Mark Lewis Taylor

I have appreciated the writing of Mark Lewis Taylor, Maxwell M. Upson Professor of Theology and Culture at Princeton Theological Seminary, especially his books Remembering Esperanza: A Cultural-Political Theology for North American Praxis and The Executed God: The Way of the Cross in Lockdown America.

In Religion, Politics, and the Christian Right Taylor continues his probing and insightful reflections on America as Empire. This time he exposes the dangers of the Christian Right, as well as Liberal Left, and presents us with the model of a prophetic spirit for engagement in public life.

Taylor speaks of 9/11 as a symbolic event or a "mythic moment" that galvanized U.S. citizens of diverse stripes in support of an unending "war on terror." The targets of the 9/11 attacks were symbolic centers of the American Empire -- the U.S. military (the Pentagon) and global economic power (the World Trade Center). The reaction to the events of 9/11 was a collective surge of nationalism with American flags flying everywhere and overwhelming support for war with Afghanistan and Iraq from both right and left.

For Taylor, the upsurge in nationalism connected to the events of 9/11 and the war on terror is being expressed out of the ideologies of American Romanticism and what he calls "contractual liberalism." American Romanticism is rooted in an idealistic vision of the nation's origins and destiny, which tends to forget its own history of terrorism and oppression, and sees the nation as exceptional within the world. The secular, political neo-conservative platform is an expression of American Romanticism, while Christian Right is a religio-political version.

According to Taylor, the civic nationalism of contractual liberalism is rooted in an ideology that anticipates progress and future growth. The spread of "democracy and freedom" through military power, globalization of market economy that benefits the wealthy, and various forms of neo-colonialism are expressions of contractual liberalism. American Romanticism and contractual liberalism have served to reinforce the hegemony of American power.

In contrast to these political ideologies, which are endangering the republic, global humanity, and the ecosphere, Taylor presents an alternative tradition of the prophetic spirit, a radical liberalism. The prophetic spirit is a spiritual, cultural, and political vision for creating justice and peace for the weak, marginalized and oppressed.

Taylor points to diverse agents of this prophetic spirit, such as advocates for the imprisoned, activists in the reparations movement, immigrants seeking justice, leaders of indigenous peoples, and environmental groups, to name just a few. Although most of Taylor's examples are secular, for him the gospel of Jesus Christ is itself born and nurtured by the prophetic spirit.

Taylor offers some handles by which to better understand the governing political ideologies of our day beyond simple right and left, conservative and liberal labeling. His analysis assists us in considering the ideological frameworks that caused alliances of right and left in supporting the post-9/11 goals of America as an empire.

The Religious Art of Andy Warhol

The knowledge of (his) secret piety inevitably changes our perception of an artist who fooled the world into believing that his only obsessions were money, fame, (and) glamor...


----John Richardson, "Eulogy for Andy Warhol"


Only Andy Warhol's closest friends were aware of his religious background and practice of church attendance. It became public knowledge with the eulogy by Warhol's friend art historian John Richardson. After seeing photos of Warhol's studio in an article by Richardson, Jane Dillenberger noticed an unfinished painting of Leonardo Da Vinci's Last Supper in the background and began tracking down other such religious works to bring them to the foreground. The final result of her research was her provocative book entitled The Religious Art of Andy Warhol.

Like most art lovers I was unaware of Warhol's religious paintings until I came across Dillenberger's book. She brings to the foreground elements of Warhol's life that he kept in the background. She places Warhol's religious paintings against the backdrop of his poor Slovakian Catholic family, who moved from Mikova to the Ruthenian section of Pittsburgh for jobs. From childhood through his college years Warhol attended the long Byzantine church services at St. John Chrysostum. His mother Julia Warhola, who was a deeply pious woman, made a significant impact upon his life. After leaving Caregie Tech, where he studied painting and design, Warhol moved to New York. He continued to attend a Catholic church in the Byzantine tradition. Even after he became a well known pop artist Warhol would serve meals to the homeless at the Church of Heavenly Rest on the holidays.

