Andean Priest named Juan, attempts to correct a common flaw in popular applications of New Age teaching: “You Americans tend to think that the critical mind is your enemy. That all you have to do is to open your intuition and everything will be all right. Nonsense! Certainly it’s true that the West has overemphasized the importance of rational thinking to the detriment of other kinds of knowledge for example connecting with the wild and more chaotic nature of the left-hand side of the path. But why go from one extreme to the other? You must not ‘throw the baby out with the bathwater,’ is that not the expression? . . . . In order to attain the fourth level you must develop the powers of the left and right sides both, together! You must have discernment. When you first came to me you were totally left sided. To be totally left sided is dangerous because it leaves you open to the great problem of the mystical delirium. . . .” (211-212).91 As an academic, Jenkins expresses doubts about the visions and strange events she experienced throughout her trip to the Andes. This statement from her mentor shows Jenkins that questioning and using her mind should be a constant part of her spiritual exploration. In fact, Juan emphasizes that “the power of the critical mind is just what is needed as a counterpoint to this potentially dangerous time” (212). Other New Age texts reiterate the importance of balance, too.

91Note that to be “left-sided” is to be right-brain dominant, which means that the components of discursive reasoning within the left hemisphere (language, sequencing, and logic) are less prominent than the holistic and intuitive qualities of the right hemisphere.

84 The Urantia Book echoes Juan’s advice, warning that “[w]hen the development of the intellectual nature proceeds faster than that of the spiritual, such a situation renders communication with the Thought Adjuster92 both difficult and dangerous. Likewise, overspiritual development tends to produce a fanatical and perverted interpretation of the spirit leadings of the divine indweller” (1209). As this quote from The Urantia Book shows, excessive attention to spiritual development is just as problematic as an exclusive approach to reason; each needs the other to provide balance. In New Age discourse, spiritual development does not really have rules or limits. In Christian theology, a person receives Christ and is “saved.” Thereafter, she develops spiritually through church attendance, prayer, Bible study, and applying what she learns to her life. A Christian can grow in the sense that, as he applies what he learns to his own life, he becomes more like Jesus; however, church teachings do not encourage or allow believers to develop their own sense of divinity--what New Agers refer to as a “Godself.” Viewing the self differently–as inseparable from the creative energy of life that God represents–is how the New Age Movement initiates an alternative construction of selfhood, one that is a necessary step in revolutionizing exclusivism.

Revolutionizing Exclusive Subjectivity Functioning institutionally, exclusive religion generates ideological control over public policies, moral codes, and common beliefs concerning the natural and supernatural worlds, and, thus, legitimizes a restrictive view of human subjectivity. The importance religion holds in many societies further reinforces its impact upon human subjects by empowering, molding, and/or restraining them under its coercive power. Generally, in contrast to traditional monotheism, the basis of alternative spirituality concerns replacing the idea of divine transcendence that remains apart from human needs with concepts about divine and human integration. These concepts come from many religions, particularly the non-Western beliefs that help disrupt binaries viewed as harmful. The Self can be identified in Hindu terms as , in as a lack of division between Self and Nature, or in the context of reincarnation, Self that is also Other on many levels and many forms. A common theme New Agers have revived from the Bhagavad Gita is seeing God, the life force, spirit–whatever name we assign it–as a connection between self and other. In the Gita, Krishna claims the role of Atman, the Self in all beings: “I am the Self, Arjuna / seated in the heart of all beings; / I am the beginning and the life span / of beings, and their end as well” (Section 10, stanza 20). Also according to the Gita, the man who is spiritually mature understands this integration; he learns to see “himself in all beings and all beings in himself”–“wherever he looks” (Section 6, stanza 29). Although many New Agers have substantially different definitions of “God/ess,” few would argue that there is much difference between divinity and self-mastery. In the preface to Manifest Your Destiny, Wayne Dyer lists two quotes from the Gospel of John that express a point similar to Irigaray’s about human divinity. Each is expressed as a statement from Jesus.

92The Urantia Book identifies Thought Adjuster(s) as beings who were not “created” but are, instead, “fragmentized entities constituting the factual presence of the infinite God . . . they are of God, and as far as we are able to discern, they are God” [italics in original] (1177). Plato’s discussion of a “daemon,” functioning like a , , or “God-self,” offers another version of what a “Thought Adjuster” might be.

