Learning from Antiquity 9

Posted by Joanne Dixon at 7:32 pm Open Thread, Politics, Religion

Dec 202024

I’m sure everyone is familiar with the figure of justice, whose statue stand outside or inside many courthouses – not just the home of SCOTUS. But you may or may not know that the has a name and a history, Her name is Themis, and she is the daughter of Uranus and Gases(heaven and earth.) She was also the second wife of Zeus (his first wife, Juno, being notorious for her jealousy, which may partly explain why Themis is little known) and as such was the mother of the Hours, the Fates, and others. She was the goddess of law, cosmic order (equity), and oracular knowledge. Lawyers and law students know of her because her name is also the name of an online school which helps students cramming for their bar exams. She has been having a rough time lately, what with MAGA and other Talibangelical Christians who seem to think they can trifle with her.

Why do I bring her up in connection with an article on, among other things, Jubilee? Well, for one thing, sometimes true justice must be and is administered outside the courts. But as the Goddess of cosmic order, I think she would appreciate that.

Jubilee is not a Greek word; it presumably comes from Hebrew since it (the word and the concept) first appear, to my knowledge, in the complex details of Mosaic law. That law established the certain years would be years of Jubilee and all kinds of things must be done – probably any one of which would trouble the wealthy. Things like freeing slaves and canceling all debts. This article covers how at least some enslaved people in the United States were able to use the holiday season for individual Jubilees. (One of the songs from the period is even named “Jubilo.”) And then I’ll have a little more to say about Jubilee years.
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For enslaved people, the holiday season was a time for revelry – and a brief window to fight back

Adolphe Duperly’s painting depicting the destruction of the Roehampton Estate in Jamaica during the Baptist War in January 1832.
Wikimedia Commons

Ana Lucia Araujo, Howard University

During the era of slavery in the Americas, enslaved men, women and children also enjoyed the holidays. Slave owners usually gave them bigger portions of food, gifted them alcohol and provided extra days of rest.

Those gestures, however, were not made out of generosity.

As abolitionist, orator and diplomat Frederick Douglass explained, slave owners were trying to keep enslaved people under control by plying them with better meals and more downtime, in the hopes of preventing escapes and rebellions.

Most of the time, it worked.

But as I discuss in my recent book, “Humans in Shackles: An Atlantic History of Slavery,” many enslaved people were onto their owners and used this brief period of respite to plan escapes and start revolts.

Feasting, frolicking and fiddling

Most enslaved people in the Americas adhered to the Christian calendar – and celebrated Christmas – since either Catholicism or Protestantism predominated, from Birmingham, Alabama, to Brazil.

Consider the example of Solomon Northup, whose tragic story became widely known in the film “12 Years A Slave.” Northup was born free in the state of New York but was kidnapped and sold into slavery in Louisiana in 1841.

In his narrative, Northup explained that his owner and their neighbors gave their slaves between three and six days off during the holidays. He described this period as “carnival season with the children of bondage,” a time for “feasting, frolicking, and fiddling.”

According to Northup, each year a slave owner in central Louisiana’s Bayou Boeuf offered a Christmas dinner attended by as many as 500 enslaved people from neighboring plantations. After spending the entire year consuming meager meals, this marked a rare opportunity to indulge in several kinds of meats, vegetables, fruits, pies and tarts.

Lithograph showing three men playing instruments with a small child in front. — Isaac Mendes Belisario’s ‘Band of the Jaw-Bone John-Canoe’ (1837).
Slavery Images

There’s evidence of holiday celebrations since the early days of slavery in the Americas. In the British colony of Jamaica, a Christmas masquerade called Jonkonnu has taken place since the 17th century. One 19th-century artist depicted the celebration, painting four enslaved men playing musical instruments, including a container covered with animal skin, along with an instrument made from an animal’s jawbone.

In the 1861 narrative of her life in slavery, abolitionist Harriet Jacobs described a similar masquerade in North Carolina.

“Every child rises early on Christmas morning to see the Johnkannaus,” she wrote. “Without them, Christmas would be shorn of its greatest attraction.”

On Christmas Day, she continued, nearly 100 enslaved men paraded through the plantation wearing colorful costumes with cows’ tails fastened to their backs and horns decorating their heads. They went door to door, asking for donations to buy food, drinks and gifts. They sang, danced and played musical instruments they had fashioned themselves – drums made of sheepskin, metal triangles and an instrument fashioned from the jawbone of a horse, mule or donkey.

