Something Spiritual for Christmas?

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Or, why our Immigration Policy is
The Hand Of God Moving in Mysterious Ways.

I have a new IPad app that lets me listen to British radio stations (oh yes, the thrill of it all!) and I recently caught the tail end of a conversation with an Anglican Bishop who was bemoaning the decline in Church attendance. He made the following comment:

"The Evangelical movement has failed as a reform movement within the Church."

I was amazed he had ever thought it could be one, when, to paraphrase my youngest daughter, it could best be described as "petri-dish mysticism" [i]. So, lest I be damned at Christmas, let me explain: First, churches operate at two levels:

1.     The communal and religious: the human urge to come together and sing uplifting songs, hear the word of their God expounded, and unite in worship and that warm feeling of virtue and connectedness. Enjoying communion - being part of a spiritual community.

2.     The individual and spiritual, or mysticism: an individual and direct personal spiritual connection to God, the Godhead, the Universal Soul (or whatever term works for you).

The first is the visible part of the church: the people it includes and all the charitable, generous, open-hearted and 'inspired' works they do. Which is the part of most Christian churches that's dwindling just as fast as their congregations are aging and dying.

The second is the personal spiritual connection that's always been distrusted and tightly controlled by Christian churches. Known as mysticism, it's about personally penetrating the 'cloud of unknowing' to reach and connect with the ineffable mystery of God. And that's why the Evangelical movement in Catholic and Protestant churches is a problem: it's a hybrid form of communal mysticism. All that speaking in tongues and spiritual healing and what looks uncomfortably like mass hysteria is the spirit of Christ, or the Holy Spirit, or whatever you want to call it, reaching down and overwhelming the faithful with bliss and rapture. It's a group orgasm of the spirit.

And if you think this doesn't have anything to do with you let me remind you that our Immigration Minister, Scott Morrison is a very senior Evangelical. His faith guides him, and therefore his attitudes and actions. And this is where the 'petri-dish mysticism' comes in. There are four levels or stages of transcendent experience involved in mysticism. They are:

1.     Bliss, or rapture.

2.     Illumination - the enlightenment bit, where you get new insights and a little humility.

3.     Exstasis, the separation of the soul from the body, and:

4.     Merging with the infinite, the Universal Soul, or God.

The problem is that Evangelicals aren't reaching beyond the first level. The 12th century Christian mystic and Augustinian monk Richard of St Victor described it thus:

"In the first degree spiritual feeling sweeter than honey
enters into her soul and inebriates her with its sweetness.."

That inebriation, being spiritually drunk (on the Holy Spirit), is what Evangelical services offer. Mass drunkenness, without alcohol. A cathartic emotional release which can wash away guilt and pain and regret without the understanding, insight or reflection of personal mediation or prayer. When people break out into babbling and gibberish it isn't a sign of over stimulation, mental intoxication and emotional overload it's a sign of holiness, of purity, of God's acceptance of who you are, with all your faults. And there's the rub. If this emotional and spiritual hot-tub washes only God's chosen vessels then we are, by definition, absolutely worthy, upright and deserving, true and correct in all our opinions and beliefs.

The Catholic and other traditional churches' long-held suspicion of this 'rapturous connection' is based on a genuine spiritual concern. People who are in this state of spiritual and emotional openness are enormously suggestible. And there's plenty of charismatic individuals in any generation willing to allow themselves to be first adored, then worshipped as beyond ordinary conceptions of morality, then obeyed to the letter in any despicable act or impulse. Cult leaders from Jim Jones to Charles Manson are notable examples of rapture followed by bloodshed. And while the Church may debate the degree of demonic influence involved the results here on earth are still bloody, appalling and socially destructive. 

Defensiveness, cults and reactionary politics

And it's not just religious cults that feed on this emotional and spiritual orgasm. When historian Robert Waite described Hitler as the 'Psychopathic God' this process is exactly what he had in mind; the cynical and systematic manipulation of people's emotional states to prey on their religious needs and instincts. The cult of personality around Lenin or Mao are similar extremes, but you can see the same fervour at an Obama rally, or in the cult of personality around Ronald Reagan among the conservative 'faithful'. People in groups will quickly connect and hype each other up emotionally, but intellectual processing drops to the lowest common denominator just as quickly. There is no need, or use, or room for intellect, discernment or logic. Just the rush, and the obedience of the herd.

That rapture, for the solitary individual praying or meditating is a sign that you're becoming spiritually open and emotionally responsive. It's there to motivate you to engage in the hard work of reflecting on yourself and your place in the world. On honestly seeing yourself in a broader context, which should produce humility. 

Instead Evangelical Churches favour an anti-intellectual Biblical literalism whose status as 'the absolute truth' is directly proportional to the fevered fervour of their emotional and spiritual experience. Which is the greatest, most powerful experience of their lives.  So there are no questions which can't be answered by their 2000 year old book of fables, myths, eye-for-an-eye morality, xenophobia, selective editing and obscure metaphysics. 

The head-shaking and derision this elicits from the rest of us does not make them feel loved. It only serves to amplify their self-imposed cultish isolation. And with all cults isolation breeds defensiveness, suspicion and a pseudo-martyr complex. God knows, they know they're right (about everything no matter how ridiculously uninformed they may be). They have God's miracle of orgasmic spiritual fever to prove it. 

