Saved

I'm still reading James Baldwin's The Cross of Redemption, and while I think there's a good reason many of these pieces remained uncollected so long -- they're just not his best work -- they still make interesting reading. Take "To Crush a Serpent," published in 1987, the year Baldwin died. It's partly autobiographical, telling of Baldwin's brief career as an adolescent preacher and how it ended. Baldwin is, as usual, reticent about his own desires and loves, writing as one who was acted on rather than one who acted:

My sexuality was on hold, for both women and men had tried to "mess" with me in the summer of my fourteenth year and had frightened me so badly that I found the Lord. The salvation I was preaching to others was fueled by the hope of my own [160].

Reticence, of course, is anyone's right, though as with so many of the openly closeted men of Baldwin's generation, his enemies never respected it while he was alive. By 1987, Baldwin was ready to say that "rather than betray the ministry, I left it" (160).

It can be supposed, then, that I cannot take seriously -- not, at least, as Christian ministers -- the present-day gang that calls itself the Moral Majority or its tongue-speaking relatives, such as follow the Right Reverend Robertson.

They have taken the man from Galilee as hostage. He does not know them and they do not know him [160-161].

Oh, Jimmy, the Moral Majority was like so early Eighties! By the time he wrote this piece, the Reagan administration had already mainstreamed the Christian Right, though Reagan disappointed them as much as his admirer Obama would later disappoint secular liberals. Such is politics in the US of A.

And come on: "taken hostage"? Jesus can't be taken hostage. In the first place, he's dead. If you're one of those people who believe he's still alive, then it's even more obviously impossible to take him hostage. If he's alive, and he objected to the Moral Majority or to Pat Robertson, he should have spoken up. Bart Ehrman had a much better take on Robertson after the latter's offensive remarks about the Haitian earthquake last January: "If that happened to the Haitians because they're so sinful, then why hasn't it happened to him?" Any comment, Mr. Of Nazareth? No? Maybe Jesus liked palling around with Falwell and Robertson. But this is too much like Anne Rice's recent complaint that she wasn't going to call herself a Christian anymore because the bad Christians have roont the name. Which is also like the Christians who say that if Teh Gay are allowed to marry, it'll roon marriage for the Decent People.

Nowhere, in the brief and extraordinary passage of the man known as Jesus Christ, is it recorded that he ever upbraided his disciples concerning their carnality. These were rough, hard-working fishermen on the Sea of Galilee. Their carnality can be taken as a given, and they would never have trusted or followed or loved a man who did not know that they were men and who did not respect their manhood. Jesus ... appears not to have despised Mary Magdalene and to have got on just fine with other ladies, notably Mary and Martha, and with the woman at the well. Not one of the present-day white fundamentalist preachers would have had the humility, the courage, the sheer presence of mind to have said to the mob surrounding the woman taken in adultery, "He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone," or the depth of perception that informs "Neither do I condemn thee: Go, and sin no more" [161].

You can tell Baldwin was a preacher, can't you? But this is all bogus. First, it is certainly recorded that Jesus did upbraid his disciples concerning their carnality, a word that Baldwin is using here as a euphemism for sexuality. But there's more to the flesh than copulation or lust. Jesus' disciples are frequently portrayed in the gospels as the Twelve Stooges: squabbling over status, failing utterly to understand his teaching, lacking the faith to drive out a teeny little demon much less to move mountains, saying foolish things out of fear or confusion, falling asleep during his final vigil in Gethsemane, running away in terror when the cops arrive, and denying him three times before his enemies. "The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak," he sighs (Mark 14:38) resignedly as he rouses the dozing Peter one more time.

Second, Jesus frequently (though not, I admit, constantly) fulminates against the flesh. From the Sermon on the Mount:

27“You have heard that it was said, ‘YOU SHALL NOT COMMIT ADULTERY’; 28but I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart. 29“If your right eye makes you stumble, tear it out and throw it from you; for it is better for you to lose one of the parts of your body, than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. 30“If your right hand makes you stumble, cut it off and throw it from you; for it is better for you to lose one of the parts of your body, than for your whole body to go into hell.