It’s the most wonderful time to escape

Yet beneath the revelry, there was an undercurrent of angst during the holidays for enslaved men, women and children.

In the American South, enslavers often sold or hired out their slaves in the first days of the year to pay their debts. During the week between Christmas and New Year’s Day, many enslaved men, women and children were consumed with worry over the possibility of being separated from their loved ones.

At the same time, slave owners and their overseers were often distracted – if not drunk – during the holidays. It was a prime opportunity to plan an escape.

John Andrew Jackson was owned by a Quaker family of planters in South Carolina. After being separated from his wife and child, he planned to escape during the Christmas holiday of 1846. He managed to flee to Charleston. From there, he went north and eventually reached New Brunswick in Canada. Sadly, he was never able to reunite with his enslaved relatives.

Even Harriet Tubman took advantage of the holiday respite. Five years after she successfully escaped from the Maryland plantation where she was enslaved, she returned on Christmas Day in 1854 to save her three brothers from a life of bondage.

‘Tis the season for rebellion

Across the Americas, the holiday break also offered a good opportunity to plot rebellions.

In 1811, enslaved and free people of color planned a series of revolts in Cuba, in what became known as the Aponte Rebellion. The scheming and preparations took place between Christmas Day and the Day of Kings, a Jan. 6 Catholic holiday commemorating the three magi who visited the infant Jesus. Inspired by the Haitian Revolution, free people of color and enslaved people joined forces to try to end slavery on the island.

In April, the Cuban government eventually smashed the rebellion.

In Jamaica, enslaved people followed suit. Samuel Sharpe, an enslaved Baptist lay deacon, called a general strike on Christmas Day 1831 to demand wages and better working conditions for the enslaved population.

Two nights later, a group of enslaved people set fire to a trash house at an estate in Montego Bay. The fire spread, and what was supposed to be a strike instead snowballed into a violent insurrection. The Christmas Rebellion – or Baptist War, as it became known – was the largest slave revolt in Jamaica’s history. For nearly two months, thousands of slaves battled British forces until they were eventually subdued. Sharpe was hanged in Montego Bay on May 23, 1832.

After news of the Christmas Rebellion and its violent repression reached Britain, antislavery activists ramped up their calls to ban slavery. The following year, Parliament passed the Slavery Abolition Act, which prohibited slavery in the British Empire.

Yes, the week between Christmas Day and New Year’s Day offered a chance to feast or plot rebellions.

But more importantly, it served as a rare window of opportunity for enslaved men, women and children to reclaim their humanity.

Ana Lucia Araujo, Professor of History, Howard University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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As I said, Mosaic law established years of Jubilee, during which, essentially, everyone had a chance to start over, freed from obligations. I did not check my memory against the Bible, but IIRC, it was every fiftieth year. But if Pope Francis wants to make it every 25th tear, I’m all for it. And apparently he does. Because he has invited me to join a Zoom call on planning for Jubilee 2025 (the last one was Jubilee 2000.) And that call is happening Monday, December 23. I didn’t get an invitation because I am special – I’m not – I assume it’s because I have signed petitions for justice that I got on the list. So I am extending it further to all of you.

Here’s the description:

“Live from St. Peter’s Square, Jubilee and Caritas Internationalis leaders hold a press conference to launch campaigns on debt relief in 160 countries for Jubilee 2025. The December 23rd St. Peter’s press conference explains the themes of debt cancellation lifted for special Jubilee Years among faith communities. The high-level press panel takes place 24 hours before Pope Francis begins Jubilee 2025 by opening the Holy Jubilee Doors and Calls for global debt relief for our people and our planet.

And here’s when it starts on Zoom:

December 23, 2024 | Rome: 3:00 PM – Accra: 2:00 PM – Rio de Janeiro: 11:00 AM – Washington DC: 9:00 AM [EST, 8:00 AM Central, 7:00 AM Mountain, 6:00 AM Pacific – and I believe 5:00 AM Alaska and 4:00 AM Hawaii.]

And here’s how to get the Zoom link:

Go to https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScZKbW9lh_ULG-poup0aCHHyXTViC-gXCZE-Aihlu_Mz94BCg/viewform Fill in your email address – click the circular box that says “Virtually” – add your name and a couple of other items, and you’ll be sent a live link. If you have never Zoomed before, you’ll b taken to a place where you can get their app, which takes up very little space on your computer and doesn’t mess with anything there; if you have Zoomed before this shouldn’t be necessary. And there you are.

