The intimacy and poignancy of writing letters.
Culture Watch
Richard Vernon 7-01-1998
For thousands upon thousands of people, four days at the end of each August are reserved for a musical extravaganza called simply Greenbelt. This festival in rural England has become one of what Malcolm Muggeridge describes as "the thin places." Such places are where the wall between the human and the divine, Heaven and Earth, becomes a translucent veil. The devotion of the attendees makes sense in light of the depth of their experiences of God and creation, especially in this, Greenbelt’s silver jubilee.
Its Christian, artistic, and social justice natures aside, Greenbelt’s cultural locus may require some transatlantic explanation. The two main secular pillars upon which the festival stands are bank holidays and rock festivals. A bank holiday is a Monday where all financial institutions (and by default all businesses) are closed. Of these, the August Bank Holiday weekend is the most firmly established. The nearest North American equivalent would be Labor Day weekend. Also now long established are the rock festivals such as Glastonbury, Reading, the Fleadh, and so forth. Imagine Lollapalooza lasting several days, or Woodstock being an annual event, and you’ll start to get the picture.
Into this cultural context, insert a Christian arts festival, which started as a rock festival and takes place mostly under canvas, and things should be getting even clearer. This is an event unlike any you’ve had contact with before...unless you’ve been to Greenbelt.
Danny Duncan Collum 7-01-1998
When he died, Dr. Benjamin Spock had been a household name for more than 50 years. His book Baby and Child Care, first published in 1946, coincided with the first swell of the baby boom. It kept selling long after the boom was gone. As of last year, the book had sold more than 40 million copies and was available in 39 languages.
That makes Benjamin Spock a major pop culture figure. Even in his dotage, he could always command a page in Parade magazine and get his pet causes onto the evening news. In his afterlife he will probably become a figure of urban folklore. In the next century, people will associate the name "Spock" with child-rearing without quite knowing why.
And the book will stay in print. It will stay around because it works.
At our house we’re already on our second copy. The pocket-sized paperback edition fell apart by the time our first child was 3. The pages on fever and nausea were the first to go. Now we have a sturdier trade paper version. It is underlined, dog-eared, and stuffed between the pages with notes and handouts from our own doctor, old recipes for baby food, and articles torn from magazines about parenting.
Dr. Spock was the one who told us that sudden, inexplicable fever in our 8-month-old baby, followed by an equally inexplicable rash, was just a fairly common infant ailment called roseola and nothing to worry about. Our pediatrician was quite impressed when my wife presented the baby to her and said, "It’s roseola, isn’t it?" Dr. Spock also told us, yes, you really do need to take that baby to the doctor with that 104 degree temperature, even if it is the weekend, because sometimes it doesn’t just go away.
Tony Campolo 7-01-1998
Just As I Am is the biography of a humble man. While outlining the development of his ministry, Billy Graham’s biography is anything but an exercise in self-glorification. He describes his evangelistic crusades from their early beginnings in tent meetings in Los Angeles to "the more recent massive gatherings in sports stadiums." He tells about his encounters with powerful heads of state. He recounts his special friends who made up the support group that kept him faithful to his mission and nurtured an integrity that even those who reject his message respect. Graham takes us with him as he meets with presidents over nine administrations, amusing us as he describes his brash holier-than-thou attitude in his first meeting with Harry Truman, and inspiring us as he describes his compassionate pastoral attitude toward Bill Clinton.
Through it all he critiques himself in ways that will help those who would make him a role model to escape his pitfalls. There is a kind of self-deprecation in this autobiography that only serves to enhance his stature.
Particularly interesting are the roles that he played in facing the pressing social concerns that have troubled the nation over the last half-century. Critics might attack him for not expressing opposition to the Vietnam War or being more specific in supporting civil rights legislation, but his autobiography reveals that he accomplished more to further social justice causes than these critics might imagine.
Randy A. Nelson 7-01-1998
In recent years, observers of the religious scene in the United States have commented on two trends that at first glance appear to be contradictory. On the one hand, they have noted that the main institutional forms of religion—that is, the mainline churches and denominations—have experienced little, if any, growth. In fact, several of the larger denominations have lost membership. (Financial pressures have also been common.) On the other hand, interest in religious matters in the general public seems to be on the increase.