Warhol's religion may have been private, but his desire for celebrity, his gay relationships, round-the-clock partying, underground films (many premiering in gay porn theaters), and bohemian, addicted friends from The Factory (his studio) were well known. This is the lifestyle most people associate with Warhol. It is this lifestyle that one should not forget even when reading Dillenberger's book as it brings his religious life to the foreground.

His life was turned around by gun shots from the radical feminist Valerie Salanos in 1968. Warhol literally died on the operating table, but was revived. This experience made a profound impact on his life and art. His religious practice became even more intense with almost daily attendance at mass, although he never went to confession or took communion.

Dillenberger surveys the artwork of Warhol looking for and finding religious themes, such as a series of cross paintings, easter eggs, details from Renaissance religious paintings, death and skull paintings and most significantly a series of pop paintings with bright colors, camouflage, with modern icons, and in multiple repeated images based on Leonardo Da Vinci's Last Supper. Surprisingly, his series of religious paintings are the largest of any modern artist. This series of paintings was eventually shown in Milan in the Palazzo delle Stelline across from Santa Maris delle Grazie, where Leonardo's famous frescoe was painted.

I appreciated Dillenberger's bringing Warhol's religious life and art into the foreground from their hidden places. I was unaware of this aspect of both his life and art. Even so, this foregrounding had the effect of turning Andy Warhol into some kind of artistic saint. When all one reads and sees visually has to do with Warhol's religious life and art, the rest of his unorthodox lifestyle is forgotten or excused for a moment. I believe in Warhol we not only find a great artist, but also a flawed human being who exhibited his conflicted spirituality in both his life and art, and not simply a spiritual person whose life is seen shining through his religious art and church practice.

Where Have All the Prophets Gone?

Where have all the prophets gone? A first response to the question of Marvin McMickle might come from an old Pete Seeger song: Gone to graveyards everyone. In his book on reclaiming prophetic preaching in America McMickle laments the decline in prophetic preaching from U.S. pulpits and calls for a renewal of preaching that addresses the moral, social, and political issues of our day.

McMickle contrasts prophetic preaching, which addresses the social issues of a society, to preaching which focuses upon the internal life of the church, like praise and worship, and has been hijacked by a "royal consciousness," that is, preaching that serves our national interests. The latter type of preaching has captivated the American pulpit. When moral issues are addressed there tends to be a myopic focus on abortion and homosexuality. Justice cannot be limited to these two issues.

McMickle wants a broadening of moral issues addressed in the church and pulpit. He points to the biblical witness for addressing distributive (economic), restorative (judicial) justice, and war. His overview of these issues is very brief. Peacemaking and restorative justice are fields Mennonites have developed extensively and their work would have benefited McMickle's summary.

"Patriot pastors" are a target of McMickle's critique, particularly those conservative, Evangelical leaders who align themselves with the Republican party and serve the interests of the state. He does note a "subtle transformation" among some conservative Evangelicals, like Rick Warren, who have started to address wider issues like poverty and AIDS. My own critique would be that few of these "new Evangelicals" are addressing the systemic, economic, and political roots of many of these social issues. Others who recieve his critique are televangelists, megachurches with a "mini gospel, and prosperity preachers.

The truncated focus upon praise and worship in some churches leads to "cheap grace" according to McMickle. Worship without justice is paricularly addressed by the eighth century biblical prophets. McMickle calls for a balance of praise and protest.

Prosperity preachers receive extensive critique from McMickle. They blatantly misinterpret biblical texts of blessing to indicate that God wants everyone, and especially the preacher, to be blessed financially. He views prosperity preaching as a major hinderance to the prophetic word.

Prosperity preaching comes from a particular wing of the church. I believe that there is an even greater danger in the more prevalant middle and upper-class capitalist consumerism that is taken as normative within the church and society. It has infiltrated the church. This broad cultural idealogy and practice seems to be a greater hinderance to prophetic preaching.

