Atlanta experiences

The presentation I made on behalf of my colleagues Joelle and Ida and me at the Association for the Sociology of Religion (ASR) Annual Meeting earlier this month in Atlanta went OK. Not a lot of feedback until I talked with fellow panelists and others afterwards – who gave advice on an alternative tactic – using hierarchical logistic regression, as a form of multi-level modeling. (So far some web materials almost make it sound like multiple regression – as well as SPSS - is out in academic circles.) There were a few other religion presentations that looked at community involvement/civic skills issues also. We may explore these (other methodological approaches) for our upcoming Religious Research Assiciation Annual Meeting presentation. (Pictured above is the Hyatt Regency hotel, site for the ASR meeting. Pictured below is another of the scholars on Friday morning panel, presenting.)

Rhys Williams’ ASR presidential address on the development of Muslim American identity also dealt with the controversy over the “Ground Zero” mosque, as did at least one other ASR presentation. I thought his speech was good.

The Census Bureau director (pictured below) continued (what he’d started talking about at the American Association for Public Opinion Research Annual Meeting, which I attended last May) to talk about ways the census might shift to using some administrative records, like Social Security files, and some public pressure to do so (don’t you guys already have this info in several other federal government databases?). He also talked about public outcry about various things, including a number of steps that they were sure would enhance response rates (and ultimately save money), including the controversial Super Bowl ad.

The American Sociological Association (ASA) presidential address dealt with efforts to get undocumented non-citizens able to take classes at state universities and colleges and eligible for federal financial aid. Some of the introduction dealt with school segregation for Asian Americans, Latinos/as, and Native Americans, some of which I didn’t know about (“Oriental schools” in California, for example). There were a number of other presentations I heard vaguely related to the Arizona law: administrative, political, and social-movement opposition to immigration, etc.

Another ASR theme was unconventional worship and congregational activity (particularly centered around young adults) including a panel discussion mainly among Emerging church movement practitioners. Most of them also tried to be amateur sociologists, but the most interesting presentation was PowerPoint slides and stories from a PC(USA) NCD organizing pastor of a emergent church ministry in SW Atlanta. The pastor talked about an Ash Wednesday event in which folks had burned their own (something?) and then they texted everyone and asked that everyone meet at dinner time at a MARTA (Atlanta subway) stop and they combined their ashes and played music in the subway station. It’s not clear if this was an alternative to conventional worship. He also talked about lunching with the pastor of a black Pentecostal church in the neighborhood and generating ideas for how to help the local neighborhood tackle the problem of child sex work in the neighborhood. Here’s a web presence (though I find the website confusing): http://churchasart.com/blog/neighborsabbeyhome/about/

Afterwards I asked the pastor if he found helping coming up with new ideas for activities all the time both liberating and exhausting. He said - not at all – that’s my personality, as it is for most of the creative class that we’re partly angling towards. These folks control many of the messages that we receive from the culture industry – why wouldn’t we want them in our churches?

Keep in mind that the ASR meeting program coordinator’s books are both studies of congregations catering to young adults: http://praxishabitus.blogspot.com/2009/12/hollywood-faith-holiness-prosperity-and.html).

Monday I had lunch with two friends, including one who formerly worked here (Columbia seminary prof Martha Moore Keish) and her husband, a pastor at Atlanta’s First Presbyterian Church, and we had an interesting conversation, including about the future of the denomination.

-- Perry

May session devotion

Popular culture has influenced my interpretation of scripture and my understanding of my faith as much as it has influence me in other ways. As a very, very, very late baby boomer, I’m of the right age that the two pop culture that did this for me at a particularly impressionable age of 11 or 12 were the rock opera “Jesus Christ Superstar” and the musical “Godspell.” I have a particularly vivid memory of my sister, my mother, and me going to the theater district in downtown Boston in the winter of ’72 to see what seemed at the time to be a particularly loud performance of “Jesus Christ Superstar.” As many of you probably know, “Jesus Christ Superstar” depicts several days during Holy Week. “Godspell” covers Jesus’ adult ministry and teaching, mainly before Holy Week. Of the two, “Superstar” is darker, even cynical.

As I grew older, one thing I noticed about these two interpretations is that they both essentially lack the Resurrection. This is particularly blatant in the movie version of the “Superstar.” The movie is a performance in a film. The performers arrive in a bus at a site, apparently in the Sinai, and perform “Superstar.” Then, they get back on the bus, all except for the performer who played Jesus, whose character has just been crucified. It’s not entirely clear what has happened, but it appears that he’s dead. The other performers, - the “disciples” – look sad. But it’s almost like it’s all a bad dream that they’re trying to forget. Needless to say, this is kind of odd.

In spite of these oddities, what is it that I got – positive – out of these interpretations? What do I value in them? “Godspell” reminds me of the joy, spontaneity, and music of the small, progressive, mainline Protestant churches I spent part of my childhood in. A year or two before I was in Boston I was riding around Southern California listening on the radio to a conservative, evangelical pastor criticize what he called “Christian rock.” It took quite a while for me to get used to the association between the job, spontaneity, and music of what became known as “contemporary worship” and large, conservative, evangelical churches, instead of churches like my childhood churches. For me, “Godspell” and Crescent Hill churches are reminders that that doesn’t have to be the case.

The Holy Week set of stories are probably my favorite scripture stories. I’m going to blatantly steal some ideas from Pastor Jane here. One of the reasons I like these stories is that – during Holy Week – Jesus – and, by extension , God - experiences a full range of very human emotions – from joy, anger, and communion, to fear, pain, doubt, betrayal, despair, and forgiveness. It seems to me that a God who has experienced all of that might be able to relate with us in a variety of situations and support us in those situations.

When my cousin-in-law died, her family had her funeral at the charismatic, don’t-worry-be-happy church that they attended. Soon after I arrived at the service, we were admonished not to be sad. We were told that we were there to celebrate Kelly’s life and that she had gone to a better place. I didn’t necessarily disagree with all of this. But this was a woman who was probably abused as a child. She got married at age 17 and went on to face some real challenges in her marriage, at her job, in court, and with her health – some of those health challenges being self-induced. She had died at age 28, leaving two children – about the same age as my sister and me=I when we went to the play – without one of their parents. It seems like there should have been a LITTLE room for feeling sad. The God of Holy Week, and of “Jesus Christ Superstar,” would have given us that space, ad would have supported us in grieving.

It’s hard for me to think of Holy Week without thinking of my friend Todd. Todd and I were high school classmates together. Todd became a professional journalist, and went on a “working vacation” to Peru, where he studied the drug economy there. Soon before he was set to leave, Todd was kidnapped, tortured for three days, and killed, apparently by the “Shining Path” guerillas. Immediately after this, Todd’s friends and family asked themselves a question I’m pretty sure Todd also asked himself: where was God, during those three days?

I ‘d liked to believe, and I do believe, that God was there with Todd, holding his hand, keeping him company, staying up with him through the night. The God of Holy Week, and of “Jesus Christ Superstar,” would have done that for Todd, just as God will do that for you and me during our darkest hours.

I’ve kept this in mind – and felt this – during the last few difficult weeks and months for those of us who work at the Presbyterian Center. And I trust that you have felt this during difficult times.

-- Perry