Is This a Nation of Only Monotheistic Believers?

Under the United Blogging Act of 2005, I should have said something about Mitt Romney’s speech about how being a Mormon does not make him unfit to be president.

Hrafnkell picked up on a news release from Americans United, a group that did a lot for us during the pentacle grave-marker quest. The nugget:

“I was particularly outraged that Romney thinks that the Constitution is somehow based on faith and that judges should rule accordingly, “ Lynn said. “That’s a gross misunderstanding of the framework of our constitutional system.

“I think it is telling that Romney quoted John Adams instead of Thomas Jefferson or James Madison,” [the Rev. Barry W.] Lynn continued. “Jefferson and Madison are the towering figures who gave us religious liberty and church-state separation.

In Romney’s world, contrary to what comes out of his mouth, there is a religious test for president:

“I believe that every faith I have encountered draws its adherents closer to God. And in every faith I have come to know, there are features I wish were in my own: I love the profound ceremony of the Catholic Mass, the approachability of God in the prayers of the Evangelicals, the tenderness of spirit among the Pentecostals, the confident independence of the Lutherans, the ancient traditions of the Jews, unchanged through the ages,[sic] and the commitment to frequent prayer of the Muslims.

And who did he leave out? I can think of a few religious traditions…

UPDATE: And the non-religious, of course, as Ann Althouse points out in her discussion of the speech.

UPDATE 2: Timothy Burke has the best summary of the Romney speech.

Getting What You Ask For

A New York City principal has been effectively fired for spending the school’s money for a Santería ceremony to remove negative energy from the school. (Via The Wild Hunt.

What an example of the “be careful what you ask for” principle. Something in the universe decided that Maritza Tamayo herself embodied the negative energy that she was trying to remove.

Tamayo later forced her assistant principal to pay the Santeria priestess $900, then improperly paid [the santera] $350 more to drive children to school for Regents exams.

And the custodial staff was stuck with cleaning up the chicken blood, apparently.

I am reminded of a ritual invoking the god Mercury that some friends and I performed when I was in my early twenties. We followed our source as best we good, even rising early in the morning to utilize the calculated “hour of Mercury” and speaking the lines in Latin.

We all got what we petitioned the god for. One friend, who clerked in a struggling used bookstore, asked that the bookstore’s business would improve. And then the owners fired him, moved to a new location, and the store’s business did indeed improve.

Gallimaufry with Dreams

¶ Anne Johnson on Dream Weaving.

¶ Anne Hill writes about dreaming too. (Is this a blog meme? Ann + dreams?)

¶ Northern Path likes the new Beowulf movie.

¶ Peg is upset about people stealing Pagan music.

¶ Caroline posts collage Tarot decks.

For Librarians & Their Fans

The Zen Librarian said, “Reference service is like a man hanging from a rope by his teeth over a cliff, with his hands bound to his sides and feet resting on no ledge, and another person asks him for books about Enrico Fermi for a child’s school assignment.” More here. Then there is something more hardcore.

What, you want more librarian blogs?

(I will have you know that I was a demon shelver when I had my undergrad work-study job.)

Jezebel the Polytheistic Princess


I am reading Lesley Hazleton’s Jezebel: The Untold Story of the Bible’s Harlot Queen, which I picked up at the Doubleday booth at the AAR-SBL meeting.

Somewhat as Robert Graves did in King Jesus decades ago–but with better sourcing–she takes a familiar Bible story and re-tells it from a different perspective.

Jezebel (Phoenician “Itha-Ba’al” — woman of the Lord) was a Phoenician princess united in a political marriage with Ahab, who was actually one of the more militarily and successful Israelite kings of the Omride dynasty. The Bible slams him for not being hard enough on polytheists, however.

As queen and then as queen mother, she plays the political game as best she can before falling victim to monotheistic religious violence incited by the prophet Elijah. It’s telling that Hazleton describes Elijah as issuing a fatwa against her: He is nothing but a forerunner of the Islamic preachers of today, urging the young men to blow themselves up in the name of Allah. When the Bible speaks of “companies of prophets,” I see the Taliban.

The story is told in the the Book of Kings, which Hazleton supplements with what archaeology has since learned about the kingdom of Israel.

It has been many years since I looked at 2nd Kings. It is supposedly a chronicle of Israel and Judah, but as Hazleton says, “It has the logic of a dream.” But I was reading Jezebel with the Bible in my lap for cross reference (Hazleton provides ample citations.)

Jezebel’s grandniece,known to the Greco-Roman world as Dido, helped to establish the city of Carthage, Rome’s military and commercial rival. But Dido’s real name was Elitha, which via the Carthaginian colonies in Spain became “Alicia,” or so Hazleton claims. Meanwhile, Jezebel–Itha-Ba’al–became “Isabelle” (or Isabella or Isobel) by the same route.