Rather than being contradictory, the presence of these two trends suggests that a reasonably important shift may be occurring in the expression Americans give to their religious beliefs. Mainline churches are only one of the options available, and increasing numbers of persons are seeking alternative forms through which to express their spirituality.
Donald Miller, professor of religion at the University of Southern California, calls one alternative form the "new paradigm churches." To represent this emerging new shape for Christianity in this country, Miller has identified three of the fastest growing movements within Christianity in this or any other time period in history, and has spent several years studying their growth. The result is Reinventing American Protestantism, a thoughtful, largely sympathetic but provocative book.
Julie Polter 7-01-1998
The Big One is a biting, funny, and sometimes odd combination of road film, populist rant, stand-up comedy, and the away-from-home video your quirky, know-it-all uncle might make if someone gave him the equipment and enough frequent flyer miles.
The premise is simple enough: Filmmaker Michael Moore (of Roger and Me fame) takes a video crew along on the promotional tour for his book Downsize This! (Crown Publishing, 1996). See Moore eat bad fast food. (Yuck.) See Moore commiserate with laid-off workers. (Poignant.) See Moore sing Bob Dylan and encounter an ex-convict who used to take reservations for TWA from in prison. (Scary!) See Moore visit various corporate headquarters in search of a CEO who will talk on camera about exactly why record profits seem to lead to employee lay-offs. (Can you say "No comment"?)
While Moore is not troubled by giving himself lots of camera time, the important thing is that he puts his ego (and money, and skill) in the service of what he believes. With profits from Roger and Me (the all-time highest grossing non-concert documentary), he set up the Center for Alternative Media, a foundation that has given funding to more than 40 independent filmmakers as well as social action and service groups. Miramax, distributor of The Big One, is giving half of all profits from this film to groups and scholarship funds that Moore supports in Flint, Michigan.
Christine Valters Paintner 7-01-1998
It is the rare contemporary musical artist who thoroughly captures my imagination and delights my spirit. Canadian artist Loreena McKennitt has succeeded at both and more for seven albums, writing music that reflects on the soul’s journey, using Celtic and Middle Eastern rhythms. So imagine my surprise at hearing our local adult alternative radio station announce her recently as a new "Zone" artist. It seems her music video of the single "Mummer’s Dance," now being aired on MTV, has launched her into the mainstream.
McKennitt began as a folk singer, singing traditional ballads with her remarkable voice. She was instinctively drawn to Celtic music because of her own heritage, fueling her desire to connect with the past. However, her two most recent albums, the mask and mirror and the book of secrets, take us into some new territory.
Extensive journeys to places like Turkey, Italy, Greece, and Spain, as well as a trip on the Trans Siberian Express, are woven into her music. Such solo journeys allow for quiet reflection, which informs her creative work. (Fascinated by the role solitude plays in reaching God, she is particularly drawn to the monastery setting.)
McKennitt draws on the influence of a culture to give her music a feel for the place in which it was inspired, such as taking inspiration from Sufi chants. The song "Marrakesh Night Market" transports the listener to Morocco, and sparks the imagination to be able to see and feel the city. But her journeys also offer a rich wellspring for her lyrics, meditating on the metaphor of the soul’s own journeying.
John Carr 7-01-1998
The day Joseph Cardinal Bernardin was buried, I was representing the U.S. Bishops Conference in South Africa. I deeply regretted missing the funeral of a bishop who had become a mentor and friend. As we met with leaders of church and government in South Africa, it sometimes seemed like Chicago. So many shared their remembrances of Cardinal Bernardin and their sense of loss. How could someone touch so many so far away?
Bernardin, the PBS documentary produced by Frank Frost and Martin Doblmeier, helps answer that question. In an age when ecclesial leaders face so many doubts and challenges, Cardinal Bernardin opened hearts and minds by the way he lived and died, served and led. Most people know him for his dignified response to false charges of sexual misconduct and for the faithful way he lived with and died from cancer. This production places both these struggles in a broader and deeper context of personal faith and public ministry.