Got that? Lust, hellfire -- check. Better to cut off some of your flesh than to burn in hell -- check. Then, on the question of marriage and divorce, Matthew 19:

8He said to them, “Because of your hardness of heart Moses permitted you to divorce your wives; but from the beginning it has not been this way. 9“And I say to you, whoever divorces his wife, except for immorality, and marries another woman commits adultery.”

10The disciples said to Him, “If the relationship of the man with his wife is like this, it is better not to marry.” 11But He said to them, “Not all men can accept this statement, but only those to whom it has been given. 12“For there are eunuchs who were born that way from their mother’s womb; and there are eunuchs who were made eunuchs by men; and there are also eunuchs who made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. He who is able to accept this, let him accept it.”

There's more, but this gives you some idea what I mean. So, those carnal disciples (some of whom were married, as we know from a reference to Peter's mother-in-law and a complaint of Paul's) said that if you couldn't divorce your wife, it was better not to marry at all, and Jesus didn't argue: he even urged them to become (figuratively, figuratively, we're not literalists here!) eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. I think it's reasonable to say that Jesus was a wee bit ambivalent about carnality, and didn't encourage his male disciples to indulge it.

Third, about the women Baldwin mentions. We don't really know much about Mary Magdalene or the sisters Mary and Martha. Mary Magdalene's reputation as a loose woman is post-biblical legend as far as I know, and Jesus kept her at a safe distance anyway ("Touch me not," he told her after his resurrection at John 20:17, "for I have not ascended to the Father," but he let the boys touch him and stick their fingers in his wounds). I'm not impressed by his attitude toward the Samaritan woman at the well in John 4: her love life was all that seemed to interest him, and rather pruriently at that. As for the woman taken in adultery, the story was probably added to the New Testament about 300 years after the gospels were written, but if it's authentic it's not much comfort. She was still sinning, and she'd better mend her ways, for hellfire awaits.

Baldwin goes on to tell of a threatening encounter, when he was thirteen, with "an aging, gaunt white woman", the only white person in his church, who warned him of "the eternal torment that awaited boys like me" (163). This was because of his close friendship with the son of a deacon whom "the elders of the church" had accused of "walking disorderly" (162). "I was in love with my friend, as boys indeed can be at that age, but hadn't the faintest idea of what to do about it -- not even in my imagination ... perhaps I simply refused to allow my imagination to wander, as it were, below the belt" (163).

But Jesus had nothing to do with it. Jesus would never have done that to me, nor attempted to make my salvation a matter for blackmail. The motive was buried deep within that woman, the decomposing corpse of her human possibilities fouling the air [163].

To analyze everything that is wrong here, the aging Baldwin's ongoing inability to embrace his own human possibilities, would take more energy than I feel like expending right now. But really, that he couldn't accept his own thirteen-year-old's carnality -- had to speak of it so slightingly -- forty years later, is heartbreaking.

For a Christian like Baldwin, the idea that Jesus would forgive him for drinking, smoking, and dancing the hoochie-koo, to say nothing of lying in the gutter with men, was surely reassuring. But why should those things be sins, putting a person in peril of hellfire, in the first place? This is one of the reasons why I don't feel that I'm missing anything by being an atheist. First you have to believe that you're in danger, then you have to believe that someone has the magic formula to get you out of danger. I know very well that this is not all there is to religion, or even just to Christianity, but it's a major element, well supported in Jesus' teachings, and one that is often used in missionary work and revivalism.

At the same time, I want to stress again that I don't blame "religion" or "Christianity" for these distasteful elements: I blame the people who put them and keep them in their faith, and that includes Jesus and the authors of the gospels. Religion is not an alien, autonomous force that makes people believe bad (or good) things: it's a human creation, and if religions are ambivalent about the flesh, as they very often are, it's because human beings are ambivalent about the flesh. Getting rid of religion won't get rid of the ambivalence, it will only displace it. That's where we need to begin -- by facing our ambivalence about having bodies -- if we want a better, more humane ethic of sexuality.

By the way, "To Crush a Serpent" originally appeared in Playboy magazine. I don't know how ironic that is; I leave that to the reader.