McMickle is to be commended for addressing social issues like racism, sexism, heterosexism and for viewing the antiwar stance as being prophetic. From an Anabaptist perspective I feel McMickle has not drawn out some of his prophetic vision to its radical conclusions. The sermon he added at the end of the book left this Anabaptist wanting. He addressed the phrase "under God" in the pledge of allegiance entitling his sermon Under God Is a Good Place. He notes those who are concerned about the separation of church and state, which would include Anabaptists like myself. As McMickle states, "The words 'under God' cause me the least concern" in the Pledge of Allegiance. I am with him as he goes through the pledge and offers his challenge to their truth in practice.

One nation. Are we really? When there are so many homeless and corporate executives plunder their companies and retire with exhorbitant wealth? When African Americans constitute 13 % of the population but more that 70% of the prison population? Republic. When thousands of votes in Florida were discounted in a presidential election? Indivisible. When we are divided by race, red and blue states and economics?

Under God. McMickle views these as the most important words of the pledge for three reasons. First, we are all under God as Creator of the world. Second, we are all accountable to God. Third, God is able to do more than we can do. My problem is that the context of these words seems to be ignored by McMickle. First, this is a pledge of allegiance to a nation. For Christians our primary allegiance is to God. And those two allegiances often come into conflict with one another. Second, the complete phrase is "one nation under God." Can Christians affirm that there is only one nation under God? Christians are citizens of God's realm and reign and members of the church, which is multinational, multiracial and multicultural. His concluding sermon could have been far more prophetic for my tastes.

Nevertheless, McMickle has provided another helpful resource for preachers and the church to renew the call to prophetic preaching.

Secret Lives of Great Artists

When I took several art history courses in L.A. City College in 1968 I got D's, even though I was an art major. Those bad grades were part of what caused me to lose my college deferment and to get drafted into the army during the Vietnam war. I never got bad grades again! And yet, I still remember the artists and the major art movements to this day.

I just finished reading a book that has inspired me look at art history afresh. It is entitled Secret Lives of Great Artists by Elizabeth Lunday. What makes it interesting is the odd angle she takes on well known artists. She tells some bizarre stories that I don't remember from my college art classes. Maybe I would have paid more attention if the professors would have spiced up the history with these oddities.

I don' remember hearing that:

* Leonardo Da Vinci was publicly accused of sodomy and was notorious for leaving work undone.

* Sandro Botticelli tried to crash a large rock on his neighbors roof for making too much noise.

* Michelangelo Buonarroti had such bad body odor, from not bathing, that he drove his assistants away while painting the Sistine Chapel, which was not painted lying on his back.

* Michelangelo Merisi Da Caravaggio was constantly in fights and even murdered a man in a bar room brawl.

* Rembrandt Van Rijn, whose was inspired by Mennonites and even painted a Mennonite minister and his wife, did not follow their morals. He had several lovers and was dragged before a church council for "living in sin."

* Dante Gabriel Rossetti, a Pre-Raphaelite painter with serious addictions, dug up his dead wife

to retrieve personal poems he had placed in her coffin.

Paul Cezanne had an inflammatory temper and hated to be touched.

* Henri Rousseau was jailed for bank fraud.

* Van Gogh performed missionary work among the poor. During his periods of insanity he would eat paint directly from the tube! Yummy.

* Edward Hopper was a wife-beater and his wife a husband-beater.

* Diego Rivera and Frieda Kahlo...well, their sexual escapades are no secret, even Frieda's trist with Leon Trotsky.

* Georgia O'Keeffe often painted in the nude and chased off nephews and nieces who spied on her.

* Jackson Pollock's couldn't draw so he dripped. His alchoholism killed him in a car crash.

* Andy Warhol was shot by a radical feminist. He turned back to religion and painted a series on Da Vinci's Last Supper (I just bought a book about this entitled The Religious Art of Andy Warhol by Jane Dillinger).

* Salvador Dali, who I have been aware of since high school, was so bizarre it would take a book to write about his weird antics (May years ago I read his autobiography. This was one strange dude. Maybe that's why I like him so much).

