This Week, On the Happy Fundamentalist Mormon Polygamy Hour...

Husband Kody's first three wives think his fourth wife is a ho because she kissed him before they were married. God, I love Mormons.

Christine O'Donnell and Eddie Izzard Argue About God

Vintage "Politically Incorrect" clip in which the Senate candidate explains that, if she were hiding Jews in her attic during WWII, God would save her from having to lie to Hitler. And then Eddie Izzard and Bill Maher make fun of her.

God Spam in The Village Voice

The Village Voice's news blog featured God Spam this weekend in a piece about Jacob Isom, of "Dude, you have no Quran" fame. The article, by Leslie Minora, specifically focuses on the merchandise I whipped up in honor of Mr. Isom. You can read the story here.

From the interview: Watkins, a freelance writer and the daughter of a minister, says she started her quirky religious blog because she's "always been really fascinated by the intersection of pop culture and religion...[this type of blog] didn't exist, and I wanted to read it." Isom seems the personification of the very intersection Watkins explores.

I wouldn't say he's exactly at the intersection that this blog explores. If David Isom had grabbed the Quran while singing a verse from the lost Gospel of Thomas to the tune of "Bad Romance," then we'd be talking.

However, The Voice is absolutely correct that David Isom's story has a special appeal for me. Ironically, I had deliberately avoided covering the Amarillo Quran-burning story at first, for the same reason that I won't write about the Westboro Baptist Church: both stories center around a small group of bigots whose message distorts the Christian faith, and who are ultimately powerless except in their ability to get media attention. I do not want to feed that particular beast.

But I am not the mainstream media. By the time the book-burning was actually scheduled to take place, the nation's entire freedom of religion apparently hung in the balance of one deluded pastor and a park grill. The Unitarian Universalists, God bless 'em, mobilized en masse to stop this event from taking place. And then one shirtless stoner thwarted the entire event by doing the most practical thing imaginable: taking the holy book away. And since apparently no one had a back-up Quran (which I do, in fact, find hilarious), everybody just went home.

With one spontaneous act, David Isom brought this clash of faiths down from the ideological clouds to a very human level. And that's the element that's so often missing from press coverage of religion stories: the fact that the participants are individuals, and even if they all believe basically the same thing, they no doubt have very different reasons. No one was hurt that day in Amarillo; no individual freedoms were lost. In the end, there was just a man who looked down and realized he had no book to burn.

Footnote: I am 99% certain that God Spam is the point of reference for this article from the Amarillo Globe-News, as no one else to my knowledge is selling "Dude, You Have no Quran" hats. That article's reference to hats and T-shirts was also featured in The Week. And as a result of all this publicity, I have sold... 3 shirts! And no teddy bears. Come on, guys, Thanksgiving is coming. That's the traditional holiday of meme-themed plush toys. 

Dude, You Have No Quran: The T-Shirt

Every once in a while, an everyman utters such a profound statement that we must grant him our culture's highest honor: a slogan T-shirt. Ladies and gentleman, Jacob Isom is such a man. Although there were dozens of protesters making a stand against the scheduled Quran burning in an Amarillo, Texas park, Isom single-handedly thwarted the Christian hate parade by yanking the sacred text off a burning grill.

In his own, now-immortal words: "I snuck up behind him and took his Quran. He said something about burning the Quran, and I said, Dude, you have no Quran."

Jacob Isom, in honor of your bold stance against religious intolerance (and the fact that you said "dude"), God Spam salutes you with this custom T-shirt.

The "Dude, you have no Quran" shirt is now available for purchase, in assorted colors and styles, at the brand-new God Spam online store. And since Cafe Press, as it turns out, is insane about customization, you can also get your own "Dude, you have no Quran" teddy bear.

Or perhaps you'd prefer an extremely American-made dog T-shirt?

 

While you're there, you can also get a Smoking Nuns T-shirt, inspired by the popular God Spam post, "Is Catholicism like Smoking?" Here's the design:

(I'm not totally sold on this one, so if buy it now before I decide it's too offensive!)

But Jacob Isom, this post is really about you. God Spam salutes you, your bravery, and your weird cooking show pilot that we found on YouTube. All Americans should be proud to wear your words.

Update: Isom is now promoting official "Dude, You Have No Quran" shirts with his face emblazoned on them. Go here to buy one. So many options!

Is Catholicism Like Smoking?

