ATDTDA (17): liberal causes + the Church

[robinlandseadel at comcast.net]

                Tim Strzechowski:
                But wouldn't support of liberalism and radicalism be, 
                in effect, a direct threat to the tradition that is at the heart 
                of the Church's belief system?

                Can you give an example of what you mean here?

                Michael Lee Bailey:
                To the extent that the church is a physical and 
                financial institution, it's subject to the same 
                tendencies to abuse power as business and 
                government.  But to the extent that it's a 
                repository of utopian thought, it's among the 
                sources of progress.  (business and govern-
                ment have redeeming qualities, too, of course)

At the bottom of it all, there's some serious satire going on here, and just 
about everywhere Our Beloved Author quotes (or takes a carom shot off 
of) scripture. The astonishingly vast landscape of "Non-Scheduled 
Theologies" on view in Against the Day reminds me of Joseph Campbell or
Finnegans Wake and it should come as no surprise that OBA would be 
cognizant of some of the more heretical studies of early Christianity.

http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0703&msg=116746&keywords=cynics

Burton L. Mack, in "The Christian Myth [Origins, Logic and Legacy]" devotes 
an entire chapter to "The Case for a Cynic-like Jesus". Listing a long string of 
"Q"* aphorisms---Bless those who curse you, Carry no money, bag or sandals, 
Sell your possessions and give alms u.s.w.---Mack notes:

                The public arena is the place of accidental encounter with 
                people who are living by traditional rules. The behavior 
                enjoined is risky, but possible. And there is more than a hint 
                of social critique or countercultural life-style. The advice is 
                to be cautious, but also courageous. . . .

"Keep cool, but care"

                One should not respond in kind, but take reproach in stride and 
                with confidence that one is right. If the maxims cited above are 
                read in the context of these instructions, a corpus of sayings 
                begins to emerge that exhibits a distinctly Cynic flavor. Now, 
                by expanding the data base to look for themes that recur 
                throughout Q1, the recommended way of life takes on a profile 
                that is clearly comparable to popular Cynicism. . . .
                Burton L. Mack: The Christian Myth, pp. 44/45

Earl Doherty goes a bit further, eliminating any vestige of a historical Jesus 
in favor of pure Cynic tale-spinning, aphoristic Lord Buckley jive:

     THE JESUS PUZZLE: Was There No Historical Jesus?
     by Earl Doherty

     [a review of WHO WROTE THE NEW TESTAMENT?
     The Making of the Christian Myth
     by Burton L. Mack]

     This “authentic” layer bears such a striking resemblance to the style and 
     content of the preaching of wandering Cynics of the time, that Mack (and 
     others) have been forced to describe Jesus as a ‘Cynic-style sage’ who 
     had little concern for things Jewish, since none of his ‘teachings’ show 
     any focus on Jewish issues or institutions. This characterization of Jesus 
     as Cynic is perhaps more clearly stated in earlier publications by Mack, 
     though in the present book he says that “It does appear that Jesus was 
     attracted to this popular (ie, Cynic) ethical philosophy,” and he refers to 
     the “Cynic-like challenge in the teachings of Jesus” (p.40). Mack declares 
     (p.47) that “(earliest) Q puts us as close to the historical Jesus as we 
     will ever be.”

     But should Mack not have asked the question: why would the teaching 
     Jesus have come to us in such a meager, tortuous fashion? Why is the 
     picture thus created of him so incongruous? Considering that such a 
     teaching Jesus is utterly missing in the first century epistles, should not 
     the possibility be examined that this original layer of Q did not belong to 
     a Jesus at all, but was in fact ultimately the product of a Cynic milieu, 
     something which found its way into a Jewish preaching movement in 
     Galilee and only later got attached to the idea of an historical figure? 
     Certainly, Q1 sounds like the product of a school or lifestyle, developed 
     over time and hardly the sudden invention of a single mind. Once again,
      a logical avenue of investigation was never opened.


     The fact that both Q and Thomas, two distinct communities, show no 
     biographical interest in Jesus’ life and remained impervious to ideas 
     of a death and resurrection as elements of faith and soteriology, should 
     raise alarm bells and lead any conscientious historian to examine the 
     possibility that both these documents began as simply sayings collections, 
     unattached to any Jesus figure.

http://home.ca.inter.net/~oblio/review1.htm

It's a hop, skip and a jump from Cynics to Luddites, to Diggers to Beats 
and Hippies, the eternal Journey to the East.

Of course, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference:

http://www.sclcnational.org/content/sclc/splash.htm

. . . .had a massive influence on the Civil Rights movement of the sixties. 
There are devout Christians who naturally "do the right thing", and the same 
holds for those who won't---vide Vibe. But satire always rules over Pynchon's 
writings, and we should never lose sight of whatever ghastly pun might be 
buried under so many dense layers of spiritual autodidacticism. 

http://www.fatemag.com/issues/1940s/1948-spring-article1a.html

*: http://www.cygnus-study.com/pageq.html