85 The first reads, “Is it not written in your law, ‘I have said, You are gods’? –John 10:34.” This passage is interesting because of its context: Jesus is standing before a crowd of his own people who are threatening to stone him for pretending to be God. Jesus’s defense is to quote a passage from the Psalmist: “I have said, ‘You are gods; all of you are children of the most High’”; he also tells the crowd that if his deeds do not match his words, they are free to disbelieve him.93 Even in the lifetime of Jesus, it was considered religious blasphemy to think oneself “one” with God. Conventional religion supports a container idea–that individuals can be filled with God, but being like God or having a “God-self” is often seen as sacrilegious. The other passage Dyer uses is also in the words of Jesus, “On that day, you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you. –John 14:20.”94 In the Conversations With God series, Walsch describes a similar idea of unity or oneness. He says, narrating in the character of God, “I am God, and I am All That Is. Since you ar a part of All That Is, I am what you are. There is not a part of you that I am not” (Communion 136). In other texts, Walsch emphasizes the view of God as “All That Is” with an analogy of unlimited Beingness—beyond androcentric forms. In Book Three, “God” says, “I tell you, I am in every flower, every rainbow, every star in the heavens, and everything in and on every planet rotating around every star. I am the whisper of the wind, the warmth of your sun, the incredible individuality and the extraordinary perfection of every snowflake. . . .And I am not limited to the modes of expression seen on your planet alone. You do not know Who I Am, but only think you do. Yet think not that Who I Am is limited to you, or that My Divine Essence—this most Holy Spirit—was given to you and you alone. That would be an arrogant thought, and a misinformed one. My Beingness is in everything. Everything. . . . Through you, I can know every aspect of Me. The perfection of the snowflake, the awesome beauty of the rose, the courage of lions, the majesty of eagles, all resides in you. In you I have placed all of these things—and one thing more: the consciousness to be aware of it.” (Walsch, Book 3, 50-51). Although Walsch’s interpretation may sound sacrilegious to those who see God as anthropomorphic, its meaning is much the same as the passage in John 14; both share the idea of mutual divinity or God-integration (as opposed to a container model in which God enters a person’s heart). Walsch illustrates God’s Beingness by using air as a metaphor, explaining that air integrates and permeates everything, yet changes under different conditions: As particles of energy join together to form physical matter, they become very concentrated. Mashed up. Pushed together. They begin to “look like,” even “feel like,” distinct units. That is, they begin to seem “separate,” “different,” from all the other energy. Yet this is all the same energy, behaving differently. (179) The integrated view of God as energy, as Walsch points out, diminishes the traditional barriers of sin and unworthiness that most Christians believe separate themselves from God. The New Age

93The Lamsa version uses the broader interpretation of “children” instead of “sons.” The New American Standard Version reads, “I said, ‘You are gods, and all of you are sons of the Most High’” (82:6).

94The Lamsa version changes “in” to “with”: In that day you will know that I am with my Father and you are with me, and I am with you.”