If you have doubts that there are still any real Christians left, especially in major denominations (and I’m the first to admit that the Catholic Right is horrendous), maybe even just knowing this is happening may help alleviate them.

Personal Update December 8, 2023

Posted by Joanne Dixon at 11:30 am Open Thread, Personal, Politics, Religion

Dec 082023

Well, if the ADL is wishing people Happy Hanukkah, then I guess I can (In fact, I’m probably a day late. Even so, I have more days available.)

Theologically, Hanukkah (however you spell it) is considered to be a minor holiday commemorating a military victory. But there are reasons why it’s more widely recognized (particularly in the United States) than more major Jewish holidays. For one thing, every human culture since pre-pre-history has had sone kind of holiday, festival, ritual – centered aroind the winter solstice, and celebrating light. For another, Hanukkah, certainly in the United States, has become very much about the children. And parents of any culture can see an opportunity to teach religious and cultural principles without pushback just as well as parents of any other culture.

In fact, I find actions like those of Hobby Lobby – removing all Hanukkah merchandise from all stores – to be shameful. I’ve said this before, but I think not here. The historical events upon which Hanukkah is based can be roughly dated to 170-160 BCE. (I grant that at that time history was not considered an exact science deserving of accuracy, but there are written histories datable to at least sometime in the BCE referencing Antiochus abd the Maccabbees.) That certainly suggests that Joseph and Mary grew up celebrating Hanukkah, which in turn siggests that Jesus as a child also celebrated, even in Egypt. All these self-styled Christians who whine about this or that attempt for any person to be the person they were born to be “makes the Baby Jesus cry” should start asking themself what taking away the baby Jesus’s dreidl and gelt away – let alone latkes – does to the baby Jesus’s mood.

It’s still possible to find the books of First and Second Maccabbees in some (though not all) Catholic versions of the Bible. And Handel’s Oratorio “Judas Maccabeus” – at least parts of it – are still being sung (probably mostly by Jews for Hannukah, ironically.) I’m not trying to advocate cultural appropriation, but would it hurt us to give a nod to a story which is part of our story too? One which shows what religious persecution really means (and that it DOESN’T mean people saying “Happy Holidays”)?

Religious persecution also doesn’t mean a menorah (specifically a Hanukkiah – menorah basically means candlestick, and there are different kinds) like this one. Anything that holds the right number of candles in the right configuration will do – and probably has done, at some point in history.

Everyday Erinyes #394

Posted by Joanne Dixon at 1:58 pm Politics, Religion

Oct 292023

Experts in autocracies have pointed out that it is, unfortunately, easy to slip into normalizing the tyrant, hence it is important to hang on to outrage. These incidents which seem to call for the efforts of the Greek Furies (Erinyes) to come and deal with them will, I hope, help with that. As a reminder, though no one really knows how many there were supposed to be, the three names we have are Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone. These roughly translate as “unceasing,” “grudging,” and “vengeful destruction.”

If anyone feels that today’s article coupled with my remarks constitute more of a personal rant than a political statement, I won’t disagree. However, if politics is to be regarded as a means of improving (and then maintaining and building upon those improvements – a proposition which seems to be losing suppport, but which should not be, then the personal Is political – is, indeed, the foundation of all politics. And it distresses me personally me that we seem to be going backwards, not only on this political point, but also on our cultural understanding of reality. I am not old enough to have see Christine Jorgenson in a movie, but I am old enough to have heard about her, and heard that she was a female soul (or person, or personality – I’m sure not everyone used the word soul – born into a male body. That made sense to me thenm and it still makes sense as an explanation, and still makes it quite clear that Christine had no choice in the matter. Yet, we were told then, and many of our worse, this youth are still being told today, that “gay” is a choice. Because “God doesn’t make mistakes.” No one appears to grasp the implication here -that, “No, God doesn’t make mistakes. You just think, in your arrogance, that you know what constitutes a mistake better than God does.” Dorothy L. Sayers knew better than that – in a novel published in the 1930’s, she has the character of a poorly educated farmer say of an elderly lesbian, “The Lord makes some on ’em that way to suit his own purposes.” These days, our “poorly educated” think they know better then their own all-knowing God.
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Biological sex is far from binary − this college course examines the science of sex diversity in people, fungi and across the animal kingdom

Biological sex comes in many more forms than just male or female.
Yifei Fang/Moment via Getty Images

Ari Berkowitz, University of Oklahoma

Text saying: Uncommon Courses, from The Conversation

Uncommon Courses is an occasional series from The Conversation U.S. highlighting unconventional approaches to teaching.