Saved

I'm still reading James Baldwin's The Cross of Redemption, and while I think there's a good reason many of these pieces remained uncollected so long -- they're just not his best work -- they still make interesting reading. Take "To Crush a Serpent," published in 1987, the year Baldwin died. It's partly autobiographical, telling of Baldwin's brief career as an adolescent preacher and how it ended. Baldwin is, as usual, reticent about his own desires and loves, writing as one who was acted on rather than one who acted:

My sexuality was on hold, for both women and men had tried to "mess" with me in the summer of my fourteenth year and had frightened me so badly that I found the Lord. The salvation I was preaching to others was fueled by the hope of my own [160].

Reticence, of course, is anyone's right, though as with so many of the openly closeted men of Baldwin's generation, his enemies never respected it while he was alive. By 1987, Baldwin was ready to say that "rather than betray the ministry, I left it" (160).

It can be supposed, then, that I cannot take seriously -- not, at least, as Christian ministers -- the present-day gang that calls itself the Moral Majority or its tongue-speaking relatives, such as follow the Right Reverend Robertson.

They have taken the man from Galilee as hostage. He does not know them and they do not know him [160-161].

Oh, Jimmy, the Moral Majority was like so early Eighties! By the time he wrote this piece, the Reagan administration had already mainstreamed the Christian Right, though Reagan disappointed them as much as his admirer Obama would later disappoint secular liberals. Such is politics in the US of A.

And come on: "taken hostage"? Jesus can't be taken hostage. In the first place, he's dead. If you're one of those people who believe he's still alive, then it's even more obviously impossible to take him hostage. If he's alive, and he objected to the Moral Majority or to Pat Robertson, he should have spoken up. Bart Ehrman had a much better take on Robertson after the latter's offensive remarks about the Haitian earthquake last January: "If that happened to the Haitians because they're so sinful, then why hasn't it happened to him?" Any comment, Mr. Of Nazareth? No? Maybe Jesus liked palling around with Falwell and Robertson. But this is too much like Anne Rice's recent complaint that she wasn't going to call herself a Christian anymore because the bad Christians have roont the name. Which is also like the Christians who say that if Teh Gay are allowed to marry, it'll roon marriage for the Decent People.

Nowhere, in the brief and extraordinary passage of the man known as Jesus Christ, is it recorded that he ever upbraided his disciples concerning their carnality. These were rough, hard-working fishermen on the Sea of Galilee. Their carnality can be taken as a given, and they would never have trusted or followed or loved a man who did not know that they were men and who did not respect their manhood. Jesus ... appears not to have despised Mary Magdalene and to have got on just fine with other ladies, notably Mary and Martha, and with the woman at the well. Not one of the present-day white fundamentalist preachers would have had the humility, the courage, the sheer presence of mind to have said to the mob surrounding the woman taken in adultery, "He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone," or the depth of perception that informs "Neither do I condemn thee: Go, and sin no more" [161].

You can tell Baldwin was a preacher, can't you? But this is all bogus. First, it is certainly recorded that Jesus did upbraid his disciples concerning their carnality, a word that Baldwin is using here as a euphemism for sexuality. But there's more to the flesh than copulation or lust. Jesus' disciples are frequently portrayed in the gospels as the Twelve Stooges: squabbling over status, failing utterly to understand his teaching, lacking the faith to drive out a teeny little demon much less to move mountains, saying foolish things out of fear or confusion, falling asleep during his final vigil in Gethsemane, running away in terror when the cops arrive, and denying him three times before his enemies. "The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak," he sighs (Mark 14:38) resignedly as he rouses the dozing Peter one more time.

Second, Jesus frequently (though not, I admit, constantly) fulminates against the flesh. From the Sermon on the Mount:

27“You have heard that it was said, ‘YOU SHALL NOT COMMIT ADULTERY’; 28but I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart. 29“If your right eye makes you stumble, tear it out and throw it from you; for it is better for you to lose one of the parts of your body, than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. 30“If your right hand makes you stumble, cut it off and throw it from you; for it is better for you to lose one of the parts of your body, than for your whole body to go into hell.