86 concept of God as energy eliminates oppressive classifications of “” and “sinners” entirely— and in a world without such negative judgments, violence, prejudice, and hate have no source. Of all the books in the Conversations With God series, the fourth book, The New Revelations, presents the clearest analogy of the divine connection between God and humanity. A view of God as “All That Is” is another way of saying that God equals life. The following dialogue between “God” and Walsch correlates God with life simply and matter of factly: God: It doesn’t matter whether people believe in God or not. All people have beliefs about Life. And what you will find is that people’s collective beliefs about Life pretty much reflect humanity’s collective beliefs about God. This is understandable, given what I’m now going to tell you–which is something that some people may not accept. Walsch: What’s that? God: God and Life are the same thing. You may call these things by two different names, but they are the same thing. God is what Life is, and Life is what God is. God is the energy that you call Life, and Life is the energy that you call God. It is all the same thing. Life is God, physicalized. Walsch: So, if we believe in Life, we believe in God, is that what you’re saying? God: Yes. You cannot separate God from Life, and you cannot separate Life from God. You can say you believe in Life but not in God, but that is like saying you believe in the brain but not the mind. You can see and touch the brain, so you know it is there. You cannot see or touch the mind, so you’re not so sure what that is, or whether it is there or not. The brain is the mind, physicalized. Yet it is your mind that allows you to even contemplate your brain. Without your mind, you would not even know that the brain exists. It is exactly the same way with God and Life. [Italics in original] (New 27-28) Walsch takes a very complex philosophical idea about “who” or “what” God is and simplifies it, making it clear enough for most eight-year-olds to understand. His analogy that Life is God “physicalized” could revolutionize human relations, governments, and the global economy, as well as the distribution and conservation of natural resources. Whether or not such a revolution exists as a covert theme of most New Age texts, it exists as a natural consequence of redefining human subjectivity from a state of unworthiness to divinity. Shirley MacLaine was bold enough to risk public criticism and promote the “God equals us” idea on screen. One particular scene in the film based on her book, Out on a Limb, shows MacLaine following the directions of her spiritual mentor, David, as she opens her arms to the sea and repeats the phrase, “I AM GOD!” Any other scene in the movie could have been discounted as part of MacLaine’s eccentricity, but her willingness to identify herself with the divine–especially by using such a bold mantra--shocked many viewers. According to many, MacLaine’s statement seemed more blasphemous than John Lennon’s claim that he was as

87 famous as Jesus. Although the media and the public mocked her actions, MacLaine took a brave stance, risking ridicule to convey what she believes to be an important message. The concept of God/ess within all things–whether they are submissive or accepting of the Godly way of life–is relatively new for people in Western societies. The idea of God/ess as life or “All That Is” shakes the foundations of conventional religion by eliminating the divine/human binary and invalidating the need for redemption. In the following passage from her audiotape On Self Esteem, Gloria Steinem presents a strong case for revolutionizing single, transcendent representations of the Divine: We badly need to look at the politics of religion and to subvert it with spirituality to find our individual, our collective spirituality, whatever form it may take. But to understand what is happening when God is represented as only one kind of life form, not only as a male but also when God is not seen as being present in animals, in flowers, in all living things, we know we are being set up to be conquered if we are a female, an animal or a flower, and being set up to conquer if we are male and therefore supposed to be Godlike. . . . And whenever we find ourselves using the masculine pronoun for God or seeing God as any less than in all of us, we are beginning to set up, to make sacred, the political hierarchies we’ve just been discussing–by race, by sex, by sexuality--we are beginning to set them up so that we will obey them in the deepest possible way. Traditional interpretations of God breathing into Adam the breath of life presume that God is a presence “out there” as a Creator. “Godness” or Spirit has not usually been associated with the life force connecting all of creation through air, sunlight, and other forms of sustenance. Even the Catholic sacrament of holy communion requires a “substance” for God to enter. In The Gospel of Thomas, a Gnostic text excluded from the New Testament canon, Jesus’s brother Thomas records him saying, “Split a piece of wood, and I am there. Lift up the stone, and you will find me there” (Robinson, saying 77, p. 135). In another example from the same text, Jesus defines God in terms of human activity: “If they ask you, ‘What is the sign of your father in you?’ say to them, ‘It is movement and repose’” (Robinson, saying 50, p. 132). In both examples, the underlying connection is life itself or life as movement; we might look at a rock or piece of wood and see nothing but a static object, but--based on what we know from modern science--the atoms inside each are moving. The New Age idea that God is in all things–even in something like the breath–makes the concept of separation from God (through sin) illogical. New Age concepts of Godness and spirit emphasize the reality of the mind/body/ nature/spirit integration. In some cases, individual seekers merge these concepts with their current or former traditional faith and, consequently, revolutionize conventional approaches to religion and spirituality by broadening their beliefs about “who or what God is.” In this context, the realm of spirit is earthly–in rock formations, animal life, and vortexes, for instance, yet cannot be separated from us; it is as close as our own breath, as unique as our dreams, as real as our own thoughts. The Essene Book of Days, a journal and devotional guide that has been published annually since 1982 by the Earthstewards Network, provides a meditation on this subject: A wave of the ocean glides over the sea And crashes upon the shore. My body dances over the meadow And joyfully leaps in the air.