Title of course:

Diversity of Biological Sex Characteristics

What prompted the idea for the course?

Most people view biological sex, or the physical features related to reproduction, as simple and binary – either male or female. Even those who recognize that gender – referring to cultural norms around biological sex, or a person’s internal feeling of being masculine, feminine or both – can be complex and nuanced don’t see biological sex in the same way. Many also regard variability in sex and gender as exclusive to people – not found in nonhuman animals.

I am a behavioral neurobiologist who has been teaching human physiology since 1998. Over the past several years, I have focused my reading and writing on the biology of sex. It struck me that many of my students had misguided assumptions about sex characteristics, including that all people are physically either 100% male or 100% female.

A course on biological sexual diversity in both nonhuman animals and people could challenge these assumptions.

What does the course explore?

First, we examine why sexual reproduction evolved in any species. This question is still hotly debated among biologists because sex is inefficient. It requires time and energy to find a suitable mate and unite your sex cells, plus it allows you to pass on only half your genes to your offspring.

In comparison, asexual reproduction – essentially cloning yourself – is much more efficient. You don’t have to find a mate, and everyone can produce offspring themselves because there are no males. In biology, “male” refers to an individual that makes small sex cells like sperm, and “female” refers to an individual that makes large sex cells like eggs.

Next, we explore nonhuman sexual diversity, including fungi that have thousands of sexes and aphids that reproduce asexually most of the year but sexually once each fall. Among many others, we also learn about fish that are male or female at different times of their lives; intersex crayfish; and female spotted hyenas that have a penis.

Sex characteristics manifest in different ways across the animal kingdom.

We then transition from nonhuman animals to people, via the brain. We learn about a few small brain structures in vertebrates that likely have reproductive functions and are differently sized in females versus males on average. We also learn that most people have some brain structures that are more typically male, others that are more typically female and still others that are intermediate – in other words, most people are mosaics of female-typical and male-typical brain sex characteristics.

Finally, we focus on the biological sex characteristics of intersex people. The chromosomes and reproductive organs of intersex people have some typically female and some typically male characteristics or are intermediate between them.

Students then build on their knowledge of the diversity of biological sex characteristics to discuss whether intersex infants should have surgery to “correct” their genitals, as well as who should be allowed to compete in girls and women’s athletics.

Why is this course relevant now?

Perhaps more than ever, there is a debate about how to treat people who do not fit neatly into a female or a male box. Many assume that biological sex is binary and regard transgender and nonbinary people as mistaken or confused. In addition, for many decades, intersex infants have undergone surgical procedures to make them appear more typically male or female. Even those who support transgender, nonbinary and intersex people often assume that biological sex is binary. But this assumption is not anchored in evidence.

What will the course prepare students to do?

Students often say that before they took this course, they had no idea biological sex characteristics could be so diverse, despite having taken several biology courses.

An improved awareness of the complexity of biological sex may help shape the research and teaching of future biologists. This will help them design experiments that take account of the diversity of their subjects and be more inclusive in their teaching. It may also help all students ask better questions and make better judgments about social and political issues related to sex and gender.

Ari Berkowitz, Presidential Professor and Director of Graduate Studies, Biology; Director, Cellular & Behavioral Neurobiology Graduate Program, University of Oklahoma

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone, that’s really all I have to say – and no doubt it’s more than enough.

The Furies and I will be back.

Video Thread 4/19/22

Posted by Joanne Dixon at 11:51 am Open Thread, Politics, Religion

Apr 192022

Glenn Kirschner – Stephen Miller Testifies to J6 Panel: How might he have criminal exposure? Let us count the ways.

The Lincoln Project – Abbott’s Wall –

Voice of America – Ukraine Refuses to Surrender Besieged Mariupol to Russian Forces

Thom Hartmann – Will SCOTUS Turn America Into A Theocracy?

Parody Peojrct – THE BANANA REPUBLICAN VOTE NO SONG

Beau – Let’s talk about Patrick Lyoya in Grand Rapids….