I have always wondered why so many artists seemed to live such tortured and bizarre lives. There must be something in the psychology of creative people that lends itself to this. Anyway, this book by Lunday highlights the strange aspects of artists lives. Unlike art history in college, it kept my interest.

Remembering Rightly: Reflections on Memory, Truth, and Healing

How we remember wrongs done to us as individuals and collectively as a people is an important part of healing in a violent world. This is the premise of Miroslav Volf’s book, The End of Memory: Remembering Rightly in a Violent World (Eerdmans, 2006). Upon reading the title my own memory immediately recalled the situation of apartheid in South Africa and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s approach of allowing victims to remember and tell their stories of oppression and abuse. More personally, I thought of my own memories of painful struggles with adopted children who have been impacted by post- traumatic stress disorder. Would this book provide some insight into how oppressed people and abused individuals deal with their memories?

Volf’s book grew out his own theological and psychological reflections on an abusive and threatening interrogation he underwent in 1984 while in the military under communist Yugoslavia. The public cry for victims of oppression and abuse to not forget their wrongs for the sake of justice echoed in Volf’s mind after the incident was over. How, as a Christian, was he to “rightly remember” the abuse he experienced? If we follow Jesus, who told us to love our enemies, is there a right way to deal with our memories of wrongs endured that leads toward reconciliation?

These questions about remembering that Volf’s book raise are not only important in the context of historical political abuse (e.g., the holocaust, South African apartheid), but also for everyday Christians who must deal with memories of their own abuse or being wronged by someone. The way we remember abuse or wrongs done can be either destructive or healing. Destructive memory fuels further anger, hatred, and vengeance. What Christians need is an approach to memory that is healing and reconciling. Elie Wiesel, a holocaust survivor once suggested that salvation lies in memory.

Right remembering is a healing and reconciling understanding of memory. It is an important, but tough, approach to recalling wrongs perpetrated against victims, especially if you are the victim of the abuse. Victims can easily demonize perpetrators and distort the truth of what happened to them. It is an understandable psychological response to perpetrators of violence and abuse. Right remembering calls for recollection of events truthfully without exaggeration or injustice against the perpetrators. Right remembering also involves not allowing traumatic memories to dominate our identity, but to reframe those memories for personal healing, having the truth of the traumas acknowledged, utilizing traumatic memories as a means of solidarity with victims, and as an impetus for protecting victims from further violence.

According to Volf, the stories of the Exodus and Christ’s Passion are “meta-memories” through which Jews and Christians rightly remember. Israel’s memories of the Exodus were to serve as the basis for their treatment of aliens and strangers. At the same time, more problematic are the dangerous and difficult texts in the Hebrew Scriptures texts about memory as a means for vengeance (against the Amalekites- Deuteronomy 25:17-19). I’m not sure that Volf adequately dealt with these “contradictory” texts in the Exodus story, at least from the perspective of a peace theology. The Passion story allows Christians to reframe memories of wrongs done to us in the light of Christ’s forgiveness and his love for enemies and the hope for communion and reconciliation.

There is much more that could be said about right forgetting and forgiving. Suffice it to say, Volf’s book has provided much thought for me on further reflection on memory, truth, and healing. It has come into my path as I have been struggling with my own memories of past wrongs perpetrated against me and those close to me, facing present consequences of violence and injuries done to those around me, reflecting on the atrocities and war in our world, and wondering about how to handle meaningless experiences in my life. The following quote from Volf has provided solace and redemptive hope for me in a world full of jagged memories and meaningless moments:

We do not need for all of our lived life to be gathered and rendered meaningful in order to be truly and finally redeemed… no need to take all of our experiences, distinct in time, and bind them together in a single volume so that each experience draws meaning from the whole as well as contributes meaning to the whole. It suffices to leave some experiences untouched…, treat others with the care of a healing hand and then abandon them to the darkness of non-remembrance…, and reframe the rest…. The way in which we are redeemed must fit the way we are made up as human beings, and both our redemption and our human makeup must fit the moral obligations we bear; otherwise, our redemption would (at least partly) undo our identity as human beings - as redeemed persons who acted in a morally responsible manner, we would work against our own humanity and well-being (pg. 192).