88 Is the wave not still one with the ocean? Am I not one with All? Can I separate myself from my Source When that wellspring flows deep within me And not on some distant mountain?95 The reference to a distant mountain is clearly an analogy to forms of belief that separate creator and creation into two identities in hierarchical relationship, far removed from each other. Wayne Dyer, in Manifest Your Destiny, emphasizes that God and the self are one, and assumptions of separation are merely illusions originating from our egocentric selves: “With the realization of God within yourself, you not only dissolve your ego’s identification as separate from God, but you leave behind the old ways of seeing yourself. As you awaken to your highest self, your conditioning as a separate being will be overcome with practice” (12-13). Echoing MacLaine’s “I AM GOD” statement in her autobiography Out on a Limb, Dyer expresses the idea that “God is within and outside every living thing” – and since God is everywhere, he is also a part of each person and IS each person (Dyer, Manifest 25). Dyer traces this concept in all the major religions as follows: Christianity: The kingdom of heaven is within you. Islam: Those who know themselves know their God. Buddhism: Look within, you are the Buddha. Vedanta (part of Hinduism): Atman (individual consciousness) and Brahman (universal consciousness) are one. Yoga (part of Hinduism): God dwells within you as you. Confucianism: Heaven, Earth, and human are of one body. Upanishads (sacred text of Hinduism): By understanding the self, all this universe is known. (Dyer, Manifest 27) Another illustration of the oneness Dyer describes between humans and God can also be translated as a sense of unity with other people–even those who died long ago: In a sense, those of us who now occupy Planet Earth are in many ways connected to all those who lived here before us. We may have new and modern conveniences, but we still share the same heart space, and the same energy or life force that flowed through their bodies now flows through ours. (Wisdom, xvi) Dyer is not referring to reincarnation in this passage, but to a sense of divinity or life force that connects everyone. Many other texts embraced by New Agers express similar ideas. Elizabeth and Mark Prophet, authors of The Lost Teachings of Jesus, discuss “the Law of the One” as ancient in origin and conveying the idea that if God created all things as part of himself, then all that is created, including humans and nature, are part of the being of God. “Simply stated,” the Prophets say, “we are all cells in the Universal Body of God and in him we live and move and have our being . . . . But we’re all very different expressions of that One and by our individual expressions we define his Oneness, even as he defines our own” (50).96

95Since the book is a daily journal, there are no page numbers. This is the part of the entry for all Thursdays in May, 2002.

96The Prophets cite Acts 17:28 here: “For in Him we live and move and exist, as even some of your own poets have said, ‘For we also are His offspring’” (NAS). 89 Similarly, Jewish Gnostics view the Shema, “Hear, O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord is one!” as a unity between Creator and Creation.97 Kabbalists view the Tree of Life as a map delineating ten areas of divine expansion, and each area stems from an ineffable Source. The idea of God as a tree is just one more example of the concept of the divine unity of all things. Lynn Gottlieb, a feminist rabbi, extends the reference to God in the Shema as “Shekinah” the feminine aspect of the divine: “Yisrael, you who walk the Spiritpath, / Shekinah, the Being One, / Elohanu, All Spirits, / Shekinah, the Being One, / Echad, embraces all being” (33). This revision of the traditional Shema, and of other Temple and practices, Gottlieb says, will not only help dismantle the negative stereotypes women have experienced for centuries but also reconnect them to a sense of the divine that is already part of who they are as females. Shekinah, Gottlieb writes, is “She who dwells within,” the one who “moves us to become fully human” (Gottlieb 228). To illustrate the meaning of a Shekinah that “embraces all being,” Gottlieb narrates a beautiful Persian story, The Conference of the Birds. She says that somewhere in China, “when animals could talk,” a golden feather fell out of the sky (33). All of the birds gathered to decide what to do, because the golden feather was presumed to be from the greatest of birds, the Great Simurg. Led by a bird that once flew with the Queen of Sheba, the flock decided to visit the palace of the Simurg. Not all birds outlasted the journey, however. Some were overwhelmed by challenges, including a fierce dragon, and the extreme length of the trip; others grew distracted by the pleasures they encountered on the way. Some, according to the legend, forgot the original purpose of the trip and wandered elsewhere. However, thirty birds finally reached the palace of the Simurg, and began searching for her; from room to room they flew, looking for her throne. When the birds reached the innermost chamber, they discovered a hall of mirrors surrounding an empty throne. As they wondered in amazement and confusion at their individual reflections in the mirrors, they cried out, “Oh Simurg, where are you?” Their reflections, however, answered their appeal, as each bird’s image merged into a composite reflection of a single bird, the focus of their journey--the Great Simurg. Gottlieb then tells readers that “Simurg” is Persian for “thirty birds,” and “is another name of the Shekinah, Herself the Bird of Golden Feathers” (34). Clearly, this story presents an alternative to the divine as Heavenly Father, transcending humankind, far above the universe. The Simurg is a composite of equal reflections, of each seeker linked to others, and each discovering the composite as the Source that already exists within the self. As the story teaches, the essence of God is without substance, as we normally think of it. Expressing a similar concept, professor of religion Darrel Fasching, explains, “God is mirrored in our diversity” (32). An anthropomorphic view of God/ess reduces the deity to “an idol” or an image of ourselves only and, Fasching says, creates “an unjust sacred order in which all who are not like us (in ethnicity, religion, race, gender, etc.) are treated as less than fully human” (32). The rigid barrier between divinity and humanity, unfortunately, has fueled religious-based prejudice and violence for centuries. The concept of God as patriarchal and transcendent, according to Starhawk, serves as the “ultimate source and repository of power-over” (4-6). The impact of science and technology, she says, citing Carolyn Merchant’s The Death of Nature, has reduced contemporary culture to the image of a ; the leftover parts are now devoid of the divinity that for centuries has been relegated to a transcendent Other (Starhawk 7). To counteract the negative effects of viewing God as sovereign and humans as sinful, Starhawk proposes a new model of consciousness, an

