hands through the bars

the thing about propaganda is: if you already think along its lines, then it disappears. watching Jesus Camp was a rather bizarre exercise in crouching between Evangelical and Liberal camps.

what, of course, is disturbing is the way those on either side of the dilemmas (note the plural here: what is conceived of as a single issue is, in fact, many different ones) resort to the same polarising techniques that they condemn in others. this is the reason i'm using capital letters to refer to the groups in question; they have placed themselves in these boxes—by means of, and right alongside with, their rhetorical choices.

i've been trying to work out, often in the company of trusted seminarians, a connotatively accurate definition of "evangelical." so far, i continue to struggle without conclusion, largely because the term includes so much cultural signification. along these lines, i dearly wish to restore to "liberal" its more-or-less dictionary definition. films like Jesus Camp do not help in such endeavors. alas, poor Yorick, the same holds true with so many lower-to-upper case transitions, especially when adjectives are implicated.

if i expected absolutely mind-blowing statements and actions on the Evangelical part, the film did not provide these. what did end up riveting me with shock was both the overt Liberal message and the audience reaction. it doesn't justify them, but many Fundamentalist attitudes and consequent choices are to be expected. moreover, they often are consistent, at least given a (sometimes limited and/or skewed) Biblical context. it's troubling, however, to see the jumpy reactive nature of the Liberal response to things Evangelical, the parody and the peering, the finger pointing. i wanted thoughtful analyses, and i got refined, knowing, and nervously staggered snickers.

perhaps i ought to pause a minute, to go briefly (don't fret) into a bit of the background without which some (especially "cultural") things make little sense. see: though i didn't grow up singing the exact Praise Choruses piped in over the trembles in the movie, i could easily dredge up full verses from their forefathers. the genetically feeble musicality and lyric strategies have always been to me akin to nothing else. at the same time, however, many of my closest friends' Bibles were penned in their D'Nealian best with the precise moment of their salvation. They attended, and then served as counsellors at Bible camps in the mountains of Japan. When Kay Arthur came to school as Spiritual Life Emphasis Week speaker, these same were overjoyed. it's almost a separate issue that i, myself, did and felt none of these things. what must come to the fore is the fact that while some of their actions might have been done merely because imposed from without/above, i'm not describing the psychopaths in my formative years. i coexisted with, and derived much from, the Fundamentalists of my youth.

even as i attempt to describe something like this, i almost fall into an observational mode myself—so different from the one of immediate experience. which is why i keep returning to the word "culture." because when the words "Spiritual Life Emphasis Week" roll off of my tongue (although, admittedly, i don't even think they had been thought for about 7 years), i realise that it's like using
えき, のり, or ｺﾞﾐ in a sentence when i refer to a train station, seaweed, or garbage. although, perhaps, to be more accurate about it—what the phenomenon most closely reminds me of is discussing WWII with Americans. because no matter whether they are staunch conservatives or bleeding hearts, there is a neatness about every interlocutor i've encountered in this country that smacks of something learned as opposed to known. here i do not mean to elevate feeling over reason; but reason does, indeed, cover more than we might think.

though i fear it may not have explained anything, let me return from the divergence to analyse the film in terms of its lack of thought. while there are countless intelligently provoking—edgy and potentially explosive, but in the right ways—things that could have been said, the film-makers chose the path of least resistance and, in doing so, merely switched up the subject for the object. in recording leading Pentacostal's condemnation of popular culture, they could do no better than to issue condemnations themselves. however (and i am taken aback to discover myself thinking this), the latter, reactive sort of vilification is the more reprehensible—because, and only because, they ought to know better. what is poked at as religiously-fueled (more on this mis-use of the adjective "religious" later; perhaps another candidate for casing-up?) simplemindedness is immediately responded to in kind, this time with the self-satisfaction that often accompanies those who do not realise that they are simply mimicking.

if Fundamentalist varieties thereof have distorted Christianity (its "true meaning" or "spirit," whatever those may be) and the possibilities it does offer for thoughtfully apprehending, and existing in, faith—then Liberalism has done the same...except for the fact that it criticises, often wholesale, the realms historically occupied by religion, without really knowing what to erect in this yawning void. the strong humanistic strain of the Western philosophical tradition that has resulted in the country in which many of us have dwelt over the past few decades, at one time or another, creates a firm foundation for confidence in critique, in attacking arguments on various logical grounds, and on the Art of Questioning. what "we" have also inherited from this tradition is a notable weakness in replacing the things, people, and rationales we have just debunked with something solid in its own right. yes, this has been done—but it has also, as lamentably as glaringly, not occurred. and when this latter has happened, when nothing has even been temporarily shuffled together from the ashes, what has been the repeated tragedy upon an original calamitous destruction is the reason that emerges from a lack of subsequent construction: that those who destroy have "done their job."

[entre our familiar self-satisfied smirk.]

to leave reconstruction to those who happen to stumble upon the rubble is to cede participation in the act of constructive destruction. for such a process must be done humanely, which is to say: with the goal of a compassion that is (in cross-linguistic etymologies and otherwheres) the "fellow feeling" whose synonym, in this instance (if not always), is "understanding."

it would have made for a different film entirely had the sign over the monkey cage read "do not feed the primates."