Since last week's post prompted some lively discussion on Anne Rice's Facebook page, this seems like a good time to ponder something that Rice has made me think about: the difficulty of quitting Catholicism.

I should clarify, to start, that I'm not a Catholic; rather, I'm a Prod with Italian roots, a nun obsession and a love of early church history. I named my son after Saint Anselm. So rest assured that I'm not trying to be flip about the Catholic Church here.  I see a great deal of beauty in Catholicism. When Anne Rice first declared her conversion into the Catholic Church, I thought it made perfect sense.  The things that resonate about her books -- the conflicted relationship between passion and morality, the grand drama on a larger-than-human scale, the tantalizing nearness of death -- are all very present in Catholic tradition and ritual.

And now she is walking away, not from her faith, but from the Church. Here's what I neglected to mention in the previous post: after declaring that she'd "quit being a Christian," Rice received a public invitation to join the socially liberal United Church of Christ (supported, of course, by an enthusiastic Facebook campaign). When she demurred, the LA Times asked Rice flat-out, How can you say no to that? Her response was diplomatic and honest: "I respect completely people who want to find a church that's more in accord with what they can morally accept. But for me, walking away is the thing right now. In the name of Christ, in the name of God."

Now, I love the UCC. I love their proud acceptance of different lifestyles and sexualities, I love their willingness to embrace change, and I love that their entire outreach campaign is based on a Gracie Allen quote. But the UCC is not the Catholic Church. For everything it offers, it lacks the rituals, the thousands of years of history and culture, the globe-spanning universal language of Catholicism. Now: did Anne Rice leave the church entirely because she thought it would make a stronger political statement than joining a more liberal denomination? Or did she leave because nothing can truly replace Catholicism for her?

I've watched many friends struggle to quit smoking, and it's always seemed to me that the hardest part of quitting smoking is that nothing can really take its place. There is no alternative activity that incorporates relaxation, socializing and ritual in the same way that cigarettes do. There's nothing you can do with your mouth and hands and breath that can replicate the feeling of having a cigarette.  Similarly: there is nothing else in the world like the Catholic Church. Some would argue for the Episcopal Church as an adequate replacement, but for many who have fallen in love or been raised with Catholic tradition, it will never be more than adequate. Remember: selecting a church is a deeply personal thing, and it can be more about a feeling of presence and belonging than about a series of check marks on an "agree/do not agree" list.

This is hard time for Catholics with an independent moral compass.  In June, a representative from the Vatican argued before the U.N. that condom distribution was actually harmful to AIDS-ravaged Africa. In July, the Vatican declared the ordination of women to be delicta graviora -- a "grave sin" comparable to sexually abusing a child. And the abuse scandal -- a travesty only magnified by the church's refusal to take responsibility -- is still a great unhealed wound; just this week, a Vatican lawyer gave an interview to Fox News assuring the public that Pope Ratzinger actually did show human emotion in reaction to the abuse cases. (When that's supposed to be comforting, we're in deep trouble.)

Anne Rice says that she'll "very much miss" going to Mass and participating in Holy Communion. Her decision sounds heartbreaking. But sometimes, going cold turkey is the only option.

The Reluctant Christian: Katy Perry & Anne Rice

At this particular moment in pop culture, we have two very influential women trying to distance themselves from their former Christian faith. And other than their ability to make headlines, they couldn't be more different. First we have Katy Perry, a 25-year-old pop singer who started out in the Contemporary Christian Music scene before a song about lip balm made her a superstar. Check out the video below from her CCM days. (Who knew she could sing without writhing? I thought these things were programmed to occur simultaneously.)


It's a well-known fact that Perry was raised by devout evangelical parents -- well-known, because for every topless photo shoot the singer gives the press, she offers a new anecdote about her wacky religious upbringing. I have to hand it to her, she gives good quote. In the latest Rolling Stone, she says that speaking in tongues is "as normal to me as 'pass the salt'", and says she couldn't eat Lucky Charms because "lucky" sounds like "Lucifier." But what's even more interesting than the sugary-cereal anecdote (I'm so trying that on my kid), is that she still considers herself a Christian. To wit:

God is very much still a part of my life...But the way the details are told in the Bible—that’s very fuzzy for me. And I want to throw up when I say that. But that’s the truth. 