Liberating Jonah

As a child the Jonah story was for me about a man who got swallowed by a whale. In my young mind he was no different from Pinocchio. As an adult I found this "whale of a tale" hard to swallow. The problem was not just because it was hard to believe that a human could stay three days inside the belly of a "big fish." In my evangelical fundamentalist church tradition the story was turned into a missionary tract with Jonah, the evangelist, being told by God to go preach to the sinners in Ninevah. And I was not interested in proselytizing people in foreign countries from other faith traditions.

I just finished reading a whole new take on the Jonah story. One that I can more easily swallow. The book is Liberating Jonah: Forming an Ethics of Reconciliation by Miguel A. De La Torre. I had read his book Reading the Bible from the Margins and Doing Ethics from the Margins, so I was curious to see what he had to say about the book of Jonah.

De La Torre interprets Jonah from the perspective of those on the margins of society. It is a liberationist reading of Jonah, which means that it is a reading with the political, economic, and social dimensions of the text placed in the foreground and utilizes a "hermeneutic of suspicion" that questions the hegemony of pietistic individualism, white eurocentricity, heterosexist patriarchy, capitalistic neoliberalism, and U.S. imperialism. His purpose is to study Jonah to "find biblically based paradigms for developing of discourse and action that can lead to reconciliation between and socioeconomic classes within the United States." A praxis mode of interpretation is emphasized in the final chapter by using contemporary case studies.

De La Torre's places the Jonah narrative within the socio-political context of the Assyrian empire. The Assyrian empire held the power in the story, while Jonah and the Israelites were among the marginalized. So, with this power dynamic it becomes more difficult to identify Jonah and the Israelites with the U.S. as an empire or Jonah as an example of missionary activity to foreign contries from within our U.S. context. We fit more analogously with Assyria. De La Torre examines the economic, racist, and religious faces of the U.S. as an empire. He also looks at the Jonah story as analogous to the marginalized calling for repentance and reconciliation from those in the dominant power structures.

Reconciliation take a good portion of the last part of the book. De La Torre's approach is to allow reconciliaion to be defined by and originate from the marginalized, who are most often the victims of the dominant culture. Forgiveness plays a significant role in his understanding of reconciliation. Reconciliation must be accompanied by justice and forgiveness by repentance, or else they become "cheap grace." Justice is understood as restorative justice over against retributive justice. De La Torre states that "restorative justice must include a retributional component." He seems to understand this component of "retribution" in terms of justice and restitution. I would question his understanding of justice and accountability as being "retribution," but agree with his call for accountability and restitution.

Finally, De La Torre notes some pitfalls the marginalized should avoid when challenging the dominant church and society. One pitfall is that reconciliation is embedded within Eurocentric constructions of what reconciliation means. This means that the marginalized and those with power will view reconciliation differently. Also, it means that the dominant church and society will seek to maintain its place of privilege in any attempts at reconciliation. Challenging white privilege should not turn into "a multiculturalism of symbolic concessions" rather than the redistribution of of power. And power should not be underestimated. Shedding tears over the past and present injustices cannot be a substitute for dismantling power and privilege. Peace cannot substitute for justice to the oppressed and marginalized.

De La Torre does not end his book on a hopeful note. Hope is the final pitfall. His hopelessness may be disturbing to some, particularly Christians. But, I understand why he has little hope for reconciliation, even in a context where many of us have been inspired by the recent message of hope in our U.S. presidential elections. De La Torre's lack of hope is based upon the long term consequences of neoliberalism, neocolonialism, imperialism, the entrenched nature of inequitable power and privilege, and a long history of racism, injustice, sexism, and oppression of marginalized groups that has taken hundreds of years to only partially be redressed and undone. Hope offered by the dominant culture most often appears contrived to the marginalized. In the end, reconciliation and justice are to be pursued not because there is hope that they will be fully realized, but because of the escatological promise of God. So, beyond all hope we believe in hope.