Open Thread April 16, 2022

Posted by Joanne Dixon at 7:19 am Open Thread, Personal, Politics, Religion

Apr 162022

Yesterday. after putting as much as possible for the blog together, I looked at another free knitting pattern I had found – this one for a crutch cover. I have a coulple of pairs of critches. I never use more than one at a time (I probably should touch wood when I say that) and when I use one, it isn’t always for pain – sometimes – most times – it’s for balance. Years ago I got a couple of sets (underarm pad and hand pad) in leopard skin patterns, one natural colors and one shocking pink; but they do need laundering, and I thought it would be nice to have some spares. The pattern calls for a cast-on technique I can always use more practice on, and it also calls for brioche stitch (like stocknette but the odd and the even columns are different colors.) I’m not experimenting with brioche stitch yet – instead, I’m using novelty yarn scraps instead of plan yarn for texture. The designer is known on the internet by the name “The Wooly Kraken,” which gave me a smile.

Cartoon

Short Takes –

Daily Beast – RNC Flounces Out of Presidential Debates Commission With Unanimous Vote
Quote – In a Thursday statement that announced the unanimous vote, RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel said, “We are going to find newer, better debate platforms to ensure that future nominees are not forced to go through the biased CPD in order to make the case for the American people.”
Click through for details. Reality may have a liberal bias – and, if so, it’s about the only thinkg that does. Certainly the media and the CPD don’t.

NBC News THINK – Why Good Friday is a warning against far-right Christian nationalism
Quote – Yet while Trump’s authoritarian MAGA movement has become all but synonymous with white evangelical Christianity, it does not speak for most Christians in the U.S., who are sick of seeing our faith hijacked for hateful political agendas.
Click through if a Scriptural condemnation of “white evangelical Christianity” woould be useful to you. Lord Acton’s famous quote doesn’t go far enough. One does not need to have power to be corrupted by it. Wanting power is more than enough to corrupt.

Crooks and Liars – James Carville Has Had It With Democratic Whiners
Quote – If you’re a Democrat, I don’t care what you are with gender, race, if you don’t see that and you are not outraged, and it doesn’t make you want to vote, I can’t do anything for you! You’re just a whiny, complaining person…. If we can’t stand in there for Joe Biden and talk about the great things he’s done, then we don’t deserve to win this election in 2022.
Click through for full opinion. Not that anyone here is guilty, necessarily. But this is the same thing we saw in 2016. It didn’t turn out well.

Food For Thought:

Open Thread April 15, 2022

Posted by Joanne Dixon at 6:37 am Open Thread, Personal, Politics, Religion

Apr 152022

Yesterday I overslept – the only surpise there is that it didn’t happen sooner after the weekend. But at least I had gotten pretty well caught up the previous day, so I was able to keep up.

Cartoon

Short Takes –

Why ‘bad’ ads appear on ‘good’ websites – a computer scientist explains
Quote – Programmatic advertising is a powerful tool that allows advertisers to target and reach people on a huge range of websites. As a doctoral student in computer science, I study how malicious online advertisers take advantage of this system and use online ads to spread scams or malware to millions of people. This means that online advertising companies have a big responsibility to prevent harmful ads from reaching users, but they sometimes fall short.
Click through for more detailed explanation, I used to see people in comments complaining about site advertising (and assuming everyone else was seeing what they were seeing) on a daily basis Nowadays I don’t. But the problem is still real – in fact worse, because not it has infested newsletters (from large sites which use a mail service to send them out.) Not that anyone here ever does … but never click on an ad in a newsletter, even from a trusted site.

Dr. Seuss’ Banned Anti-War ‘The Butter Battle Book’ Is Now a Netflix Kids’ Show
Quote – Written in 1984, The Butter Battle Book centered around the war between an orange race called Zooks and a blue race called Yooks. Their countries were divided by a wall over a disagreement on which was the right way to butter bread: Yooks preferred them butter-side up while the Zooks preferred butter-side down. Given the time of the book’s publication, The Butter Battle Book was considered a direct commentary on the Cold War. Seuss unapologetically delved into exploring the consequences of nationalism and the nature of war via the military-industrial complex. Most of the book focused on a heated arms race that got so deadly, it ended with a dour, open-ended conclusion.
Click through for synopsis of original, synopsis of adaptation, and a trailer (plus a link to a John Olver video torching Ted Cruz ove Dr. Seuss which is probably not new.) Theodor Geisel was not a perfect person … but his propensity for making people think (which too many people don’t like) was a great gift.