I still believe that Jesus is the son of God… But I also believe in extraterrestrials, and that there are people who are sent from God to be messengers, and all sorts of crazy stuff… Every time I look up, I know that I’m nothing and there’s something way beyond me. I don’t think it’s as simple as heaven and hell.

 

In the other corner of the blogosphere we have Anne Rice, who made headlines by announcing on Facebook that she had "quit being a Christian." The vampire novelist famously returned to her Catholic roots in 1998, after a long period of atheism. Here's what she told the Los Angeles Times about her decision to walk away again:

I've come to the conclusion from my experience with organized religion that I have to leave, that I have to, in the name of Christ, step away from this. It's a matter of rejecting what I've discovered about the persecution of gays, the persecution and oppression of women and the actions of the churches on many different levels. I've also found that I can't find a basis in Scripture for a lot of the positions that churches and denominations take today, and I can't find any basis at all for an anointed, hierarchical priesthood. 

So all of this finally created a pressure in me, a kind of confusion, a toxic anger at times, and I felt I had to step aside. And that's what I've done.

What do these two stories have in common?  Neither of these ladies have abandoned the core tenet of Christianity, faith in the divinity of Jesus Christ. By that definition, they're still devout Christians. What they've done is left the church, or more specifically, a version of Christianity that they found limiting. For Perry, it was a version that didn't allow her to eat Lucky Charms or hang out with gay people; for Rice, it was a version that insisted that priests were closer to God than laypeople (or women). This makes perfect sense, really. One could argue that Christianity itself is founded on the idea of rebelling from restrictive religious laws and practices. So why is it headline-worthy news when a pop singer and a fiction writer decide that organized religion has a few problems?

In terms of Katy Perry, there's an easy answer: the press tosses its spectacles into the air with glee every time it finds a story that actually has the capacity to shock, anger or titillate the jaded reader -- and while religion and sex are only sometimes enough on their own, the intersection of the two is a reliable home run. (Adding "violence" to either topic also works. Nobody tell The Huffington Post that I'm spilling their secrets, okay?) Katy Perry is sex on a plate, and Katy Perry has an unironic Jesus tattoo. Write it up, boys.

I could make a case for Anne Rice falling into the same category -- after all, she's best known for writing steamy fantasy novels -- but I think there's something more going on here. What strikes me most about Perry and Rice's statements is the inner conflict they express. These women are not just declaring their beliefs; they're divulging an ongoing struggle with the very ideas of faith, the church and salvation. Katy Perry literally feels nauseous when she admits she doesn't believe in the absolute truth of the Bible. Anne Rice, like a woman in mourning, lists the Catholic rituals that she'll miss. Neither Rice nor Perry is in a state of resolution about their faith. Each is on a journey, working through "toxic anger" (Rice) and contemplating "the neverendingness of the universe" (Perry).

This is turf where celebrity journalism fears to tread. We like our Christian stars to be troops-supporting virgins, our atheist stars to be hard-drinking intellectuals. We can allow for agnostics, or those who fit into the new default category of "spiritual but not religious." But celebrities who actively wrestle with faith? They make us uncomfortable. Why can't they just pick a side, like everybody else? Katy Perry must be an idiot. Anne Rice must never have been a real Christian. We can accept the sincerity of a celebrity who marries and divorces six people, but not that of a celebrity who goes back and forth on God.

If we could make room for celebrities who question religion, could we also make room in the modern church for disbelief? Should our religious institutions be trying harder to embrace doubt, to accept questioning as part of the process of faith? Food for thought.

For now, it will be interesting to see what replaces religion in Rice's books and Perry's songs.  Katy Perry seems to have fled from her strict religious upbringing into a teenage cotton-candy world, where any notion of Hell is superseded by the next sugar fix. Is the much-criticized lack of depth in her songs an attempt to detach herself from her evangelizing past? Rice has referred to her entire body of work, up until her 2004 decision to "write only for the Lord," as "a movement toward Jesus Christ." Will her work from now on be a movement away from Christianity -- and if so, what will that look like?

Gotta Have Faith: Lady Gaga

"I'm very religious, I was raised Catholic, I believe in Jesus, I believe in God, I'm very spiritual, I pray very much. But at the same time, there is no one religion that doesn't hate or speak against or be prejudiced against another racial group or religious group or sexual group, and for that I think religion is also bogus. So I suppose you could say I'm a quite religious woman who's very confused about religion."- Lady Gaga on Larry King Live



Image: Gaga at the Wailing Wall, from the Daily Mail