Got that? Lust, hellfire -- check. Better to cut off some of your flesh than to burn in hell -- check. Then, on the question of marriage and divorce, Matthew 19:

8He said to them, “Because of your hardness of heart Moses permitted you to divorce your wives; but from the beginning it has not been this way. 9“And I say to you, whoever divorces his wife, except for immorality, and marries another woman commits adultery.”

10The disciples said to Him, “If the relationship of the man with his wife is like this, it is better not to marry.” 11But He said to them, “Not all men can accept this statement, but only those to whom it has been given. 12“For there are eunuchs who were born that way from their mother’s womb; and there are eunuchs who were made eunuchs by men; and there are also eunuchs who made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. He who is able to accept this, let him accept it.”

There's more, but this gives you some idea what I mean. So, those carnal disciples (some of whom were married, as we know from a reference to Peter's mother-in-law and a complaint of Paul's) said that if you couldn't divorce your wife, it was better not to marry at all, and Jesus didn't argue: he even urged them to become (figuratively, figuratively, we're not literalists here!) eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. I think it's reasonable to say that Jesus was a wee bit ambivalent about carnality, and didn't encourage his male disciples to indulge it.

Third, about the women Baldwin mentions. We don't really know much about Mary Magdalene or the sisters Mary and Martha. Mary Magdalene's reputation as a loose woman is post-biblical legend as far as I know, and Jesus kept her at a safe distance anyway ("Touch me not," he told her after his resurrection at John 20:17, "for I have not ascended to the Father," but he let the boys touch him and stick their fingers in his wounds). I'm not impressed by his attitude toward the Samaritan woman at the well in John 4: her love life was all that seemed to interest him, and rather pruriently at that. As for the woman taken in adultery, the story was probably added to the New Testament about 300 years after the gospels were written, but if it's authentic it's not much comfort. She was still sinning, and she'd better mend her ways, for hellfire awaits.

Baldwin goes on to tell of a threatening encounter, when he was thirteen, with "an aging, gaunt white woman", the only white person in his church, who warned him of "the eternal torment that awaited boys like me" (163). This was because of his close friendship with the son of a deacon whom "the elders of the church" had accused of "walking disorderly" (162). "I was in love with my friend, as boys indeed can be at that age, but hadn't the faintest idea of what to do about it -- not even in my imagination ... perhaps I simply refused to allow my imagination to wander, as it were, below the belt" (163).

But Jesus had nothing to do with it. Jesus would never have done that to me, nor attempted to make my salvation a matter for blackmail. The motive was buried deep within that woman, the decomposing corpse of her human possibilities fouling the air [163].

To analyze everything that is wrong here, the aging Baldwin's ongoing inability to embrace his own human possibilities, would take more energy than I feel like expending right now. But really, that he couldn't accept his own thirteen-year-old's carnality -- had to speak of it so slightingly -- forty years later, is heartbreaking.

For a Christian like Baldwin, the idea that Jesus would forgive him for drinking, smoking, and dancing the hoochie-koo, to say nothing of lying in the gutter with men, was surely reassuring. But why should those things be sins, putting a person in peril of hellfire, in the first place? This is one of the reasons why I don't feel that I'm missing anything by being an atheist. First you have to believe that you're in danger, then you have to believe that someone has the magic formula to get you out of danger. I know very well that this is not all there is to religion, or even just to Christianity, but it's a major element, well supported in Jesus' teachings, and one that is often used in missionary work and revivalism.

At the same time, I want to stress again that I don't blame "religion" or "Christianity" for these distasteful elements: I blame the people who put them and keep them in their faith, and that includes Jesus and the authors of the gospels. Religion is not an alien, autonomous force that makes people believe bad (or good) things: it's a human creation, and if religions are ambivalent about the flesh, as they very often are, it's because human beings are ambivalent about the flesh. Getting rid of religion won't get rid of the ambivalence, it will only displace it. That's where we need to begin -- by facing our ambivalence about having bodies -- if we want a better, more humane ethic of sexuality.

By the way, "To Crush a Serpent" originally appeared in Playboy magazine. I don't know how ironic that is; I leave that to the reader.

