Harry T. Cook Essay 7/12/13

Politics That Sell

By Harry T. Cook

7/12/13

This was a dinner table conversation. I was seething over the recent passage of a super-restrictive law in Ohio that all but undoes the limited reproductive freedom that Roe v. Wade provided women. The legislature seemed eager to march in step with those in Texas, South Dakota, North Carolina and now Wisconsin.

I was wondering aloud about how it was that in the second decade of the 21st century misogyny could have pushed its way to the forefront of prejudice, almost surpassing racism -- at least the more overt kind. Although, as Paula Deen has learned, the N-word has been banned for life.

I went on to suggest that some people just have to have a Them against which to aggress, and for self-styled conservatives in many a legislative chamber that Them is now the female half of the human race.

I had long since abandoned the notion that it was religion that drove the effort to keep our women barefoot and pregnant. Why legislators -- mostly men -- persist in making termination of pregnancies more difficult when they are so resistant to providing food stamps and other aid to children of the poor stumps me.

My wife, who is so much smarter than her husband, scoffed. "It's all about marketing," she said.

This is how she is nearly always right: One day I was griping about what I consider to be made-up words that appear in no dictionary. Not so much as turning her head whilst chopping vegetables, she said: "Everything after 'oogah oogah' is made up," referring to primitive Homo sapiens. Obvious, but not to me until then.

Now this fount of knock-'em-dead wisdom is telling me that the anti-choice crowd is legislating against women's rights because it's what's selling.

"It's the flavor of the year," she said. From that I guess I am to understand that the free market of politics is kind of like the free market of fast food: Make it more unhealthy, and they will come. Or like the free market in television sitcoms: Make 'em more stupid (if that's possible), and they will watch them, mouths slightly open.

Anger, outrage and resentment are easily provoked by those sated with Big Macs and reruns of "Roseanne." Read any newspaper and underline every instance in which a reporter has written that people are "angered" by this or "outraged" by that or "resentful" of something else. Getting angry is a real kick. Watch Fox News' person-on-the-street interviews that invariably turn into cantatas of choler. The cameras tease it out.

What will people do with their anger if the power doesn't go off, or their favorite team doesn't lose, or the price of gasoline at the pump doesn't go up? Enter a deceptive do-gooder to shed a few crocodile tears over the pain fetuses allegedly feel after 20 weeks in the womb and curse the wicked mother who would ask for an abortion, or a senator with a $500 haircut and a $1,200 suit to stand before a camera and bemoan the sin of killing unwanted babies, and you'll soon have a fire of anger kindled. Never mind the facts.

The same thing applies to being "tough on crime." Anger-ready folk can easily fall in behind one who demands that the criminal should be locked up forever in prison and the key thrown away. Legislated mandatory sentences to life in prison without parole are largely attempts by politicians to gain votes by assuaging the anger they have deliberately fueled.

Abortion, like immigration or being tough on crime, is a wedge issue. There's enough market demand for outrage -- especially among voters in heavily gerrymandered districts made safe for the most extreme of politicians -- that in the end it pays the eager candidate to whip it up.

Among males of the species are those who easily can be incited to anger over reproductive rights. I have heard men utter such chauvinist nonsense as, "Hey, I put that seed in her. She's got no right to uproot it without my permission." Ah, chivalry.

I worked this argument through on the premise proffered over the remnants of a delicious dinner prepared by a person who came to adulthood just in time to enjoy the freedom of reproductive rights and, while giving birth to and mothering two children, stood ready to exercise those rights if she needed to do so.

Tomorrow during dinner, I will be asking her why she thinks right-wing extremists in Congress and state legislatures make such a deal of decrying "the debt we are passing on to our children" even as they object so strenuously to regulating the use of fossil fuels, helping to guarantee that the same children who may or may not inherit the debt are certain to inherit a more toxic Earth.

I mean, either they're clueless in the extreme and have no business running the country, or they're cynical and have no business running the country.

What a Friend They Had in Jesus: The Theological Visions of Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Hymn Writers

Have you ever found yourself humming a favorite childhood hymn, only to realize you could no longer embrace its message? Harry Cook explores how hymns reflect the religious beliefs of their times. He revisits the texts of popular hymns, posing such questions as: How true are they to the biblical texts that seem to have inspired them? What aspects of nineteenth- and twentieth-century piety have persisted into the twenty-first century through the singing of those hymns? And, how does one manage the conflict between the emotional appeal and the theological content of such hymns?

