I joined a church when I was in college, and my mother thought I'd become a Moonie.
Why she thought this is still unclear; she'd raised me, after all, and she knew that I was stubborn, opinionated, almost impossible to sway, and had a distressing tendency to do exactly what I wanted no matter what. She also knew that although I hadn't attended church very much since we'd left a wonderful little United Church of Christ in suburban Cleveland, I'd kept up with Biblical studies and had a fascination with comparative religion that led me to question almost everything in Scripture.
How any of the above translated to "potential cultist" is a mystery to rank with how the scallop-encrusted corpse of James the Great ended up in Compostela, but so it was. The resulting bit of dialogue is possibly the single most surreal conversation I've ever participated in or witnessed, excepting only the time that Mum and my uncle Oscar spent five increasingly strained minutes discussing plastic garment bags, and no, I will not attempt to recreate it because you really, truly, had to be there.
As for Mum and me on that long ago February minute, our exchange went something like this:
Ellid: And so I've thought about it, and I've decided to join a church here in Northampton.
Mum: Which one? I know you weren't happy at Prince of Peace. Did you join the Lutheran church?
Ellid: Well, no. Not really.
Mum: Did you find a United Church of Christ?
Ellid: Uh. No.
Mum: Then what did you join?
Ellid: I've decided to become a Unitarian.
(dead silence for five seconds)
Mum: Ellid? Does this mean you'll be selling flowers in airports?
(deader silence for another five seconds)
Ellid: Mum. Those are Moonies. The Unification Church. That's not what I'm joining.
Mum: Then what are you -
Ellid: Unitarians. You know, Transcendalists? Ralph Waldo Emerson? Margaret Fuller? Henry David Thoreau?
Mum: Oh, those Unitarians!
Ellid: Yes, Mum. Those Unitarians.
Mum: Good. That sounds much more like you. Just one thing.
Ellid: Yes?
Mum: Let me break the news to your aunt. She's a Presbyterian, after all.
Despite this inauspicious beginning, I was indeed quite happy at the local Unitarian Society. I'm still a Unitarian Universalist, even now, although I've been taking a break from an actual congregation for the last year or so. I'm still stubborn, still opinionated, and still have very little patience for cults, and when one takes that and melds with liberal politics, even more liberal religious thought, and a liking for intelligent conversation and good coffee, and really, what else could I be?
Of course, being a UU is not all sweetness and light, and doesn't even count the time I saw a woman add cream to a cup of beef bouillon she thought was coffee during the after-service conversation hour. We're all supposed to create our own theology, resulting in Sunday School kids wishing to score points by asking if we'd welcome Adolf Hitler as a member since "everything is equally valid and meaningful," jokes about Unitarianism being "a tasty, low-calorie substitute for religion," and earnest attempts at repurposing prejudicial language that result in the elderly being called "the chronologically endowed." We're overwhelmingly white, well educated, and affluent, and are distressingly bad at publicizing ourselves and our martyrs (how many of you knew that the two civil rights activists who died at Selma were both UU's?). And despite Unitarians and Universalists being at the forefront of every single progressive political and social movement of the last two centuries, the average American still probably thinks we worship Sun Myung Moon and sell flowers at airports.
Tonight, as part of December Rewind, I bring you a mix of diaries that in some way touch on religion, Unitarianism, or the annual holiday when Americans traditionally order Chinese food and go to the movies (I'm currently planning to hit the second Hobbit movie with a buddy or two). One is about terrible pseudopigrapha, another about silly religious books in general, the third about two solemn, pious movies that engendered remarkably bad movies, and that all-time favorite, the French hoax that the Templars, the Merovingians, and a priest who got rich running a postal order scam were somehow connected to Jesus:
Vegetarian Jesus and the High Colonic - there were many, many books about Jesus that didn't make it into the New Testament, from the Gospel of Thomas (which might well be the closest we have to the actual words of Jesus) to various third and fourth century works that filled in the gaps in the Savior's life story in what can only be called an early attempt at religious fan fiction.
Some of these are worth reading, others less so, but none of them can hold a candle to modern forgeries that claim that Jesus was, in no particular order, a pet lover who adopted a kitten and entrusted it to his BFF Lorenza, preferred nice fresh melons to loaves and fishes when he needed to feed yet more multitudes, and believed in self-administered enemas to heal whatever ailed you.
Yes. Really.
Losing My Religion - many people have claimed to discover lost manuscripts, especially in the Himalayas and other parts of what white colonialists used to call "The Mysterious East," but few were as successful as Helena Petrova Blavatsky. This charming adventuress, who started out as a Russian aristocrat, worked as a psychic medium and confidence trickster, and ended up founding the Theosophical Society, lived a life that was far more colorful and interesting than the numbingly repetitive "secret wisdom" she allegedly unearthed with the aid of several "Secret Masters." Much of what became known as the New Age started here, though what HPB would have thought of Ramtha and Heart Defibrillator Master Da Free Bubblegummachine Ramalamadingdong auf Ulm is best left to the imagination.
The other seeker in this diary, civil rights activist and lawyer Arnold Beizer, not only allegedly found that the Lost Tribes of Israel somehow ended up in Ireland, he offered a rock-solid ironclad 100% guarantee that the dozen or so people who actually managed to wade their way through his masterpiece would be so stunned by his work that they'd never ask for a refund. Who could ask for anything more?
The Silver Chalice and The Robe - The Silver Chalice, a Biblical adventure story by Thomas B. Costain, and The Robe, a piously turgid novel by Lutheran pastor Lloyd C. Douglas, were firmly in the tradition of Biblical historical fiction like Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ and The Last Days of Pompeii. This meant steady sales to good Christians who craved fiction that somehow worked around the conservative prohibition on novels, followed in due time by film adaptations.
Sometimes these adaptations were good (The Last Days of Pompeii), while others were genuinely good (Ben-Hur, if for nothing else than the chariot race). Alas, neither The Silver Chalice (which nearly killed Paul Newman's career) nor The Robe (which had one good adaptation starring Richard Burton and one horrific sequel starring Victor Mature and a starlet in about twenty pounds of silver eyeshadow) was that lucky....
Merry Christmas, Merovingian Jesus! - “The lunatic is all idée fixe, and whatever he comes across confirms his lunacy. You can tell him by the liberties he takes with common sense, by his flashes of inspiration, and by the fact that sooner or later he brings up the Templars," Umberto Eco once wrote, and no truer words were e'er writ. Tonight's diary discusses a hoax that morphed into, in turn, the following:
- a conspiracy theory about lost kings, royal pretenders, the Templars, lizard people, and the French ultraright;
- a series of popular television programs;
- a major tourist industry in a French backwater;
- several absolutely terrible books, both fiction and non-fiction; and
- that all-time bestseller The Da Vinci Code.
This one alone is worth rereading it, and almost makes up for my continued, abject, utterly deliberate and inexcusable failure to complete Captain America: Socialist Scum! for your reading pleasure. I hope it will suffice.
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Were you ever a Moonie? A Unitarian? Did you ever sell flowers? Read about the Templars? Have a friend named Lorenza? Belong to a cult? It's the Winter Solstice tonight, so what better time to unburden yourself among friends?
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