Haiti: Give Sphere a Troutman, It'll Generate Spin for the Rest of the News Cycle

The earthquake in Haiti is horrifying, and I'm glad that so many people care, and that so much is being done to try to help.

Some predictable media-whoring is going on, of course. Tiger Woods, we're told, is keeping a low profile since his scandal broke, but Russell Simmons told the New York Daily News that Woods is "considering" a $3 million dollar donation to help Haiti. Well, he can certainly afford it, and if he comes through, his motives don't matter. (Update.) Rush Limbaugh argued that Haiti shouldn't receive aid. Pat Robertson said that the earthquake was God's punishment (and having read the Bible, I wouldn't put it past him) for Haitians' allegedly having cut a deal with Satan; I'm not sure whether Robertson was referring to Voudoun or to the slave uprising that won their independence in the first place, but I'm betting on the latter. Slave revolts are only the first step down the slippery slope that leads to gay marriage. President Obama has agreed to write a cover story about Haiti for Newsweek, which is sure to exhibit the same historical accuracy and depth of analysis as all of his public statements. But this sort of thing is, as I said, predictable, and not worth worrying much about.

What bothers me a little more is the absence of historical context in much of the mainstream news coverage. Again, in the short run it's not important as long as the media are drumming up concern and help, but in the long run it does matter since the earthquake is really just a cap to centuries of misery imposed on Haiti from without. Democracy Now!, whose reports I linked to at the beginning of this post, is an exception, but then they're not mainstream. Probably only DN! would feature a guest who was even aware of the irony of Obama's appointing George W. Bush and Bill Clinton to coordinate the US aid program:

RANDALL ROBINSON: Well, Amy, I’m, of course, troubled by that. I don’t think this is the time—neither the time nor the place to discuss those things that have troubled me for a long time in the history of American policy towards Haiti. Now the focus must be upon the rescue efforts that are underway to save lives.

But I hope that this experience, this disaster, causes American media to take a keener look at Haiti, at the Haitian people, at their wonderful creativity, at their art, at their culture, and what they’ve had to bear. It has been described to the American people as a problem of their own making. Well, that’s simply not the case. Haiti has been, of course, put upon by outside powers for its whole post-slavery history, from 1804 up until the present.

Of course, President Bush was responsible for destroying Haitian democracy in 2004, when he and American forces abducted President Aristide and his wife, taking them off to Africa, and they are now in South Africa. President Clinton has largely sponsored a program of economic development that supports the idea of sweatshops. Haitians in Haiti today make 38 cents an hour. They don’t make a high enough wage to pay for their lunch and transportation to and from work. But this is the kind of economic program that President Clinton has supported. I think that is sad, that these two should be joined in this kind of effort. It sends, I think, the wrong kind of signal. But that is not what we should focus on now. We should focus on saving lives.

But in the last analysis, I hope that American media will not just continue to—the refrain of Haiti being the poorest country in the western hemisphere, but will come to ask the question, why?

Most of what I'm seeing doesn't bother to ask that question, and it is not because the writers want to focus firmly on what must be done now, without fussing over the past. This writer, for example, who modestly confesses that she "traveled with an honorary title, U.N. Citizen Ambassador", laments that

Haiti was so destitute, so broken. ... The hurricanes that devastated Haiti, particularly the town of Gonaives, in 2004 and 2008 made planning a priority. The priority. But for most of its existence, Haiti has had a highly centralized government, with local authorities either invisible or impotent ... It's a problem that all the humanitarians in the country felt they contributed to: a culture of dependence. The phrase I heard most in Haiti, from everyone at every level of society was, "Give a man a fish, he eats for a day ..."

But the needs remained. Haiti's problems were complicated, old and typical. Haiti was ruled by autocrats for so many years that it seemed no one shared any sense of national identity. If the country doesn't serve you, why should you serve it?

Well, you know how it is. Haiti's problems are old. Things are bad, that's all. It's nobody's fault. The actual history that produced these problems seems to be entirely unknown to Emily Troutman (and the article as a whole is even more offensive than this excerpt suggests), especially the grass-roots political movement that showed that Haitians do indeed have "a sense of national identity" and political dedication that puts most Americans to shame. That's why they had to be stopped, and stopped, and stopped again.

