September 2006 Archives

I have beed doing some research on photographic portrayals of visual practice and recently came across some beautiful portraits published in the New York Times of students who attended Catholic World Youth Day in 2005. See the photos here.

I like the humanity and sensitivity of the portraits. While religious symbols and dress often appear in the photos, their use is not over the top or cliche, neither are the youth made to look strange or exotic, yet also clearly come from around the globe.

Earlier this year I posted a piece on the liberal baby bust about the declining fertility rates in Seattle versus Salt Lake City which may have something to do with cultural religious identity.

Salon.com published a story, Come As You Are, by Lauren Sandler. The article covers Mars Hill, a church in Seattle geared toward the hipster crowd and is preaching a conservative Christian message. The piece reads like an editorial and Sandler clearly doesn't like what is happening at Mars Hill. Journalistic merits aside, the piece raises some interesting questions for me.

The way Driscoll sees it, the more babies his conservative Christian congregation can produce in this child-poor city, the more they can redirect local politics, public education, and culture in one of the liberal capitals of the world. To complete his trifecta of indoctrinating, voting, and breeding, Driscoll has developed a community that dwarfs any living experiment of the '60s. To say that Mars Hill is just a church is to say that Woodstock was just a concert.

Mars Hill wrests future converts searching for identity and purpose from the dominion of available sex and drugs that still make post-grunge Seattle a countercultural destination. Driscoll promises his followers they don't have to reprogram their iTunes catalog along with their beliefs -- culture from outside the Christian fold isn't just tolerated here, it's cherished. Hipster culture is what sweetens the proverbial Kool-Aid, which parishioners here seem to gulp by the gallon. This is a land where housewives cradle babies in tattooed arms, where young men balance responsibilities as breadwinners in their families and lead guitarists in their local rock bands, and where biblical orthodoxy rules as strictly as in Hasidism or Opus Dei.

I've recently been hooked on the sci-fi series Battlestar Galactica, a new take on an old television show. The premise is that humans created a race of machines, Cylons and the Cylons rebeled destroyed almost all of human civilization and what is left of humanity is running from the Cylons trying to find the mythical planet earth.

An interesting feature of the show is that it has 2 competing theological systems built in. The humans believe in a pantheon of gods (basically the greek gods with a few very minor changes) whereas, the Cylons have a monotheistic system. More interesting still is that the entire show has roots in the theology of The Church of Jesus Christ of latter-day Saints. Ellen Leventry writes about it in her article, Born-Again ‘Battlestar.’

Unbeknownst to most viewers, “Battlestar Galactica” has been steeped in religion since its very inception. First pitched by uber-producer Glen A. Larson as a series of Bible stories set in space called “Adam’s Ark,” the reworked “Battlestar Galactica” was also influenced by another religious book: the Book of Mormon. A member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Larson borrowed plot points from his faith's sacred texts.

"'Battlestar Galactica' and the Book of Mormon both start from the premise that civilization is either about to be destroyed or has just been destroyed and that there’s this remnant, this ragtag fleet that is preserved,” explains Jana Reiss, author of “What Would Buffy Do?” “The story of the Book of Mormon is set in the time frame of the destruction of Jerusalem. The prophet Lehi has a vision of the destruction of Jerusalem and was able to get his family out in time.”

There are many other similarities between the show and the Latter-day Saint scripture. While not purely a Mormon concept, the idea of the “Lost Tribes of Israel”--that ten tribes of Israel were "lost" to history after they were exiled--plays an important role in both the religion and in the show. “The idea of there being these other civilizations that have the gospel is a main tenet in Mormonism,” notes Reiss. “There is this idea, in the show, that Earth will be this colony that they don’t have a record of but they believe it exists.”

There is considerable discussion of the role and agency of the god(s) as well as character destiny as well as the classic sci-fi exploration of what it means to be human/alive. This combined with cool special effects, space battles, and good writing make the show a blast to watch. Thank you to Arni for the article link.