Pop Culture

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Thinking about St. Benedict: Emma Green looks at one extreme option in Kansas

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Several years ago, I took a copy of The Atlantic Monthly with me on a non-stop flight from Baltimore to the Los Angeles area. I was still reading it when the plane landed on the West Coast. And that was before Emma Green arrived.

As I have stated before here at GetReligion, Green’s work is magazine-style analysis, yet she is also doing hard reporting as part of that mix — reporting that often drives hard-news beat reporters to have to consider expanding their sources and the points of view included in their work. At times, it seems like we could feature Green in this “think piece” slot every weekend.

This time around, she headed to a state that I am beginning to frequent for family reasons. Kansas is not for everyone, but it is an interesting and unique culture — a real place. It’s as far south and west as you can go and still be in the Midwest, with it’s strong emphasis on family and community. How many public parks are there in Wichita? (The answer is 144.)

Here is the headline on Green’s new piece:

The Christian Withdrawal Experiment

Feeling out of step with the mores of contemporary life, members of a conservative-Catholic group have built a thriving community in rural Kansas. Could their flight from mainstream society be a harbinger for the nation?

The big idea, of course, is that these believers are withdrawing, as much as is possible in this hyperlinked world, from one culture in order to defend another. At the heart of it all is faith and family.

But is this specific community the emerging norm? Here is the overture:


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Podcast: Why reporters (and clergy) should heed religious signals in pop culture

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Readers who have followed GetReligion for quite a few years may remember that, in 1991, I left full-time work at The Rocky Mountain News (RIP) to teach as “Communicator on Culture” at Denver Seminary. Basically, I was teaching classes about religious content and trends in mainstream news coverage and popular culture, providing material for apologetics.

In the summer of 1993, when I moved to Milligan College in East Tennessee, I spoke at a national conference for Episcopal church leaders and laypeople, delivering a lecture entitled: “And Now, a Word from Your Culture — Mass Media, Ministry and Tuning in New Signals.” The respondent to my paper, by the way, was Father N.T. Wright, a big-league British intellectual who was beginning to gain some fame in North America. Here is the opening of that lecture:

True or false: It is impossible to talk — in terms of practical details and statistics — about how modern Americans live their lives without addressing the role played by television and other forms of news and entertainment media.

True or false: Most churches have little or nothing practical to say about the role that television and other forms of news and entertainment media play in the daily lives of most modern Americans.

True or false: Most churches have little or nothing practical to say about the daily lives of most modern Americans.

True or false: This applies to my church.

Now, this era of my life surfaced in this week’s “Crossroads” podcast (click here to tune that in), because of two recent posts here at GetReligion. They were, “Old Pete Townshend asks some big questions about rock and what happens after he dies” and “Washington Post offers look at five country music myths and misses a familiar ghost.”

The big idea in the podcast: Every now and then popular culture sends out “signals” addressing subjects on topics that religious leaders simply cannot ignore.


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Washington Post offers look at five country music myths and misses a familiar ghost

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I have been feeling my inner music-beat writer stirring a bit, as of late. Maybe, like Pete Townshend, I’m getting old. Then again, my East Tennessee home is a short drive from the birthplace of country music, and only slightly further from Nashville.

Thus, my eyes tend to focus a bit when I see this kind of headline in a blue-zip code elite newspaper, in this case the Washington Post: “Five myths about country music.”

Yes, this did run as a “perspective” piece in the Outlook section, so I am not looking at this as a news piece. Instead, I am simply noting an interesting chunk of this country-music flyover, since I would argue that it points toward a familiar news “ghost” in popular culture. I am referring to the prominent role that religion and religious imagery plays in country music and how that helps shape its audience.

Here is the overture of this piece by Jocelyn Neal, a music professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She is the author of “Country Music: A Cultural and Stylistic History,” from Oxford Press.

Love it or leave it, country music — with its whiskey-soaked nostalgia and crying steel guitars, its trains, trucks and lost love — is a defining feature of the American soundscape. This fall, Ken Burns’s documentary series, along with an outpouring of Dolly Parton tributes on NPR, Netflix and the stage at the Grand Ole Opry, has trained a spotlight on the genre. Still, myths infuse many people’s understanding of country music — and some of them are integral to its appeal.