I was in a chat room where Haiti was being mentioned from time to time, and one participant declared that Haiti could be "a paradise 10 years from now." I asked him who it would be a paradise for (the Haitians? tourists? multinational corporations who are in heaven when they pay workers 38 cents and hour?) but couldn't get him to elaborate. Naomi Klein did elaborate, however. The vultures are hovering, and this disaster is just the opportunity they're waiting for.

On Facebook, my old friend the minister is saying nice things, and of course urging people to help. He's properly embarrassed by Robertson's rant, of course, but why? I mean, yes, it's bad PR, but it also goes back to a question I addressed some time ago. Most people would agree that we should judge religions by their best adherents, not by their worst (though most people judge competing sects by their worst adherents). But how do you decide who are the best and who are the worst? Robertson's position is biblical enough. King David took a census, and Yahweh punished him by sending a plague that killed 70,000 people. According to 2 Samuel 24, Yahweh incited David to take the census; the Chronicler (1 Chronicles 21) solved the problem by claiming that Satan incited David to take the census, which only implies that Yahweh is Satan. If you want to argue that this doesn't count because the Old Testament God is a God of Wrath, Jesus is reported to have said that Jerusalem would be destroyed because Israel had failed to recognize him as Messiah. This doesn't make any more sense, really, because if Israel had recognized Jesus as the Messiah, he would not have been crucified and mankind could not have been saved by Jesus' saving sacrificial blood.

Beyond this, natural disasters are conventionally known as acts of God. Most modern Christians, even very conservative ones, are uncomfortable about this, but it's traditional Christian doctrine that Yahweh is not just the creator of the world but its sustainer. Everything that happens is his doing. Not even a sparrow falls without his knowledge, according to Jesus, and as an omniscient and omnipotent being Yahweh is therefore responsible for that sparrow in a way that no mere human being could ever be. It's also traditional Christian doctrine that Yahweh is a god who acts in history. The Deist philosophy -- that God created the universe but has followed a hands-off policy ever since -- is not reconcilable with Christianity, which holds that Yahweh intervened at least in Jesus' career. So in Christian terms, it doesn't really matter if the Haitian earthquake was a punishment or had some other motivation: it was still an act of the Christian God. Whether Christians should help the Haitians (who are themselves Christians, remember), or whether aid constitutes an act of rebellion against their god's will, is a question that, as an atheist, I happily don't have to answer.

P.S. It turns out that the Haitian revolution was exactly what Pat Robertson had in mind. It also turns out that Robertson didn't make the story up himself; it's been circulating for several years now. This historian provides some background (via) while still largely ignoring the direct US support for those plundering Haitian plutocrats.

Jon Stewart gets a wee bit self-righteous in this clip, pointing out all the pretty parts in the Good Book and asking why after such a disaster Robertson didn't quote any of them: passages where Yahweh reassures his Chosen (after he's hit them with yet another plague, earthquake, invasion, or deportation) that his love for them is steadfast and they can lean on him all the way. Except that it was always Yahweh who sent the plague, earthquake, invading army of deportation in the first place, which makes him like the classical abusive husband/lover: first he beats you black and blue, then he swears that he only did it because he loves you, and if you'd only stop making those deals with Satan he wouldn't have to chastise you. The prophets of Israel, including Jesus if you want to include him, were all about Tough Love, and repellent as Robertson certainly is, he stands squarely in that demented tradition.

Stewart also is displeased by a Rachel Maddow item in which she points out the USAID / US military connection. It's a good thing he didn't see Naomi Klein's warning, quoted above! Granted that the first priority right now is getting help to Haiti as soon as possible, there's no reason not to be wary of US / corporate intentions at the same time. Unless Stewart is packing his bags to go minister personally to the suffering Haitians, he can't really fault Maddow for doing her job, just as he continues to do his. (Satire? While people are dying? Jon, how could you?) Then he engages in an embarrassing interview with Tom Brokaw, which tiptoes around the history of Haiti with vague references to "corruption and oppression."

