Showing posts with label religious persecution. Show all posts
Showing posts with label religious persecution. Show all posts

3.16.2005

Still reading Perry Miller's Roger Williams. In tandem with this week's New Yorker article, about religious right's pressure on separation of church & state.

Roger would have had a lot to say about that. The aggressive proselytizing, which makes Christianity a cultural binding agent rather than a spiritual shriving & quest. A certain worldliness attaches itself to the million-dollar legal & ad-propaganda campaigns. (Then again, who in this world doesn't exude a certain worldliness? Not many.)

The absurd, tragicomic melodrama of relations between religious practices and the practices of society at large... Williams loved to use the "garden & wilderness" metaphor (the church is the garden, the wilderness is the world). This is a useful distinction, which goes back (you might say) even before Christ, to the rite of baptism - which is the sign of repentance, of turning from the ways of the world to the love of God, of recognizing oneself as a child of God before anything else.

There is always this temptation to impose one's landscape (the garden) on the world; to erase that difficult distinction; to create a kind of Christian-imperial fantasy-culture. Williams, on the other hand, loves to point out that the sign of the true Christian is the lamb : the persecuted, not the persecutor.

The power of rhetoric over free inquiry. The willingness to judge & condemn the opponent, the "enemy", in simplistic terms, ruthless castigations (practiced everywhere now, on every side, on every issue).

The first Roger Williams I knew about was the '60s pop musician. I played his fancy version of "Autumn Leaves" as a piano recital. (This was the sheet music:)

3.07.2005

Finished Yourcenar's The Abyss over the weekend. I can't remember reading a better historical novel. & it's more than an "historical novel".

Set in mid-1500s. Makes you realize very clearly why Pilgrims etc. came over here (& of course everything was sweetness & light, over here! like in Salem!). Pure hell of religious wars, totalitarian empires, persecution of science, free thought... she piles on layer after layer of human folly.

Her gift for depth of detail, characterization. The dialogues read like a very good play.