This is not an easy task. The producers had no special access or final interview. But they have pulled together from photos, news clips, and interviews an hourlong biography that is admiring and accurate, rich in detail, and sweeping in its coverage of Cardinal Bernardin’s life and ministry.
The program initially focuses on his roots—he was raised in the American South by a hard-working Italian immigrant widow. It follows the young priest as he was shaped by Vatican II and in turn helped shape the U.S. Bishops Conference into a new instrument of collegiality and public witness. It documents how his leadership was shaken and formed by the racial traumas of the ’60s and the abortion debate of the ’70s. It reports how Bernardin led the American bishops to challenge U.S. policy on nuclear arms. The producers address, but do not dwell on, the difficulties he faced when his actions in the 1976 presidential campaign led to accusations of political partisanship and the pain resulting from closing Chicago parishes and schools.
Bob Hulteen 7-01-1998
Within the Christian tradition, rarely is a concept more misunderstood than prophecy. Unfortunately, this misinterpretation wreaks havoc on our society in the form of doomsday soothsayers, apocalyptic dreamers, and militant revolutionaries.
The crux of the misunderstanding is this: Prophecy is not the result of seeing into the future. Instead, prophecy is the faithful declaration of the implications of current actions on the future, with the hope of having an impact on both.
For instance, one need not be a rocket scientist to figure out that increasing economic inequities lead to social dissolution and fragmentation. So someone with the courage to say that wealth accumulation leads to the destruction of community, and that the result will be a future awash in violence, isn’t looking into a crystal ball. They’re simply sensitive to inevitabilities.
For many within the Christian tradition, the Bible has been starved into a mere blueprint of unavoidable dystopia. Interestingly, many advocates of this interpretation allow common cultural mythology to syncretize with this biblical view, creating a very simple yet dangerous theology. Several new books offer a tour of the Christian Identity and millennial movement landscape.
Baker Books has made available an interesting, though not exhaustive, contribution to its evangelical audience with Gregory S. Camp’s Selling Fear: Conspiracy Theories and End-times Paranoia (1997). A professor of history at Minot State University in North Dakota, Camp provides an introductory primer on the religious dimension of the conspiracy tendencies so popular in the American perspective.
Rose Marie Berger 7-01-1998
Rough hands gripped mine. I stared down, uncomfortable, at the yellow and silver Formica table. "Tat nupal," the voices began, "tey tinemi tic ne ylhuicatl." In a run-down tract house in the weedy suburbs of Washington, D.C., five Salvadoran refugees began their evening blessing over our meal. "Our Creator in heaven," they pray in Nahuat, one of the indigenous languages of El Salvador. As a poet in a time when languages are being lost at a rate equivalent to the rain forest, I clung to the edges of the words, the narrowness of their sound, their rhythm like wind in high trees, never expecting to hear them again.
John Sayles’ newest film, Men With Guns, not only includes dialogue in Nahuat, but in Tzotzil, Maya, and Kuna, as well as Spanish and English. "Language is one of the main gaps between people," Sayles says about his characters. "If everyone was speaking English, the story wouldn’t make as much sense." (The subtitles, by the way, are clear and excellent.)
In his understated way, Sayles’ movie mission is about making sense. He does so not in a rational, superficial, or always socially recognizable way, but on a very human and spiritual level, digging at the question of how to shore up faith and uncover meaning in daily life.
Sayles characteristically uses a guide, an outsider, someone who leads the viewer through self-discovery in the story. In The Brother From Another Planet (1984), the guide is a black mute extraterrestrial who beams down in Harlem; in Matewan (1987), a union organizer; in The Secret of Roan Inish (1994), a young girl. In Men With Guns, our "escort" is Humberto Fuentes (Argentinean actor Federico Luppi), a wealthy doctor approaching retirement who has never paid any attention to the political realities of his unspecified country. He considers his greatest achievement to be his participation in an international health program in which he trained students to work as doctors in the poorest villages.
Danny Duncan Collum 5-01-1998
Thirty-five years ago, on June 12, 1963, Medgar Evers was assassinated in front of his home on the west side of Jackson, Mississippi.