truthout (OpEd) – Republicans Refuse to Name Courthouse After Black Judge in Overtly Racist Move
Quote – Hatchett retired from the court in 1999 and went into private practice. He passed away last year at age 88, a widely praised and highly admired jurist. “Joe Hatchett is a person who lives and has lived by the ethical precepts which have historically guided the conduct of truly great judges and lawyers of our past and present,” said former American Bar Association (ABA) President Chesterfield Smith when Hatchett was awarded the Florida Supreme Court Historical Society’s Lifetime Achievement Award. “Joe Hatchett to me exemplifies what is best in an American judge, one who is sometimes lonely, but one who never shirks standing alone.”
Click through for full opinion. Yes, this is truthout, and yes, truthout is pretty far left. Bu there’s only one phrase in it I could conceivably disagree with, and that because it is too kind to Republicans. See what you think.

Food For Thought:

Open Thread April 14, 2022

Posted by Joanne Dixon at 7:22 am Open Thread, Personal, Politics, Religion

Apr 142022

Yesterday was another pretty quiet day. It was cold, and there was some snow, but I do have a working heater in place (as opposed to last week, when the one I had died), so i was just fine.

Cartoon 14 0414Cartoon.jpg

Short Takes –

Daily Beast – Why Putin Is Itching to Get His Hands on This Ex-American Banker
Quote – [Bill] Browder, a financier who had once been the largest foreign investor in Russia, had long been a thorn in Moscow’s side before he was detained that day in May 2018. Years earlier, Browder had discovered that many of the companies he had invested in were being robbed by oligarchs and corrupt officials. Unwilling to let this fraud go unchallenged, Browder, as detailed in his 2015 bestseller Red Notice, decided to fight back.
Click through for the gist of the story. I expect that Freezing Order is quite some book. Every group has its exceptions, even bankers (I don’t mean bank employees, who are generally good pwople; I’m thinkinfg of management when I make that generalization.)

New Mexico In Depth – Money for abandoned uranium mine cleanup spurs questions about design, jobs
Quote – Uranium mines are personal for Dariel Yazzie. Now head of the Navajo Nation’s Superfund program, Yazzie grew up near Monument Valley, Arizona, where the Vanadium Corporation of America started uranium operations in the 1940s. His childhood home sat a stone’s throw from piles of waste from uranium milling, known as tailings. His grandfather, Luke Yazzie, helped locate the first uranium deposits mined on the Navajo Nation. His father was a uranium miner, then worked for Peabody Coal mine. Yazzie, Diné, heard the family stories about the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency scanning his family’s home for radiation in 1974, when he was 4 years old, finding several high contamination readings.
Click through for details and anecdotes. Cleaning up after fossil fuels is bad enough … but cleaning up after uranium is worse.

Want to improve student achievement? Hire a Black principal.
Quote – Researchers have found that principals of color yield multiple benefits for students of color. A University of Minnesota study published in January about the impact of Black women principals in secondary schools linked Black principals and higher math achievement for students. Black men make up a slight majority of Black secondary school principals, but the researchers suggest that Black women in these roles have a positive effect on student achievement and teacher investment in schools.
Click through for evidence. I don’t know that this would work in every school district, but in those where it wouldm it would do so like a champion.

Food For Thought:
Not a picture today, but a short quote from an email from Faithful America. Anyone not in the Christian faith tradition, please take this as confirmation of what you already know: far too many “Christians” don’t act Christian.

During Holy Week, the church remembers the final days of Christ’s earthly life and ministry. But we often forget just what it was that Jesus did to anger the religious and political authorities in the first place:

“Then Jesus entered the temple and drove out all who were selling and buying in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money-changers… He said to them, ‘It is written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer;’ but you are making it a den of robbers.'”

If we’re serious about following Jesus, we need to start flipping more tables ourselves.