Margaret Murray, the English archaeologist who cast Paganism as the “Old Religion” in early modern Europe, claimed that “Isobel” and its variants (along with Joan) was among the most common names of women tried as witches. (Is that why Björk chose it?) But, really, I think that that was because it was a popular name, not because it was a “witch name.”

Gallimaufry with Cocktails

¶ Having watched most of the “Thin Man” movies out of sequence, M. and I finished tonight with the last of them, Song of the Thin Man. It is notable for its proto-hipster dialog in some scenes and what I am sure are well-veiled cannabis references, slipped past the Hollywood censors of the day. I have a vision of a 21-year-old Allen Ginsberg, watching it and going “Yeah, yeah!” “Best minds of my generation,” check. [Hidden] drug references, check. [Euphemized] “negro streets,” check. Insane asylum, check. Jazz, check. It’s almost all there. But no overt references to Patterson, New Jersey.

¶ A friend writes, “I am finally reading Her Hidden Children!! It is wonderful, Chas. Intelligent, concise, thoughtful, and respectful as well. Lovely, bravo, you are my hero. It is well written and pleasant to read. Your style flows like water over glass, never stumbling over complexities or data.”

I can’t marry her, so do I put her in my will? Flattery goes to a writer’s head like a big glass of cheap sherry!

¶ You should bookmark Jason Pitzl-Waters’ music blog, A Sweeping Curve of Sound. “Music, Blasphemy, Idolatry.” I’m in. Links abound, including to his Pagan music podcasts.

Varieties of Thanksgiving Day

A Florida teacher wants to challenge the usual First Thanksgiving story with one about the Spanish in St. Augustine.

But [Robyn] Gioia, 53, has written a children’s book, and just the title is enough to peeve any Pilgrim: America’s REAL First Thanksgiving.

“It was the publisher who put real in capital letters,” she says, “but I think it’s great.”

What does REAL mean? Well, she’s not talking turkey and cranberry sauce. She’s talking a Spanish explorer who landed here on Sept. 8, 1565, and celebrated a feast of thanksgiving with Timucua Indians. They dined on bean soup.

Couple of problems with that. While the Pilgrims occupy much more mythic space than their numbers justify (do you ever hear about the parallel Anglican colonies and their celebrations?,), the Spanish soldiers and missionaries in Florida occupy none, outside of Florida, where I suppose that they inspire the names of subdivisions. They came, they massacred some French Protestants, and eventually they gave up the territory.

We read about Ms. Gioia’s efforts on the train coming home. On T’giving morning, M. called me to breakfast.

“Is it a Calvinist breakfast or a Papist breakfast?”

“Oatmeal and burned biscuits — what do you think?” she replied.

“Only the Elect will be saved,” I said.

And then we had bean soup at supper. As for the people who think that Thanksgiving should be a “day of atonement” or “day of mourning,” let them eat cold tofu in the dark. I see too many people trying to make it back to the family home on this one day–a day that is more about social bonds than about history or religion. I, for one, cannot condemn them.

An Immigrant’s Story

So here I am at the final joint annual meeting of the American Academy of Religion and the Society for Biblical Literature. The book show is always one of the best parts. It is of the size that is usually measured in “football fields.”

Naturally books relating to Christianity dominate, as is true of the many multiple sessions where people are presenting papers.

I walk around, and I feel like an immigrant who has successfully integrated himself into his new country must feel. I recognize “the old country.” Sure, the pop songs have changed and the postage stamps look different now, but I remember how to understand the language and even to speak it sometimes. (It’s an effort.)

“Revelation” “Prophet” “Authority” “Redemption” “Church” — I remember those words. But my new language does not need them.

Fortunately, there are plenty of other things to talk about. The new religious movements sessions are always fun–they attract those of us who enjoy religion as spectacle. On Saturday, for instance, I was introduced to the international vampire self-study project. Self-labeled vampirism — quantified!

Gallimaufry with Geats

¶ Slate reviews the new 3-D Beowulf movie in heroic verse! I liked Beowulf and Grendel. Comparison will be fun.

¶ Staying in a San Diego waterfront hotel is like living in a Tom Clancy novel. Marines in dress blues suddenly fill the lobby. Helicopters and jets dash overhead. On Saturday morning I woke up to see the USS Nimitz moored across from us at Coronado Island.

But from the convention center I look over to a certain apartment complex on Coronado, where someone once important to me lived. Vanished youth, etc. M. is wryly accepting. She has her nostalgia moments too, after all.

¶ Jason Pitzl-Waters links to a news story about what happens when a church is “marital property”.

His Noodly Appendage

About to leave my hotel room for the off-program Pagan Studies session, I check the AP wire to learn that the most noteworthy session at this year’s American Academy of Religion meeting is the one devoted to the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

Indeed, the tale of the Flying Spaghetti Monster and its followers cuts to the heart of the one of the thorniest questions in religious studies: What defines a religion? Does it require a genuine theological belief? Or simply a set of rituals and a community joining together as a way of signaling their cultural alliances to others?