97Deuteronomy 6:4.

90 “ethics of immanence,” in which life and death, sexuality, personal integrity and diversity, are balanced in ethical proportion (33-44). Rather than making judgments about the validity of what other people believe, she proposes a new “attitude” of “choosing to take this living world, the people and creatures on it, as the ultimate meaning and purpose of life, to see the world, the earth, and our lives as sacred” (11). Writer Susan Cahill illustrates the relationship between sacredness and life in Starhawk’s theory of immanence as “the awareness of the world and everything in it as alive, dynamic, interdependent, interacting, and infused with moving : a living being, a weaving dance” (Cahill 313). In many New Age discourses, concepts of divinity suggest a parallel to changing concepts of human selfhood. Edgar Cayce, Deepak Chopra, Julianne Everett, Elizabeth Clare Prophet, and others refer to this part of us as “the higher self” or “God-self.” Still others identify it more generally as “.” Marianne Williamson calls it embracing the glory within (43) and refers to women as “priestesses,” “healers,” “goddesses,” and “queens” (8-13). In each case, an expansive, yet integrated view of the divine parallels a broadening concept of individual spiritual purpose and subjectivity. The new definitions of subjectivity suggested by many of the texts promoting alternative spirituality further the resources individuals have for changing their communicative strategies in culturally-recognizable ways. Because a view of God is no longer dualistic in terms of divine perfection and human shame, or in terms of God existing “way up there” and humans “way down here,” God/ess becomes spirit within and around everyone, everything, everywhere–regardless whether or not individuals have been “saved” in the Evangelical sense of the word. Joan Borysenko, a New Age author and speaker, also proposes a view of God/ess that serves as an alternative to the anthropomorphic model. In her audiotape on meditation, Borysenko explains that humans tend to project their own perspectives of reality upon their image of God: We want to be able to get our minds and our arms around something, so first we have the whole argument of God as a She. After awhile, God became a He–for the last 6,000 years, God is a He. Now, we’re trying to get back to God as a She. Well, you know . . . God is a verb. And if we could get rid of the rest of this, it would be wonderful . . . so we have to get over those kinds of things and to recognize the spirituality that is in every single religion–and the same spirituality that is intrinsic in science, or , or . It’s there. Referring to God as a verb is impossible if we can only conceptualize God as a Being. Yet if we follow Paul Tillich’s example of viewing God as “the ground of being,” or as Borysenko urges, as a verb, then the foundations of patriarchy and conventional religion would no longer support exclusivity or dualism (Tillich 41). For Borysenko and other New Age authors, the concept of spirit–the essential connection between human individuality and divinity--is as real and as simple as breathing. According to Borysenko, “breath comes, actually, in most , from the same root as spirit. So in Latin, you have ‘spiritus,’ spirit, breath–same thing . . . in Hebrew it’s ‘ruwach,’ breath, or wind.” The same is true with the Hawaiian word, Aloha: “Alo” = presence, front, face; “hâ” = breath or “the presence of (Divine) Breath” (“Real”).98

