ATDTDA (17): liberal causes + the Church

[kelber at mindspring.com]

This episode seemed more about labor-contracting -- anarchists and christers trying to outbid each other on workers for their respective causes -- than about relgious support of lefty politics (which certainly has a long, rich history).

Laura

-----Original Message-----
>From: 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