Something seems to be missing there.

Let’s turn to an alternative summary statement, provided by someone who knew quite a bit about this topic — Johnny “The Man in Black” Cash. Asked to state his musical values, he said:


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Old Pete Townshend asks some big questions about rock and what happens after he dies

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And now for something completely different.

Long, long ago, in my previous life as a weekly music columnist in Champaign-Urbana, Ill., I used to spend many enjoyable hours talking about music in that college town’s clubs and main record store. One of the hot debate topics, over and over again: Name the greatest rock band of all time.

Note the word “rock” in that equation, as opposed to “pop,” or “blues” or some other adjective.

For most people, the argument came down to an old stand-off — The Beatles vs. The Rolling Stones. There were then-young idealists who made the case for The Clash.

I stood firm, arguing for The Who. My primary reasons were that this was a “rock” band (period) and that, as a writer/composer, Pete Townshend always played for higher stakes, in terms of both the personal (wrestling with his own history of abuse as a child in “Tommy”) and the political (turn it up).

Of course, Townshend didn’t die before he got old and he has pulled all of his painful questions, struggles and fears with him. If you have followed The Who over the decades, you know that many of those questions are about (a) the purpose of rock music, (b) his own broken heart, (c) religious faith and (d) all of the above.

I would never argue that Townshend has reached any conclusions about this equation. However, it is fascinating and poignant to watch his struggles, on behalf of his generation. With that in mind, let’s turn to an amazing interview in The New York Times Sunday Magazine that ran with this headline: “The Who’s PeteTownshend grapples with rock’s legacy, and his own dark past.” (This interview is also being read in the context of the usual Townshend-esque media storm about another interview, with Rolling Stone.)

So why bring this subject up at a blog about religion-news content? Well, toward the end a major ghost pops into view, one that probably deserved a follow-up question or two. What we need now is a Townshend interview conducted by former rock-beat scribe (and GetReligion writer) Dawn Eden Goldstein, author of “Sunday Will Never Be the Same: A Rock & Roll Journalist Opens Her Ears to God.”

Let’s walk into the crucial material with a sampling of Townshend talking (with David Marchese) about rock music and his generation. We will get to eternity in a moment.

Insofar as we’re now able to look back at the rock era as a completed thing, what do you see you and your peers as having achieved? 


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Let's give thanks that it's Dolly time, even if New York folks don't get all that faith stuff

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Greetings and a Happy Thanksgiving nod from here in the mountains of East Tennessee, a unique and proud region that includes the kingdom of Dollywood.

I think that folks in these parts — the ones who pay attention to elite media — are a bit bemused about the current wave of Dolly Parton-mania in places like New York City and Los Angeles. I mean, lots of people in these hills have thought, for ages, that Parton deserved more attention and respect as an artist, songwriter and business maven.

There are mysteries about Dolly, of course, and I’m not just talking about all those questions about whether her arms are covered with tattoos and where she heads every now and then — under cover — with her husband in their RV. This is one colorful lady.

But here is another mystery: It’s clear that Parton’s intense Christian upbringing is still a part of who she is, but it’s hard to know what she actually believes. This is a subject that, like politics, Parton is very careful with in public remarks. Then again, one can always listen to what she says in her music.

But this brings back to the current Dolly-mania, which recently reached the ultimate high ground — The New York Times. Once again we face the same issues that I wrote about the other day in a post with this headline: “LA and New York scribes ask: How does Dolly avoid politics while embracing gays and church folks?”

In that post I wrote the following, which also fits with this New York Times article (“Is There Anything We Can All Agree On? Yes: Dolly Parton”):

How good, how complete, is this article? How you answer that question will probably pivot on which of the following questions matter the most to you: (1) How does Parton appeal to Democrats and Republicans at the same time? Or (2) how has Dolly, for a decade or two, managed to be a superstar with both LGBTQ and evangelical audiences?

Once again, we are talking about Parton as safe ground in the Donald Trump era.

