God's Graffiti

 

Photo by author

I’ve almost finished reading Revolutionary Characters, by historian Gordon S. Wood, and have recently read biographies on George Washington and Benjamin Franklin. I intend to squeeze in Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and Alexander Hamilton as soon as I can acquire the books, and I’ll look up the others on the internet. I look especially for information on their religious views and, so far, I have found nothing to indicate that the founding fathers were the devout men that Christian apologists and evangelicals would have us believe. Most of the Founders were deists, the prevailing sentiment held by the educated upper classes of the time, and they held in varying degrees of indifference and contempt the evangelical Christianity of the masses.

The religious right in this modern age like to point to references to God in the founders’ letters and documents as proof of the religiosity of the framers of the Constitution, but the God of the deists bore no resemblance to the angry meddling God whose words contemporary evangelist would have inscribed on every surface of every federal facility on the planet and taught as science in the classrooms of our public schools. Appeals to God in those letters and documents were appeals to Providence, not to some denominational creator who heaps beneficence on the faithful and severe judgment on those not obedient to His authority as expressed by one or another interpretive branch of His dictates.

George Washington, ever aware of his public image, attended church to display his affinity with his constituency in much the same way modern politicians, steeped in corruption and self-interest, cater to a religious constituency to appear as one of the people. Alexander Hamilton used Christianity to achieve political ends and did not express adherence to the faith until the early nineteenth century, decades after his prominence in Revolutionary politics. John Adams openly expressed in belief in deism but thought church attendance essential to man’s morality. Thomas Paine’s masterpiece, The Age of Reason, promoted deism and criticized Christian doctrine. Benjamin Franklin considered himself a deeply religious man, but in his writings, he often refers to “the deity” and “providence,” without mention of Christianity. He endeavored to virtue, but of course, virtue does not rely on religion for its practice or existence. James Madison rigorously defended and promoted religious freedom. Of the founding fathers, only John Jay and Patrick Henry attested to orthodox Christianity. They did not belong to the class of educated men who adhered to the prevailing theology of deism among the landed elite in the northern colonies. Evangelical Christianity was, to those who aspired to a republican aristocracy in the Age of Enlightenment, the religion of the unenlightened masses.

The furor over the place of religion in patriotism began with Francis Scott Key’s words in the Star-Spangled Banner: “And this be our motto: In God is our trust.” We can assume without further research that the god referred to is the Judeo-Christian deity.

Proselytizers and enforcers of religious have only the motto “In God We Trust” as a wedge and as justification for their attempts to force fundamentalist Christianity on an entire nation, but that graffiti did not appear on American currency until the Civil War's religious revival period, at a time of religious revival in the United States and was not adopted as the national motto until the Eisenhower administration in 1956, when the aristocratic values inherent in the Age of Enlightenment ceased to have relevance. Its acceptance as the national motto was accelerated when positioned as a response to “Godless Communism”.

The most militant atheist quarrels with inscriptions of the national motto on currency and the Ten Commandments on the face of federal buildings, but most Americans view those allusions to religion with ambivalence. The motto refers only to “God” and does not promote the god of a favored group, and the Decalogue represents a historical event and is not the sole province of any particular philosophy. The exact wording belongs to the Judeo-Muslim-Christian heritage, but identical admonitions come from multiple cultures and religions ranging from the code of Hammurabi to definitions of proper behavior in Scientology. It does not require religious thought to know that rules set forward in the Commandments represent common-sense applications for an individual to live by if he is to live at peace in a society. The problem many deists have with religious graffiti on taxpayer-funded property lies in the rigid enforcement by brown-shirt religious leaders to limit those inscriptions to their particular faith. Why not include Buddhism’s Eightfold Path, and the Sutras of Patanjali? Buddhism and Hinduism, are, after all, well represented in American society, as are Wicca, Paganism, Scientology, and any number of groups and doctrines that have sprung up to challenge the rigid and chauvinist dogma of Christianity and its history of torture, mass murder, and denial of reason and free thought to enforce its adherence.

