This is one of Rod’s better columns in a while. But there are things one can be nit picky about, such as when I read:
There is a certain sort of tiresome person who, whenever you bring up the steep and consequential decline of cultural standards, can be counted on to say, “People used to think Elvis was evil.†If a cable network ever stages live executions or barnyard orgies, these same people will turn up mouthing the same cliche. This line is not an aid to thinking clearly, but is an obstacle to it. It’s meant to assuage the consciences of those who say it, and to grant them permission not to think about the troubling thing in front of their noses.
…. as if some of the enemies of Elvis were not interested in a WASP-led theocracy against godless communism, as if their antagonism against black music and black music appropriated by white singers was something other than an effort to maintain their power and influence over all non-affluent WASPs and all non-WASPs? (Were not the enemies of Elvis also the enemies of Catholic-all-too-Catholic JFK?)….
But overall this is a great post–particularly the part about the Atlanta airport and the elusive sense of “home” shared between strangers.
UPDATE: I guess what I mean to say is that the “troubling thing in front of” my nose, is that WASPy extremism is just as extreme as “barnyard orgies” and broadcasting “live executions.”
Via Catapult.co, Sabrina Jaszi translated a short story “Bluebells” from руÑÑкий to English (for the first time!), written in the late 1950s-1960s by Reed Grachev (1935-2004).
Religion is opinions and actions, determined and restricted with stipulations and prescribed for a community by their first ruler, who seeks to obtain through their practicing it a specific purpose with respect to them or by means of them.
––Al-Farabi (872–951 AD), The Book of Religion[1]
Al Smith’s presidential loss in 1928 and Jack Kennedy’s Houston speech in 1960 concerning religion and government have both been run through the ringer aplenty. There are shelfs and stacks of books that compare and contrast (and exhaust) those two events, and I’m honestly not very interested in reading more about them.
But after reading Robert Dalleck’s A Life Unfinished: John F. Kennedy, 1917–1963 (2001), I was struck that the most interesting character was Kennedy’s father Joseph Patrick Kennedy.
Opposing or remaining neutral to Jack’s candidacy, as the church leaders now appeared to be doing, was, Kennedy believed, a betrayal not only of him, his son, and his family, but of the millions of American Catholics who stood to benefit from the election of one of their own to the presidency of the United States. For perhaps the first time in his life, certainly for the first time since the death of Joe Jr., Joseph P. Kennedy was forced to reconsider, to reevaluate, the ties that bound him to his church. “My relationship with the Church will never be the same,†he confessed to Galeazzi in an April 17 letter,†and certainly, never the same with the hierarchy. But that will not make any difference to them, I am sure, and I can assure you that it will not make any difference to me. For the last few years which I have left, I will indulge myself at least in continuing to believe that friends are friends when you need them. Please do not be upset yourself about my attitude. I would not want anything to annoy you.†[2]
And:
[Billy] Graham, on arriving at the Palm Beach house in mid-January, was greeted by the president-elect. “My father’s out by the pool. He wants to talk to you.†At poolside, the two shook hands, then Kennedy, Graham recalled in his autobiography, “came straight to the point: ‘Do you know why you’re here?’ †Kennedy told the evangelist (and Nixon supporter) that he and Father Cavanaugh had been in Stuttgart, Germany, when Graham lectured through an interpreter to an audience of sixty thousand. “When we visited the pope three days later, we told him about it. He said he wished he had a dozen such evangelists in our church. When Jack was elected, I told him that one of the first things he should do was to get acquainted with you. I told him you could be a great asset to the country, helping heal the division over the religious problem in the campaign.’†[3]
So what’s happening to Joseph Patrick Kennedy (1888–1969) in these two instances? If we apply Al-farabi’s formulation to these two instances, the first thing to consider is what we interpret Al-farabi to mean by “first ruler.†A literal interpretation would mean George Washington, and one could elaborate and discuss Washington’s deism and any sense of “civil religion†stemming from that which might’ve later been prescribed to the country’s citizenry. A contextual interpretation would mean John Kennedy, and one could elaborate and discuss Jack’s Catholicism and any sense of “civil religion.â€
In the first instance, Kennedy has lost tremendous faith in the administrators of American Catholicism following the election of his son to the presidency.
In the second, we see that, despite that loss of faith, Kennedy still wants what (he sees) as best for American Catholicism, and the best he could see for that Catholicism in 1960 was for it to attempt to reconcile, understand, and begin a dialogue with American Protestantism.