Once again, there are nods to her unique stance in cultural no-man’s land between drag-queen culture and Pentecostal hillbillies.


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LA and New York scribes ask: How does Dolly avoid politics while embracing gays and church folks?

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I live in the heart of East Tennessee, which means I have heard more stories and rumors about the queen of our region — Dolly Parton, of course — than outsiders can even imagine.

This is one complex woman we’re talking about. What the locals want the big shots in America’s coastal media elites to get about Dolly is that she is smart as a whip when it comes to business, a phenomenally consistent singer, one of the great songwriters of her era (focus on the lyrics in “Little Sparrow”) and totally sincere in her love of East Tennessee’s mountains and the people who live there.

All the themes in the WNYC podcast series “Dolly Parton’s America” are too complex to handle in one post. Still I urge readers to subscribe to this and dig in — if only to hear the awe in the voices of some New York pros when they discover that Dolly’s mountains are as beautiful and even magical as she says they are. Pay attention to the material about the “Dolly trance” that settles over them from time to time.

One way to wade into the current Dolly surge is to read this recent Los Angeles Times feature: “Dolly Parton refuses to get political. She’d prefer to heal the divide.”

Yes, note the nod to our hellish political times.

How good, how complete, is this article? How you answer that question will probably pivot on which of the following questions matter the most to you: (1) How does Parton appeal to Democrats and Republicans at the same time? Or (2) how has Dolly, for a decade or two, managed to be a superstar with both LGBTQ and evangelical audiences?

If your answer is No. 2, then you’re going to be like me — disappointed that the LA Times scribe seemed to grasp that Christian faith is a huge part of the 73-year-old Dolly’s life, story and appeal, yet decided to avoid digging into the details of her life and beliefs.

I mean, Trump is more important and more interesting than Jesus. Right?

Early on, there are some wink-wink references to religion, like this:

Home to the Dollywood amusement park, a tourist destination that draws more visitors than Graceland, Pigeon Forge has become a pilgrimage site for those who worship at the Church of Dolly.


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Gospel of Poo and New Age thought gets (as usual) uncritical New Yorker coverage

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In regards to elite magazines, I have not read anything unfavorable about New Age religious topics in recent years.

But when it comes to coverage of mainstream religion, watch out.

I was frustrated to read a recent New Yorker story — that I’ll call the Gospel of Poo — that soberly related the tale of a serial entrepreneur and corporate mysticism with the seriousness of someone trying to dissect the Talmud.

The entrepreneur at the center of the piece is given the kind of serious treatment that other groups, say, Southern Baptists, could only dream of. See Jia Tolentino’s disparaging New Yorker piece not long ago about her childhood at Houston’s Second Baptist Church. That’s a 180-degree treatment from the following article:

A few days after Suzy Batiz learned that she’d made Forbes’s 2019 list of America’s richest self-made women, she lay down on her kitchen floor and wept. Batiz, whose net worth is estimated at more than two hundred and forty million dollars, grew up poor. …

One day, she went to see a hypnotist, who told her that her life lacked purpose. He gave her the book “Man’s Search for Meaning,” by Viktor Frankl, which inspired Batiz to take what she calls a “spiritual sabbatical.” She studied Buddhism, Kabbalah, Hinduism, and metaphysics. “I had an insatiable desire to find something,” she said. “I was the ultimate seeker.” At a bookshop, she came across “Loving What Is,” by the motivational speaker and author Byron Katie, who teaches a method of self-inquiry called the Work.

“Two weeks later, I’m at her ten-day workshop,” Batiz said. “I went in drinking a big thing of Yellow Tail every night, and, when I came out, I was sober for eight years. After that, I was in a bliss state. I knew there was a larger meaning here.” She developed a self-help course called Inside Out: How to Create the Life You Want by Going Within. She started to meditate. She got out of her head and into her body. She listened to her gut. “Then,” she recalled, “I was at a dinner party, and my brother-in-law asked, ‘Can bathroom odor be trapped?’ And lightning went through my body.”

Finally we get to what journalists call the “nut” or main paragraph of the story.