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Cross Dressing on the Elizabethan Stage

 

Photo by Hulki Okan Tabak on Unsplash

In William Shakespeare’s time, the depiction on stage of a young, respectable, unmarried woman ran counter to social conventions. When playwrights presented contemporary works or modernized Greek Drama, they changed the character from female to male, or—where the character’s gender gave the play its form and plot—a young male dressed in feminine attire played the part. With the presentation of Twelfth Night, Shakespeare turned social convention on its head with an ironic twist: he had a young woman, played by a male actor, disguise himself (herself?) as a man. The humor in the man-turned-woman-turned-man-turned-woman romp would have delighted an Elizabethan Age audience, with the exception of domineering social prudes. Their representation in the play by Malvolio would have doubled the fun and had the spectators gasp at Shakespeare’s genius in his subtle use of irony in poking fun at society through story. Even the title had meaning to the crowds at the Globe Theater: the Twelfth Night refers to the twelfth night after Christmas, or the Feast of Epiphany, when custom had men dress as women and women as men. Disguise and confused identity are common themes in Shakespeare’s works.

Students of history can easily see how he found favor with Elizabeth, the popular queen and only the second woman to rule the country.

The law of primogeniture that dictated a male line of succession to the English monarchy had collapsed with the fall of Salic Law in France under the threat of English claims to the French crown. By the time Mary Tudor ascended to the throne, the only restraint on a female monarch was the concern of Henry VIII, her father, that a woman could not hold together the Tudor line and a country that seemed destined for civil war. With the death of Henry’s only son Edward, the line of succession fell to Mary, whose reign of terror and her cozy relations with Spain infuriated the English people.

On Mary’s death, Elizabeth I resumed the Tudor monarchy. Her reign marked the beginning of the Renaissance in England. The arts and sciences flourished, the English navy ruled the seas, and explorations of Asia, Africa, and the New World reached a fever pitch. Knowledge founded on reason surged forth and a revolution in societal standards and mores swept away the old values of the Medieval Age. In the new age of learning and relaxed attitudes, William Shakespeare found fertile ground for his wit.

The opening lines of Twelfth Night set the tone for the remainder of the play. The idea of romantic love existed in medieval Europe, but it was tightly bound in cultural proscriptions. Arranged marriages and marriages of convenience represented the cultural norm. Orsino’s both praises the joys of love and laments it in the opening lines of the play (Act 1, scene 1: 1-15). We know immediately that this is a play about love.

Much of Shakespeare’s language is lost to the modern reader. Metaphor anchors language, and metaphors change in time until they lose meaning. One must be a Shakespearean scholar to fully understand and appreciate much of his writing, but some metaphorical meaning has survived the nearly five hundred years since they had found life under Shakespeare’s pen. His subversive and bawdy humor doubtless drew chuckles with lines like those spoken by Sir Toby Belch to Sir Andrew at Maria’s farewell: “And thou let part so, Sir Andrew, would thou mightst never draw sword again” (Act 1, scene 3: 56-57). William Shakespeare’s use of wit and humor to both transgress and reveal his society’s attitudes under a thin veil of metaphor makes worthwhile the time required to fully grasp the meaning of a five-hundred-year-old language.

Jingo Gods

 

Eden, Janine and Jim from New York City, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

While cleaning out some ancient files on random flash drives, I came across some old email promoting wing nut propaganda from a day in the early days of war in the Middle East. The predominant message that day featured a photograph of a wounded soldier giving an over-the-shoulder finger to invisible insurgents. Below the photo, an account of the soldier’s heroism and a brief history of past bravery, ending with a reminder that God was on our side. Eat it, insurgents!

I paused over the image for a moment. “I am impotent in the face of you’re your rage,” it said. The maudlin sentimentality of the caption did not show through the electronic photograph. I saw an image of a wounded warrior fighting back with the last act of the defeated- an obscene gesture. This is not the stuff of the flag raising at Iwo Jima, the charge up San Juan Hill, or the storming of the beaches at Normandy. The image conveyed instead anger, frustration, failure.

The soldier’s wounds had been pixilated out of the photo. I saw only bare skin under the torn clothing. He does not even face the enemy he insults, but tosses the gesture over his shoulder. The caption might just have well read, “Retreating troops offer last act of defiance.”