Nearly sixty years later, it is easy to say––particularly with the rise and fall of the Religious Right––that that reconciliation was never absolute. There seem to be more significant divisions within the American Protestantism of 2017 and within the American Catholicism of 2017 than the divisions between the two.
[1] Alfarabi, The Political Writings, Translated by Charles E. Butterworth. (Cornell UP, Ithaca, NY), “Book of Religion†p. 93, § 1.
[2] Nasaw, David. The Patriarch: the Remarkable Life and Turbulent Times of Joseph P. Kennedy, (New York, NY: Penguin, 2012) 724.
In his book How Dante Can Save Your Life (2015), Rod Dreher talks about a childhood family hunting outing in rural Louisiana gone wrong:
I froze in horror. I had killed many squirrels before, and some were not fully dead when they fell from the tree. I would pick them up by their tails and bash their skulls against a tree to put them out of their misery. It was unpleasant but no big thing…. I looked up from the ground at my father and my sister. Ruthie burst into laughter. Daddy screwed his face up in disgust and growled, “You sissy.†[1]
Upon rereading this passage, it reminded me of an episode in Robert Dalleck’s 2001 biography A Life Unfinished: John F. Kennedy, 1917–1963 that describes one of LBJ and RFK’s first encounters in rural Central Texas:
The logical choice [for a running mate] seemed to be Lyndon Johnson. At a personal level, the Kennedys were not well-disposed toward him. He had said harsh things about Jack and Joe and antagonized Bobby by rejecting his father’s suggestion of an LBJ-JFK ticket in 1956. In November 1959, when Jack had sent Bobby to see Johnson at his Texas ranch to ask if he was running, Johnson, in some peculiar test of manhood or as a way of one-upping the Kennedys, insisted that he and Bobby hunt deer. When Bobby was knocked to the ground and cut above the eye by the recoil of a shotgun Johnson had lent him, Johnson exclaimed, “Son, you’ve got to learn to handle a gun like a man.†It was an indication of his low regard for the whole Kennedy clan…[2]
Who goes deer hunting with a shotgun?! Nonetheless, compare all of the above to several separate moments in Elmer Gantry (1927) and its rural Midwestern, rather than Southern, take on violence and Christianity:
Though Elmer detested Eddie’s sappiness, though he might have liked to share drinks with the lively young baker-heckler, there was no really good unctuous violence to be had except by turning champion of religion. The packed crowd excited him, and the pressure of rough bodies, the smell of wet overcoats, the rumble of mob voices. It was like a football line-up….[3]
[And Rev. Judson Roberts said to Elmer Gantry:] “You bet, Hell-cat! I’m willing to fight you for the glory of God! God needs you! Can you think of anything finer for a big husky like you than to spend his life bringing poor, weak, sick, scared folks to happiness? Can’t you see how the poor little skinny guys and all the kiddies would follow you and praise you and admire you, you old son of a gun? Am I a sneaking Christian? Can you lick me? Want to fight it out?” …. [4]
“That’s right,” agreed Elmer Gantry. “Say, I had–I was holding a meeting at Grauten, Kansas, last summer, and there was a big boob that kept interrupting, so I just jumped down from the platform and went up to him, and he says, ‘Say, Parson,’ he says, ‘Can you tell us what the Almighty wants us to do about prohibition, considering he told Paul to take some wine for his stomach’s sake?’ ‘I don’t know as I can,’ I says, ‘but you want to remember he also commanded us to cast out devils!’ and I yanked that yahoo out of his seat and threw him out on his ear, and say, the whole crowd–well, there weren’t so awfully many there, but they certainly did give him the ha-ha! You bet. And to be husky makes a hit with the whole congregation, men’s well as women. But there’s more’n one high-toned preacher that got his pulpit because the deacons felt he could lick ’em. Of course praying and all that is all O.K., but you got to be practical! We’re here to do good, but first you have to cinch a job that you can do good in!” [5]
NOTES
[1] Dreher, Rod. How Dante Can Save Your Life: the Life-Changing Wisdom of History’s Greatest Poem. NY: Regan Arts. 2015. p. 11.
[2] Dalleck, Robert. A Life Unfinished: John F. Kennedy, 1917–1963. NY: Little and Brown. 2001. p. 269.