This is the mindset that inspires reactionary politics: suspicion of outsiders, possession of a Holy Truth that others lampoon, direct authority from God for their opinions, no matter how small, or petty or cruel, or selfish, or self-serving or .. well, you get the drift. And when they get the power to punish others for their temerity in questioning God's chosen people.. well, watch out, Buddy.

I once worked with an Evangelical Catholic and his most prominent trait was an astonishing level of spiritual arrogance. He truly believed he was 'chosen of God' if not chosen by God. He was, unsurprisingly, reactionary and conservative, and he closely identified with the authority structure of the organisation, becoming progressively more humourless and authoritarian the longer he held any organisational power over others. He went from being regarded with amused condescension, to mockery, to animus, to fear and eventually outright hatred for his punitive, bullying manner and acts of spite and petty revenge.

The 'holier than thou' reactionary politics of Evangelical Christians is consistent with history's worst religious excesses. Pogroms, massacres, jihads and crusades all stem from religious fervour and fear. Fear which morphs into hate, and hate which generates violence. 

The cumulative weight of micro-aggressions targeted at refugees and other outsiders makes our society uglier and more hateful. It isn't just the 'boat people' who suffer. We all do when they arrive here damaged and in pain, embittered by their treatment, angry and resentful. And while Scott Morrison and Tony Abbott may keep them from staying here we will all still have to live in a society with new norms of behaviour that are progressively more hate-filled, mean-spirited and extreme, less tolerant of difference and diversity, more abusive, authoritarian and violent. 

And no God worth a good goddamn could be pleased with that.

And A Merry Christmas to You All.

PS: If anyone would like to engage me upon the rest of the four levels of transcendent whotsit, mine's a very large rum.

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[i] An acerbic and insightful young lady, she once memorably described the idea that pole-dancing empowered women through physical mastery as 'petri-dish feminism'.

How Free Is Your Free Speech?

Angry of Mayfair is currently in the USA and has been watching the Alan Jones "died of shame" melodrama from somewhere with a guaranteed right to free speech. 

The ugly exposure of Jones' cruel remarks at a Young Liberals smug-fest led to a horrified reaction and public backlash, an internet campaign and self-pitying claims of cyber-bullying by the offender. Now Jones and his defenders are 'outraged' by a satirical TV show and it's lampoons. It's a sad, but predictable, attempt at muddying the waters, because there are some facts about free speech that Jones and his ilk don't want you to think about (and they apply to every right-wing shock jock).

The first is this: When Alan Jones talks it isn't for free.

Alan Jones isn't employing free speech. He gets PAID to pour his divisive, misogynist, xenophobic, fear-mongering, dog-whistle politics into the ether. This isn't happening by chance, there's a great deal of profit to be had, both by his radio station and the companies who line up to advertise on it. This is about money. This is hate-speech for money, and lots of it. So let's be clear about how this works. 

Jones' appeal is simple. He's the lazy-thinking, public bar loudmouth who reduces every problem to one of them b@stards versus us good blokes. There are no problems that can't be reduced to a coin-toss of us decent, hard-working, struggle-street Aussies and our trickle-down millionaire exemplars of greed versus them. 

'Them' of course can be anyone different from us: Queue-jumping illegal-immigrant boat-scum, gangs of teenage ethnic dole bludgers who refuse to fit in; scary, angry Muslims who might be terrorists; castrating bitches who never shut up about equal pay and rape and abortion; socialist politicians who want to steal your money and raise your taxes; tree-hugging greenies who want to raise your taxes and steal your money, the list goes on.

The list goes on, but they all have one thing in common. They all demand that you think beyond your own short-term interest, that you show some consideration for another point of view, that you spare a thought for others. They threaten your right to be petty, greedy, self-absorbed and mentally lazy. Far better to just react viscerally and emotionally, to be one of us. Nice safe comfortable us.

The drunker you get the more sense he makes.

The point of this is that when you react with the knee-jerk greed-fear-hatred of the hind-brain you are easily suggestible. When your fear buttons are pushed you are far more likely to (a) lash out at the nearest, weakest target put in front of you, and (b) grab hungrily at what your greed response is presented with before the scary thing steals it from you.

When your emotions rule thinking goes by the board, and you"ll buy the next comforting lie and the next, and, of course, you'll buy the product that's put in front of you. Not immediately, of course, but soon, and the more you listen the more you believe, the better it feels to be one of us, to want the Mercedes Benz that shows us just how strong, brave and successful we are.

The profits from this fear-mongering, hate-mongering, greed-mongering retardathon are in the millions. That's not free speech under any rational definition. 

Real free speech is when 100,000 people use their laptops and iPads to say that they won't be part of the system that pays this pig a fortune to peddle his ignorant, right-wing, hatred and fear designed to keep people dumb, ill-informed, and reacting with emotion, buying with emotion.

Jones calls it cyber-bullying. It's not. 

It's free speech in action. 

Free, unpaid, private citizens speaking out. 

Free speech is the right of the unpaid, non-professional, private citizen to say NO to the paid propaganda of corporate greed, nationalist war-mongering and ugly, hate-spewing demagogues. 

We choose, as a society, to extend that right to journalists and news organizations so that we can guarantee that the truth gets told. That the public record is based on facts, not the spin of misogynist bully-boys.

That's the democracy of the 21st century. For the first time we have the technology to make immediate personal democratic opinion a player in the world. That frightens some people. "Mob rule" they cry as they cling to their comforting prophets of profit and complacency. The only rational response is to get involved, to think, to consider, to see another's point of view. Who knows, it may make the world a better place.