(both photos)

Haiti: Give Sphere a Troutman, It'll Generate Spin for the Rest of the News Cycle

The earthquake in Haiti is horrifying, and I'm glad that so many people care, and that so much is being done to try to help.

Some predictable media-whoring is going on, of course. Tiger Woods, we're told, is keeping a low profile since his scandal broke, but Russell Simmons told the New York Daily News that Woods is "considering" a $3 million dollar donation to help Haiti. Well, he can certainly afford it, and if he comes through, his motives don't matter. (Update.) Rush Limbaugh argued that Haiti shouldn't receive aid. Pat Robertson said that the earthquake was God's punishment (and having read the Bible, I wouldn't put it past him) for Haitians' allegedly having cut a deal with Satan; I'm not sure whether Robertson was referring to Voudoun or to the slave uprising that won their independence in the first place, but I'm betting on the latter. Slave revolts are only the first step down the slippery slope that leads to gay marriage. President Obama has agreed to write a cover story about Haiti for Newsweek, which is sure to exhibit the same historical accuracy and depth of analysis as all of his public statements. But this sort of thing is, as I said, predictable, and not worth worrying much about.

What bothers me a little more is the absence of historical context in much of the mainstream news coverage. Again, in the short run it's not important as long as the media are drumming up concern and help, but in the long run it does matter since the earthquake is really just a cap to centuries of misery imposed on Haiti from without. Democracy Now!, whose reports I linked to at the beginning of this post, is an exception, but then they're not mainstream. Probably only DN! would feature a guest who was even aware of the irony of Obama's appointing George W. Bush and Bill Clinton to coordinate the US aid program:

RANDALL ROBINSON: Well, Amy, I’m, of course, troubled by that. I don’t think this is the time—neither the time nor the place to discuss those things that have troubled me for a long time in the history of American policy towards Haiti. Now the focus must be upon the rescue efforts that are underway to save lives.

But I hope that this experience, this disaster, causes American media to take a keener look at Haiti, at the Haitian people, at their wonderful creativity, at their art, at their culture, and what they’ve had to bear. It has been described to the American people as a problem of their own making. Well, that’s simply not the case. Haiti has been, of course, put upon by outside powers for its whole post-slavery history, from 1804 up until the present.

Of course, President Bush was responsible for destroying Haitian democracy in 2004, when he and American forces abducted President Aristide and his wife, taking them off to Africa, and they are now in South Africa. President Clinton has largely sponsored a program of economic development that supports the idea of sweatshops. Haitians in Haiti today make 38 cents an hour. They don’t make a high enough wage to pay for their lunch and transportation to and from work. But this is the kind of economic program that President Clinton has supported. I think that is sad, that these two should be joined in this kind of effort. It sends, I think, the wrong kind of signal. But that is not what we should focus on now. We should focus on saving lives.

But in the last analysis, I hope that American media will not just continue to—the refrain of Haiti being the poorest country in the western hemisphere, but will come to ask the question, why?

Most of what I'm seeing doesn't bother to ask that question, and it is not because the writers want to focus firmly on what must be done now, without fussing over the past. This writer, for example, who modestly confesses that she "traveled with an honorary title, U.N. Citizen Ambassador", laments that

Haiti was so destitute, so broken. ... The hurricanes that devastated Haiti, particularly the town of Gonaives, in 2004 and 2008 made planning a priority. The priority. But for most of its existence, Haiti has had a highly centralized government, with local authorities either invisible or impotent ... It's a problem that all the humanitarians in the country felt they contributed to: a culture of dependence. The phrase I heard most in Haiti, from everyone at every level of society was, "Give a man a fish, he eats for a day ..."

But the needs remained. Haiti's problems were complicated, old and typical. Haiti was ruled by autocrats for so many years that it seemed no one shared any sense of national identity. If the country doesn't serve you, why should you serve it?

Well, you know how it is. Haiti's problems are old. Things are bad, that's all. It's nobody's fault. The actual history that produced these problems seems to be entirely unknown to Emily Troutman (and the article as a whole is even more offensive than this excerpt suggests), especially the grass-roots political movement that showed that Haitians do indeed have "a sense of national identity" and political dedication that puts most Americans to shame. That's why they had to be stopped, and stopped, and stopped again.