98The website author cites Helena G. Allen, The Betrayal of Lili`uokalani, Last Queen of Hawaii, 1838-1917, Honolulu: Mutual Publishing, 1982.

91 Borysenko uses a poem from the Islamic mystic, Kabir, to illustrate her point about the relationship between breath and spirit: The Breath Are you looking for me? I am in the next seat. My shoulder is against yours. You will not find me in the stupas, not in Indian shrine rooms, nor in synagogues, nor in cathedrals: not in masses, nor kirtans, not in legs winding around your own neck, nor in eating nothing but vegetables. When you really look for me, you will see me instantly-- you will find me in the tiniest house of time. Kabir says: Student, tell me, what is God? He is the breath inside the breath. If “everything” is God or part of God, then the traditional view of animals and plant life, stones, air, even what we believe to be “evil” becomes, in varying degrees, a function of divinity.99 In response to the events on September 11, Chopra writes in The Deeper Wound: One question gets asked over and over. Why does God permit evil to exist? The answer, I feel, must be divine patience. God is waiting for us to grow into our goodness. God wants us to see on our own, so that the vision will endure. It may take a long time, but that is the price for having . No choice is forced upon us. There is only the allure of peace and love as higher realities. (82-83) Chopra’s answer implies an aspect of spiritual development that is social as well as individual. The development of individual character and recognizing divinity within is a microcosm of the evolution of humanity, a concept that serves as an underlying theme in many different texts reclaimed by the New Age Movement. For example, in Volume Three of New Age Bible Interpretation, the author, Corinne Helene discusses several incarnations of the Hindu God Vishnu, all advancing from primitive forms of life to more advanced forms. Vishnu’s various transform him from a fish, in the first instance, to a turtle, then to a boar, to a creature who is half-man and half-lion, and then into human form. But the story does not end there. According to Helene, even after a “Divine Man” is born, “the end is not yet”: “The path leads still higher, to the appearance of God-Man and the establishment of the new heaven and the new earth” (62). Applying a New Age twist to the Judeo-Christian narrative, Helene describes a post-Messianic world as a place or state of mind that, presumably, would no longer need evil to inspire growth, one that would sustain an environment of peace and love, the “higher realities” Chopra mentions. The New Age Movement has no credo or no agreed upon agenda, but if it did, revising the present view of God as a Being would be essential. An expansive view of the divine replaces superficial judgments and platitudes with a sense of responsibility for understanding more about

99A reference to a similar concept can be found in the Old Testament: “I am the Lord, and there is none else. I form the light, and create darkness; I make peace, and create evil: I the Lord do all these things” (Isaiah 45: 6, 7).

92 the interconnectedness of life. Egocentric lifestyles formerly viewed as “sinful” would not proliferate in an environment where the divine is viewed as part of everything. Initially, the ego’s act of self-aggrandizement actually disengages its connection to others and proclaims itself as a “god” of sorts. However, if wide-ranging cultural changes take place so that the majority of the citizens of the world view God/ess as within everyone and all things, egotism would eventually become theoretically and theologically impossible. The distinctions between divine and human become blurred in the Gnostic, Buddhist, Native American, and other ancient philosophies that influence most New Age thought. In a sense, whether God/ess is everywhere (for the New Ager) or nowhere (for the atheist), the result is much the same. How this particular Source--or to use Bergson’s term, “elan vital”--is labeled and how individuals define that within their own systems of rationality determine whether it can be called “spiritual.” In order to transform the conditions of cultural, racial, and gender injustices within our communities and whatever we define as the mysteries of these “outer” , we must pay more attention to the effects of the inner mysteries in people lives–including the complexities of their internal searching, how and in what form they find answers, and how this process might affect individual, social, and ideological functioning. Individuals may, of course, deny themselves the power of self-inquiry; they may choose not to challenge basic ideas about selfhood and the , but our world is nonetheless influenced by the profound questions the New Age Movement has provoked. Since the term “New Age” still garners some disdain even among the people who share its philosophies, people use a variety of other names for themselves–seekers, light bearers, neo-Gnostics, pagans, wiccans, Buddhists, esotericists, etc.--all with their own eccentricities. However, each shares a belief in the perennial and indistinguishable union of the physical and metaphysical–the meaning behind the phrase “we are all one.” Regardless of whatever names emerge, the Movement’s messages have the potential to establish a counter- tradition that encourages the blending of both reason and faith in a way that sustains social justice.

