Thoughts and Prayers: The Religion Thread

That ain’t for communion hoss.

Mark 16:18

 

My first foray into the field to see if I liked it was a snake-handling service in Mississippi. #zorahadmorefun

 

It was a good question. I don't think it is possible to boil down what Christians believe into three sentences, mostly because Christians are not some monolithic group of people that all believe the same thing. There are too many divisions within Christianity, including that of faith and religious dogma. Faith is mostly beautiful and inspirational. Dogma, not so much.

 

It would probably take a good pull of moonshine before I picked up a rattlesnake.

 

Piker.

Rattlesnakes or GTFO.

Edit: Then again, maybe they are the real deal. I’ve watched too much Swamp People: Serpent Invasion.

 

further snakes . . .

https://oxfordamerican.org/eyes/facts-and-fictions

 

This is the rural south many on the outside don't quite understand. I feel the same twinge in my chest when I see or hear of places like this that I do when I get news of West Texas. Those places feel like different planets to anyone who hasn't spent time there. It is safe to include urban and suburban southerners like me who didn't venture into those wilder outbacks until adulthood.

Religion can play a decidedly different role there than it does in those nice, well-kept mega-churches and satellite Baptist outposts. The ideas are immutable: hierarchies and doctrine rarely if ever change. For many Christians in those places, whether they leave or stay, the basic tenets of faith are spelled out in The Beatitudes, The Ten Commandments, John 3:16, and John 13:14. They remain the textual bedrocks of their faith.

The seachange of the last half-decade has many true believers reeling. The word "cult" gets used quite often in describing what has co-opted a big swath of American Christianity. It's the best descriptor for now.

 

One of the things I miss most about Robert Coles' long-gone 'DoubleTake' magazine is its familiarity and affection for those corners of Christian America. And its clear-eyed approach to the rites and practices of those Americans.

These underexplored corners of the American south seem in many ways unchanged from the days of Mencken at the Scopes trial: brimstone then, brimstone now.

Last of the old-time religion.

 

I'll have to look for Robert Coles. Thanks for bringing him up!

The culture is vital in that there is life that gets missed when "11th hour ethnographic preservation" comes into play.

FWIW, my big project when I spent time as a distance student at Big Giant Playwrights Incubation Center was a piece on the Scopes trial from the standpoint of someone who had left Rhea County, where Dayton is located. I spent a year getting to know all of the key players through the work and words they left behind. My heroes turned human and my villain was someone I came to miss when I turned in my final draft.

I can't say enough good things about Edward Larson's work on the subject. It served as a springboard for my own research toward breathing life into Darrow, et al. If you haven't already, find a copy of Summer For the Gods: The Scopes Trial and America's Continuing Debate Over Science and Religion.

My feelings about Mencken are mixed. Like many funny people, he could be a piece of work. I recognize his brilliance and have a copy of the LoA volume of Mencken's essays. There is frustration at the intellectual laziness and lack of rigor when considering his subject, but that's my disciplinary hangup.

 

Coles is an American giant. Hard to find a capsule biography that does him justice. Start here, I guess. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Coles_(psychiatrist)

I mentioned Mencken for that very reason: because he represents in all his coruscating cynicism the essential tension between the glib modernity and lazy condescension of the Eastern establishment and the ancient angers and earnest bigotries of that old-time God from the uphollow tent show.

 

Got the word in service this morning that unlike many of our neighboring Methodist churches, ours will not be entering the discernment process this year, which means we will be staying UMC. A considerable relief to me and I’m sure even much more so to the handful of families who have found us a quiet oasis of welcome in a region growing more vocally intolerant of anyone not straight or cis by the day.