I was in a chat room where Haiti was being mentioned from time to time, and one participant declared that Haiti could be "a paradise 10 years from now." I asked him who it would be a paradise for (the Haitians? tourists? multinational corporations who are in heaven when they pay workers 38 cents and hour?) but couldn't get him to elaborate. Naomi Klein did elaborate, however. The vultures are hovering, and this disaster is just the opportunity they're waiting for.

On Facebook, my old friend the minister is saying nice things, and of course urging people to help. He's properly embarrassed by Robertson's rant, of course, but why? I mean, yes, it's bad PR, but it also goes back to a question I addressed some time ago. Most people would agree that we should judge religions by their best adherents, not by their worst (though most people judge competing sects by their worst adherents). But how do you decide who are the best and who are the worst? Robertson's position is biblical enough. King David took a census, and Yahweh punished him by sending a plague that killed 70,000 people. According to 2 Samuel 24, Yahweh incited David to take the census; the Chronicler (1 Chronicles 21) solved the problem by claiming that Satan incited David to take the census, which only implies that Yahweh is Satan. If you want to argue that this doesn't count because the Old Testament God is a God of Wrath, Jesus is reported to have said that Jerusalem would be destroyed because Israel had failed to recognize him as Messiah. This doesn't make any more sense, really, because if Israel had recognized Jesus as the Messiah, he would not have been crucified and mankind could not have been saved by Jesus' saving sacrificial blood.

Beyond this, natural disasters are conventionally known as acts of God. Most modern Christians, even very conservative ones, are uncomfortable about this, but it's traditional Christian doctrine that Yahweh is not just the creator of the world but its sustainer. Everything that happens is his doing. Not even a sparrow falls without his knowledge, according to Jesus, and as an omniscient and omnipotent being Yahweh is therefore responsible for that sparrow in a way that no mere human being could ever be. It's also traditional Christian doctrine that Yahweh is a god who acts in history. The Deist philosophy -- that God created the universe but has followed a hands-off policy ever since -- is not reconcilable with Christianity, which holds that Yahweh intervened at least in Jesus' career. So in Christian terms, it doesn't really matter if the Haitian earthquake was a punishment or had some other motivation: it was still an act of the Christian God. Whether Christians should help the Haitians (who are themselves Christians, remember), or whether aid constitutes an act of rebellion against their god's will, is a question that, as an atheist, I happily don't have to answer.

P.S. It turns out that the Haitian revolution was exactly what Pat Robertson had in mind. It also turns out that Robertson didn't make the story up himself; it's been circulating for several years now. This historian provides some background (via) while still largely ignoring the direct US support for those plundering Haitian plutocrats.

Jon Stewart gets a wee bit self-righteous in this clip, pointing out all the pretty parts in the Good Book and asking why after such a disaster Robertson didn't quote any of them: passages where Yahweh reassures his Chosen (after he's hit them with yet another plague, earthquake, invasion, or deportation) that his love for them is steadfast and they can lean on him all the way. Except that it was always Yahweh who sent the plague, earthquake, invading army of deportation in the first place, which makes him like the classical abusive husband/lover: first he beats you black and blue, then he swears that he only did it because he loves you, and if you'd only stop making those deals with Satan he wouldn't have to chastise you. The prophets of Israel, including Jesus if you want to include him, were all about Tough Love, and repellent as Robertson certainly is, he stands squarely in that demented tradition.

Stewart also is displeased by a Rachel Maddow item in which she points out the USAID / US military connection. It's a good thing he didn't see Naomi Klein's warning, quoted above! Granted that the first priority right now is getting help to Haiti as soon as possible, there's no reason not to be wary of US / corporate intentions at the same time. Unless Stewart is packing his bags to go minister personally to the suffering Haitians, he can't really fault Maddow for doing her job, just as he continues to do his. (Satire? While people are dying? Jon, how could you?) Then he engages in an embarrassing interview with Tom Brokaw, which tiptoes around the history of Haiti with vague references to "corruption and oppression."

(both photos)