93 Conclusion

“[T]he criticism of religion is the premise of all criticism” (Marx 28).

Cultural changes are escalating in America and beyond, yet conventional religion and government policies have not been able to keep up with these changes in order to meet social needs. In U.S. politics, exclusive thinking prevents peaceful negotiations, fair distribution of wealth, or using the billions reserved for national defense to end world hunger. Instead, our nation manufactures violence and war without clear justification. The President insists on keeping America’s shores safe, yet, according to the National Center for Injury Protection and Control, every two years the number of deaths from gun violence here in our own country exceed the total number of deaths during the nine-year Viet Nam war (Rosen 49, National). In a comparative study of firearm-related deaths among 35 high-and upper-middle-income countries, the rate of gun deaths in the U.S., “14.24 per 100,000,” was eight times that of other countries in the same economic bracket (Krug, Powell, and Dahlberg 214). In contrast to this data, showing that he is in support of the “right to life,” President Bush called the National Right to Life organization before their latest march. The qualitative difference between ignoring the need for reducing gun violence in America, aggressively pursuing a justifiably-debatable war with Iraq, and making a phone call to support right-to-lifers is an irony many thinking people have come to accept as commonplace in conservative-style American government. Under the influence of such exclusive practices, political action seems to be guided by the power-hungry or, at the very least, by those who seek re-election. Likewise, exclusive practices in religion, particularly among American protestant fundamentalists, show intolerance for social equity (especially for women and same-sex couples), reveal a general mistrust of those who practice a religion that is different from their own, and refuse to accept scholarship or alternative opinions that challenge the legitimacy of their chosen, sacred text. Often serving as a silent partner to American , exclusive religion has maintained a stronghold over major issues. One of the main points I have stated in this dissertation is that rapid changes in culture (especially when these changes are accompanied by traumatic events like the attacks on 9/11) intensify the problems that exclusive approaches to religion and nationalism already create. In order to encourage rational, peaceful societies that accept differences of opinion and ways of life, we must challenge exclusivism–not with intellectual forms of reason, which it often fails to recognize or accept–but with an expanded sense of reason that can be conjoined with wonder. Traditionally, reason generally holds that the existence of a divine being can only be a matter of faith rather than of fact, which is at the basis of why reason and faith are often at odds, whereas a state of wonder encourages openness and exploration of questions without presuppositions; wonder is not threatened by other points of view. If we take another look at early Christianity, we can see that Jesus used wonder as a basis for expanding the thinking of Pharisees. Pagels explains, in fact, that Jesus revolutionized how his followers viewed the Ten Commandments, explaining to them that thinking about committing adultery broke the commandment as much as committing the act in person (Adam 6). Because Jesus was subversive, perhaps there is hope that Christian fundamentalists will become more aware of how their literal interpretations of the Bible are just as backward as interpretations of the Ten Commandments were in the time of Jesus.