Available at:

Polebridge Press

Amazon.com

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What reviewers said:

"Important and heart-warming ... Cook's keen insights into the most familiar of old-time gospel hymns ... help you do theology like a grownup."
--Robin Meyers, author of Saving Jesus from the Church

"A compelling look at centuries of Christian theology and practice, at how particular hymns have shaped American faith and religious thought."
--Richard Webster, Director of Music and Organist at Trinity Church, Boston

"A call to integrity in worship ... This exciting, penetrating and provocative study explores the theology we sing, which re-enforces the dated and pre-modern theology from which the Christian faith seeks to escape."
--John Shelby Spong, author of Re-Claiming the Bible for a Non-Religious World

Readers Write

Essay 7/5/13: Scholars and Scholarship

Sulette Strader Brown, Westland, MI:

For those of us who are curious enough to explore "possibilities" instead of "singular truths," the journey is difficult. I learned very long ago that to see another point of view that challenges the accepted opinion of the many can be very lonely. Thus I learned not to say anything that might offend. A "nice" girl, so to speak. Progress cannot be made if no one challenges what is.

Beverly Lochinor, Durham, NC:

I am a newcomer to your writings and wish I had encountered them a long time ago. I salute people like you who keep probing and are not satisfied with the status quo of anything. It never occurred to me that there might be more than one "Jesus."

David Withrow, Chagrin Falls, OH:

My experience in the scientific realm 100 % supports your thesis to dig, dig, dig, through all the so-called wisdom and tradition to find facts that fit and explain reality.

Diane Tumidajewicz St Clair Shores, MI:

Ever the voice of reason! Once again, you've hit the nail square on the head. I just got your latest book. Bravo! Another victory for those who think!

Hershey Julien, Sunnyvale, CA:

Today I subscribed to your essays. I commend you for reducing the influence of the religious right by reducing their numbers with educational, liberal, biblical exegesis. I hope to read in the future one or more essays in which you point out that humans cannot rely on divine intervention to save planet earth from environmental degradation: We must do it ourselves in order to keep the earth habitable.

Dick Schrader, Jacksonville, FL:

Back in the late '40s and early '50s, I attended a large Independent School in New England. On our way to compulsory Sunday church, my classmates would often sing the following ditty to the tune of the Pepsi Cola jingle popular at the time ("Pepsi Cola hits the spot; twelve full ounces that's a lot . . ."):

Christianity hits the spot!

Twelve Apostles, that's a lot!

Jesus Christ and the Virgin, too!

Christianity is the thing for you!

Somehow, a little levity goes a long way at trying to understand the contradictions that bedevil religious doctrine.

Dave Carlin, Newport, RI:

While you are exploring the possibility of many Jesuses, I hope you'll also explore the possibility of many Julius Caesars. My own hypothesis, which is still far from being scientifically established (it still needs a lot of careful testing), is that there were three different men named Caesar, all of whom (by an extraordinary coincidence) happened to get assassinated by three different men named Marcus Brutus.

(Editor's Note: Comparing the figure of Jesus to Julius Caesar doesn't work. There is far more attestation to the latter's existence than to that of the former. Outside the Bible itself, references to a person who may or may not have been one of the Jesuses that appear in the gospels are spotty and uncertain.)

Blayney Colmore, Jacksonville, VT:

You're one of the last people on earth I would accuse of na�vet�, but surely all the scars you bear from trying to introduce congregations to serious scholarship, mean you understand that the church as institution is not merely inhospitable to such an effort, but hostile. And likely for good reason. Once the church became an institution rather than a movement, it adopted the same priority as any institution: it's own survival. Because we humans are mostly non-rational, driven more by fear, especially of the unknown, than rational and confident, the church's magical and mysterious trappings led people to hope she really did have a tap into the unknown. Like you, I was at first amazed, then exhilarated, to discover the depth and complexity of biblical scholarship opened by German scholars more than 100 years ago. Like you I soon discovered congregations were uninterested or worse if asked to consider it. Now I confess I can sometimes go to divine worship (but only the smokiest, spookiest, untranslated, non-preaching worship) and come away feeling visited in some way. But I find attempts to meld worship with the prevailing culture with the usual insipid conventional morality and piety, unbearable.

What do you think?

I'd like to hear from you. E-mail your comments to me at revharrytcook@aol.com.

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