Today, the two sides continue call upon their regional and national gods to support the goodness of their respective causes, I think of a line from Father Thomas Merton: “The love of a disinterested god.” The universal God had been forgotten by both sides to favor the jingo gods of nationalist fervor. “God bless our troops. Allahu Akbar.” If we win, we lose. The minor gods of our smallest minds will prevail. If we lose, we lose. The minor god of the enemy will have invaded our thoughts. In either event, the Omniscient God will be eclipsed by the angry god of righteous retribution and revenge.

We have stopped, for now, the disgusting practice of using the military to promote our political and religious ideologies. I can only hope it is a continuing non-practice.

Whether we embrace the Universal consciousness, or the regional deity; hairy thunderer or cosmic muffin*, we must win. We can sort out the conflicting concepts of our gods some other time.

* From the National Lampoon song, “Deteriorata,” by Tony Hendra. See https://web.archive.org/web/20150511234144/http://www.joke-archives.com/poetry/deteriorata.html

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Darwin and Wallace

 Alfred Russel Wallace

This Photo by Unknown Author is licensed under CC BY-NC

Variations in traits among a species lie behind Charles Darwin’s concept of natural selection. Those traits that lead to differential reproduction success [1] will cause some of a given species to reproduce at a faster rate than others. For example: a brightly colored insect increases its chance of being eaten by birds, leading to a lowered reproduction rate compared to their dull-colored counterparts. As more brown and gray beetles survive, they pass on the brown or gray gene, resulting in more beetles of that color.

Variation + differential reproduction + heredity = natural selection. Natural selection is the driving force behind Darwin’s Theory of Evolution, detailed in his book, Origin of Species, written on his return from the five-year voyage aboard the HMS Beagle. He joined the voyage in December 1831 as a geologist and naturalist, but biology began to consume him early in the five-year trek around the point of South America, to the Galapagos Islands, he noticed differences in animals seen in Chile and those seen on the Galapagos Islands, and in differences from island to island. From there, he began formulating his theory of natural selection.

Alfred Russell Wallace, inspired in part by Darwin’s 1839 Journal of Researches [2] (known to modern readers as The Voyage of the Beagle) an account of his Beagle research, and Alexander von Humboldt’s’ Personal Narrative [3]. Wallace joined the Mischief in 1848 for a similar journey. He and entomologist Henry Bates spen more than four years collecting specimens of animals, plants, and insects inhabiting the Americas. He suffered setbacks, including a fire aboard the Helen, the ship that was to return him to England. He was able to save little of his specimens and samples. A brig sailing from Cuba picked him up after days adrift in a small craft and arrived in London in 1852. He departed England again in 1854, destined for the Malay Archipelago, where he devised his own theory of natural selection.

In early 1858, Wallace contacted Darwin regarding the similarity of their work. Darwin offered to send Wallace’s paper to a scientific journal. It was published the same year with a description of Darwin’s theory. Darwin’s Origin of Species published the following year, preceded Wallace’ The Mandalay Archipelago by ten years, likely a major reason for Darwin’s continued fame. Charles Darwin was already well known in academic and scientific circles when Wallace began his own voyage of discovery. Several websites outlining the accomplishments of the two men indicate that, had not the respected Darwin published his work first, the theory promoted by Wallace are likely to be as varied and complex as the differences in their life experiences. In any even the world has accepted “Darwinism” in its lexicography, while Wallace remains a footnote.

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Notes:

[1] Differential reproductive success: A situation in which some individuals leave more offspring in the next generation than do others, often due to traits that confer advantages in survival and/or reproduction.

https://evolution.berkeley.edu/glossary/differential-reproductive-success/#:~:text=A%20situation%20in%20which%20some,in%20survival%20and%2For%20reproduction.

 

[2] Charles Darwin, Journal of Researches into the Natural History and Geology of the Countries, 1859

https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/6951

 

[3] Alexander von Humboldt, 1822 Personal Narrative of Travels to the Equinoctial Regions of America, During the Year 1799-1804

https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/6322

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