Batiz is the creator of Poo-Pourri, a bathroom spray made from essential oils, which has sold sixty million bottles since it launched, in 2007. As its name suggests, Poo-Pourri is designed to mask the smell of excrement — or, more precisely, to trap unpleasant odors in the toilet, below the surface of the water, and to release pleasant natural fragrances, including citrus, lavender, and tropical hibiscus, in their stead.


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Rolling Stone skips Marianne Williamson's ideas and focuses on money, money, money

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The headline and deck of Tess Stuart’s report on Marianne Williamson — “That Marianne Mind$et: Obeying the Law of Divine Compensation” — tell you nearly everything you need to know about this one-trick pony of a profile in Rolling Stone. Stuart has latched onto one of the easiest clichés of politics (They’re all in it for the money) and turned it into a unified theory of everything, or at least of everything about Williamson.

There was a time when a Rolling Stone writer would have made the effort to understand the worldview behind a person who speaks of miracles and transformation, but that was more than 10 years ago, back when it published Janet Reitman’s “Inside Scientology.”

It’s so much easier now to compare Williamson’s New Thought response to Hurricane Dorian to a prayer offered by a chaplain during a governor’s press conference, as though they are equally ridiculous:

Yet, at other points, it does feel like Williamson is getting something of a raw deal. A week after we met, as Hurricane Dorian was crawling across the Atlantic Ocean toward Florida, Williamson wanted to help. She tweeted, in an attempt to marshal her then-2.76 million followers, “Millions of us seeing Dorian turn away from land is not a wacky idea; it is a creative use of the power of the mind. Two minutes of prayer, visualization, meditation for those in the way of the storm.”

She was mercilessly ridiculed for the sentiment — so badly that Williamson ultimately ended up deleting the tweet.

Although it wasn’t the official end of Williamson’s campaign, it might have been the functional end: the last time she made national news. There was relatively little notice, by contrast, when Henry McMaster, the governor of South Carolina, opened a press conference about the state’s emergency preparations for Hurricane Dorian with a prayer from an Army Corps of Engineers chaplain, who said, “God, we know that you’re able to turn a storm. You’re able to say to that storm: Peace, be still. We give you glory now, and in your name we pray. Amen.” You could say that man was asking God for a miracle, but no one made fun of him for it.


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Kanye West visits Joel Osteen's Lakewood Church for all-day media extravaganza

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There was some good theater in the world of religion this weekend, starting with the David Daleiden/Planned Parenthood verdict in San Francisco on Friday and ending with the Kanye West evening extravaganza at Houston’s Lakewood Church.

The Houston Chronicle set the stage, leading with West’s most inflammable quote during an appearance earlier that day at Lakewood’s main Sunday morning service.

Since his conversion, it was West’s first appearance before a crowd that wasn’t necessarily fans of his music. But there was that spiritual connection.

Kanye West may have found God. But he’s still brandishing his trademark cockiness.

“Jesus has won the victory because now the greatest artist that God has ever created is now working for Him,” West said onstage Sunday at Lakewood Church.

The rapper spoke onstage with Joel Osteen for about 20 minutes, his first of two appearances at the megachurch. …

During the brief, sometimes rambling conversation, West, 42, talked about his battle with the Devil, mental breakdown and subliminal messages in the media. He prayed with Osteen and praised the televangelist’s “anointed words.”

The Chronicle also said the two men were actually friends, which seems like an odd mix, as they run in completely separate circles. I’d like to know what moved Osteen to invite West.

Whatever happened, it turned out to be a brilliant idea, in terms of publicity.

Other than the Chronicle, the major media covering this event were the local networks and TMZ, the Hollywood news-gossip site. The spectacle of the famous rapper joining forces with the leader of America’s largest church was sheer catnip for TMZ, which broke the story of West coming to Lakewood.

(In the years I worked for the Houston Chronicle, Lakewood’s building was known as The Summit, a 16,800-seat concert venue and home of the NBA’s Houston Rockets. Then evangelistic wunderkind Rev. Joel Osteen bought the place in 2010.)

It proved to be a perfect setting for a Kanye concert.


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