94 When individuals explore their most basic beliefs about why people do what they do, discourse fractures boundaries: such pervasive hunger for meaning invokes controversy, shifts paradigms, and challenges whatever is considered unthinkable or unknowable. And if such new thinking begins to take root, other approaches to life might also expand and change because inquiry and exploration would no longer become threatening. Personal and civic improvement requires questioning, and with productive inquiry influencing social relations, communities would not only become more open and respectful of difference but also welcome it. No longer would politics proceed according to an “us versus them” method of operation; the distribution of wealth would be based on ethics and responsibility for others; citizens and governments would be more concerned about protecting natural resources and solving global problems. On perhaps the most fundamental level, if individuals expand and redefine their view of God as equal to Life, low self-esteem would be less of an issue, family relationships and partnerships would improve, and, as a consequence of improved self-esteem, violence would diminish. People all over the world are experiencing individual and cultural awakenings to what they consider most valuable in their search for personal growth and quality of life. In order for conscious awareness to become the basis for revolution, each of us must be willing to examine our belief systems, others’ belief systems, and the social impact of those constructions. New Age seekers generally propose an approach to life that is based on reflection and wonder, but transposing these philosophies in an atmosphere of extremism is very difficult. Wouter Hanegraaff, a prominent scholar on New Age religion, notes that because the New Age Movement rejects some traditional forms of religion as “false” (either dogmatic, exclusivist, merely exoteric, etc.), it is dangerously close to becoming what it rejects–being exclusive or even dogmatic (329). It’s aim toward universalist schemes, he says, are meant to be “tolerant and inclusive because [New Age thought] encompasses all religious traditions . . . but it qualifies the actual diversity of faiths by pointing out that, whatever the believers may say, there is only one fundamental spiritual truth” (italics in original, 330). Hanegraaff makes an important point, but it serves more as a warning than as a direct observation. In the context of what I have discussed in the last few chapters, exploratory thinking, in its most functional sense, resists closure and perpetuates itself through continued inquiry. By encouraging a spirit of wonder, the New Age Movement creates an atmosphere of dialogue, exchange, self-development, and critique--even within various factions of the movement itself. In fact, what prevents New Age seekers from developing exclusive beliefs is their resistance to static institutional forms, their continuing attention to the blending of reason and faith, and their individualized approach to divinity–as opposed to identifying with a Supreme Being who dictates what truth and morality are for everyone. In this light, I disagree with Hanegraaff that underlying New Age religion is the concept that there is only one, fundamental spiritual truth. Given that texts are subject to various interpretations, I am not saying that Hanegraaff is in error; however, none of the texts I have mentioned in the last few chapters have espoused “one truth” for all. Spiritual growth—or coming into the realization of “the God within”—by necessity, must be unique to each person. Just as maturity, responsibility, and harmonious relationships are goals for adulthood, many seekers share common goals than can be misinterpreted as universal truths. Contending that “we are all one” expresses a sense of connection to others through a sense of “the God within” and is not tantamount to assuming all people are the same or that they should believe the same things, a claim that New Age writers do not make.

95 Although the academic and secular rejection of some New Age thought is often as harmful as it is justifiable, various factions of the New Age movement continue to challenge the master narratives of religious idealism that have oppressed many who were not of the privileged gender, race, denomination, social class, or sexual orientation. The necessity of exploring this new spiritual in America is more important than ever. Any discourses that complicate the gaps between reason and spirit–or whatever names we assign them–should be explored and evaluated in terms of their potential for deconstructing oppressive binaries many social critics and academics have been seeking to disrupt. As I mentioned in the introduction, our society needs brave critics who question and develop strategies to resist the harmful tendencies of ideological extremism. According to Jürgen Habermas, if knowledge and human interest combine to produce self reflection, dogmatism becomes “equally a moral lack and a theoretical incapacity” (208). In order for change to occur, we must challenge the received view of reason as transcendental Divine Logos and experience it in context of human rationality, imagination, intuition, and emotion–a rhetorical move that theorizes a kind of intersubjectivity that rejects ideological containment. A more balanced integration between what qualifies as divinity and human life foregrounds a strong critique of absolutism and ideological power. The discursive force of such an integration would potentially impact how we currently view rationality, subjectivity, otherness, and the world around us . . . and it can only begin in terms of rescripting former discursive patterns that have established limited conceptions of “ultimate truth and meaning.” Perhaps the last barrier we face in the battle against social oppression is deconstructing the divine/human dualism in the context of consciousness and cultural relations. When we break through this barrier, previously unrecognized others may have more ability to react against cultural extremism and operational reason, including excessive dependence on outside experts for “answers.” Concepts of human divinity, intuition, nature, politics, and cultural inclusiveness emphasized by New Age spirituality, of course, need further critique, yet these alternative discourses provide rhetoric, rationality, and religion new starting points for just such a revolution.

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