Everyday Erinyes #311

Posted by Joanne Dixon at 10:33 am Politics, Religion

Mar 272022

I wanted to share this article because – even before the invasion of Ukraine started, we were hearing things like “I’d rather be Russian than a Democrat,” and now we are hearing “I prefer Putin’s Christian values to Joe Bifen’s values.” And, frankly. that scares the Republication out of me. It doesn’t seem to be scaring many people, and that scares me too. So I have been trying to be alert for anything I could find on the topic
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Why is Russia’s church backing Putin’s war? Church-state history gives a clue

Vladimir Putin speaks to Russian Orthodox Church Patriarch Kirill (center) in Samolva, Russia, on Sept. 11, 2021.
Alexei Druzhinin/Pool Photo via AP

Scott Kenworthy, Miami University

Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the leader of the Russian Orthodox Church has defended Russia’s actions and blamed the conflict on the West.

Patriarch Kirill’s support for the invasion of a country where millions of people belong to his own church has led critics to conclude that Orthodox leadership has become little more than an arm of the state – and that this is the role it usually plays.

The reality is much more complicated. The relationship between Russian church and state has undergone profound historical transformations, not least in the past century – a focus of my work as a scholar of Eastern Orthodoxy. The church’s current support for the Kremlin is not inevitable or predestined, but a deliberate decision that needs to be understood.

Soviet shifts

For centuries, leaders in Byzantium and Russia prized the idea of church and state working harmoniously together in “symphony” – unlike their more competitive relationships in some Western countries.

In the early 1700s, however, Czar Peter the Great instituted reforms for greater control of the church – part of his attempts to make Russia more like Protestant Europe.

Churchmen grew to resent the state’s interference. They did not defend the monarchy in its final hour during the February Revolution of 1917, hoping it would lead to a “free church in a free state.”

The Bolsheviks who seized power, however, embraced a militant atheism that sought to secularize society completely. They regarded the church as a threat because of its ties to the old regime. Attacks on the church proceeded from legal measures like confiscating property to executing clergy suspected of supporting the counterrevolution.

Patriarch Tikhon, head of the Church during the Revolution, criticized Bolshevik assaults on the Church, but his successor, Metropolitan Bishop Sergy, made a declaration of loyalty to the Soviet Union in 1927. Persecution of religion only intensified, however, with repression reaching a peak during the Great Terror of 1937-1938, when tens of thousands of clergy and ordinary believers were simply executed or sent to the Gulag. By the end of the 1930s, the Russian Orthodox Church had nearly been destroyed.

The Nazi invasion brought a dramatic reversal. Josef Stalin needed popular support to defeat Germany and allowed churches to reopen. But his successor, Nikita Khrushchev, reinvigorated the anti-religious campaign at the end of the 1950s, and for the rest of the Soviet period, the church was tightly controlled and marginalized.

Kirill’s campaigns

The dissolution of the Soviet Union brought yet another complete reversal. The church was suddenly free, yet facing enormous challenges after decades of suppression. With the collapse of Soviet ideology, Russian society seemed set adrift. Church leaders sought to reclaim it, but faced stiff competition from new forces, especially Western consumer culture and American evangelical missionaries.

A priest offers Communion to a woman wearing a kerchief. — A Russian Orthodox Church priest leads a service at the Church of the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin in Sokolniki in Moscow on Feb. 15, 2022.
AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko

The first post-Soviet head of the church, Patriarch Aleksy II, maintained his distance from politicians. Initially, they were not very responsive to the church’s goals – including Vladimir Putin in his first two terms between 2000 and 2008. Yet in more recent years, the president has embraced Russian Orthodoxy as a cornerstone of post-Soviet identity, and relations between church and state leadership have changed significantly since Kirill became patriarch in 2009. He quickly succeeded in securing the return of church property from the state, religious instruction in public schools and military chaplains in the armed forces.

Kirill has also promoted an influential critique of Western liberalism, consumerism and individualism, contrasted with Russian “traditional values.” This idea argues that human rights are not universal, but a product of Western culture, especially when extended to LGBTQ people. The patriarch also helped develop the idea of the “Russian world”: a soft power ideology that promotes Russian civilization, ties to Russian-speakers around the world, and greater Russian influence on Ukraine and Belarus.

Although 70%-75% of Russians consider themselves Orthodox, only a small percentage are active in church life. Kirill has sought to “re-church” society by asserting that Russian Orthodoxy is central to Russian identity, patriotism and cohesion – and a strong Russian state. He has also created a highly centralized church bureaucracy that mirrors Putin’s and stifles dissenting voices.

Growing closer

A key turning point came in 2011-2012, starting with massive protests against electoral fraud and Putin’s decision to run for a third term.

Kirill initially called for the government to dialogue with protesters, but later offered unqualified support for Putin and referred to stability and prosperity during his first two terms as a “miracle of God,” in contrast to the tumultuous 1990s.

In 2012, Pussy Riot, a feminist punk group, staged a protest in a Moscow cathedral to criticize Kirill’s support for Putin – yet the episode actually pushed church and state closer together. Putin portrayed Pussy Riot and the opposition as aligned with decadent Western values, and himself as the defender of Russian morality, including Orthodoxy. A 2013 law banning dissemination of gay “propaganda” to minors, which was supported by the church, was part of this campaign to marginalize dissent.

Putin successfully won reelection, and Kirill’s ideology has been linked to Putin’s ever since.

Three women behind a glass panel look out at a courtroom. — Members of the feminist punk group Pussy Riot sit in a glass cage at a courtroom in Moscow in 2012. The women were charged with hooliganism connected to religious hatred.
AP Photo/Mikhail Metzel

Russia’s annexation of Crimea and the eruption of conflict in the Donbas in 2014 also had an enormous impact on the Russian Orthodox Church.

Ukraine’s Orthodox churches remained under the Moscow Patriarchate’s authority after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Indeed, about 30% of the Russian Orthodox Church’s parishes were actually in Ukraine.

The conflict in Crimea and eastern Ukraine, however, intensified Ukrainians’ calls for an independent Orthodox church. Patriarch Bartholomew, the spiritual head of Orthodox Christianity, granted that independence in 2019. Moscow not only refused to recognize the new church, but also severed relations with Constantinople, threatening a broader schism.

Orthodox Christians in Ukraine were divided over which church to follow, deepening Russia’s cultural anxieties about “losing” Ukraine to the West.

High-stakes gamble

Kirill’s close alliance with the Putin regime has had some clear payoffs. Orthodoxy has become one of the central pillars of Putin’s image of national identity. Moreover, the “culture wars” discourse of “traditional values” has attracted international supporters, including conservative evangelicals in the United States.

But Kirill does not represent the entirety of the Russian Orthodox Church any more than Putin represents the entirety of Russia. The patriarch’s positions have alienated some of his own flock, and his support for the invasion of Ukraine will likely split some of his support abroad. Christian leaders around the world are calling upon Kirill to pressure the government to stop the war.

The patriarch has alienated the Ukrainian flock that remained loyal to the Moscow Patriarchate. Leaders of that church have condemned Russia’s attack and appealed to Kirill to intervene with Putin.

A broader rift is clearly brewing: A number of Ukrainian Orthodox bishops have already stopped commemorating Kirill during their services. If Kirill supported Russia’s actions as a way to preserve the unity of the church, the opposite outcome seems likely.

Scott Kenworthy, Professor of Comparative Religion, Miami University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone, there you have it. Any church which promotes ?traditional values” (which I put in quotes because they all fling that phrase about, never addressing “Whose tradition?” “How can you consider oppressing people to be a value” and many other related questions) will always be susceptible to becoming affiliated with autocracy. We have seen this in the Taliban. We have seen this in evangelical Christianity. And now we are seeing it in Russian Orthodoxy. For all of those groups, be they Muslim, Evangelical Christian, or Orthodox Christian, there are many others around the world who are Muslims, western Christians, and Eastern Christians who are horrified that these people who claim to profess the same faith practice it so horrifyingly.

I am not opposed to tradition, But I am opposed to confusing “traditional” with “godly.” I am reminded of the story of the little girl who was watching her mother cut off both ends of the Easter ham before putting it in the ovem, and who asked why. “My mother always did it that way,” was the response. The next time the little girl saw her grandmother, she asked the same question and go the same answer. Finally the little girl was able to speak with her great-grandmother and ask the question again. “When your Great-Grandfather and I were first married, we didn’t have a lot, and our roasting pan was very small. The ham would not fit in it without trimming the ends off.”

I cannot see a partcle of difference between these affiliations of convenience with religion and autocracy, and many others have already seen, spoken about, and written about evangelical Christianity vis-a-vis the Taliban. But I don’t see anyone but me saying that we now have a third example in Russia (and a fourth one in Israel would not surprise me, but I have no evidence for that.) There are many, many examples throughout recorded history as well. That is one history I really, really do not want to repeat.

The Furies and I will be back.

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