"Experience" is the Premium Channel

Faultlines

Have you ever held something until your hands were aching? 

And then let it go and watched it fall and listened to it breaking?

I have held back time and tide when all the world was plenty,

But now my hands are open wide, open wide and empty. 

(Karine Polwart, 2005)

My hands are wide open...

And the possibilities are endless.

(Prayers of the Goddess Gaia)
(ByDesiree Delgado)
http://www.flickr.com/photos/desireedelgado/3703359639/

Coming to the end of another semester, I stop to reflect on where I've been and where I'm going. I've done much good work on my dissertation in the last three months, finally overcoming the abject terror and lethargy that gripped me every time I even thought about writing. Now, every day I easily contemplate and nuance the intricacies of the arguments I aim to weave about the intersection of Mormonism and the New Spirituality. I'm finally clear that that is the subject of my project. It isn't about New Age or Contemporary Pagan Studies per se. Rather, it's about where those I've called "New Age Mormon Pagans" fit in relation to the larger American spiritual/religious context. 

As I write, the path appears increasingly clear: A review of literature about "spirituality" in America points intuitively to the need to include commentary on the importance of experience in American religious history, which has led most Americans to expect (even demand) the right to cultivate a fulfilling--and unmediated--spiritual life. It's interesting to see how sociological investigation of what was happening to "religion" during the 1960s and 70s segued into the 1980s and 90s concept of spiritual marketplace (Wade Clark Roof, 1999) and religious economies/rational choice (Stark & Bainbridge, 1985; Stark & Finke, 2005) theories. 

Even if, like Mark Oppenheimer (Knocking on Heaven's Door: American Religion in the Age of Counterculture, 2003), you think "alternative" religions had very little impact on Americans and that New Age" spirituality as just so much "silliness" (p. 228) (preferring instead to put your money on the influence of "mainline" religious institutions), experience is still the watchword. The subversive power of the counterculture, though according to Oppenheimer it produced only "aesthetic" and "formalistic" change, was that it created an entirely new experience of traditional religion (p. 220). 

Regardless of whether the women I encounter in my research consider themselves orthodox or heretical Mormons (or not Mormons at all), they are all engaged in the search for a more authentic self-expression in their spiritual lives. In the end, experience is the premium channel.

In addition to getting power around my writing, I have also been led to question the degree to which I am fully self-expressed in other areas of my life. What experience of the world am I claiming for myself? Does a scholar who studies historically new and alternative religions (including Mormonism) ever get to be powerfully and fully self-expressed? If so, what might that self-expression look like? 

It's no wonder that I've put off situating myself in relation to my work in my Preface.  Have I held onto academic political correctness with white knuckles, assuming the position so to speak, just hoping to avoid the hordes who perpetually mislabel critical analysis as "misunderstanding."
 

I've come to realize I'm consciously choosing something different, a different way of being. I am no longer so interested in safety. I've let go of the net and what lies broken was in any case no longer interesting or useful.

Glenn Beck and the Book of Love

The Book of Love

The book of love is long and boring
No one can lift the damn thing
It's full of charts and facts and figures
and instructions for dancing
 
But I
I love it when you read to me
And you
You can read me anything
 
The book of love has music in it
In fact that's where music comes from
Some of it is just transcendental
Some of it is just really dumb
 
But I
I love it when you sing to me
And you
You can sing me anything

(Song by Stephin Merritt
Sung by Peter Gabriel on "Scratch My Back," 2010)

Glenn Beck has become a common topic on blogs and in newspapers and ejournals. In case you've been living in the middle of nowhere for some time now, Beck (who proudly explained his conversion to Mormonism by announcing that he joined the LDS Church so that his wife would marry and have sex with him) took his loud-mouthed show from CNN to Fox News, where he surely fits in much better. He has made the headlines most recently for his tirade against social justice, urging listeners to flee churches that espoused those principles (like that of Jim Wallis), comparing them with Nazism and Communism. I'm proud to see that two of my friends and colleagues have publicly called him out.

First, Joanna Brooks responded with fire by quoting social justice passages from the Book of Mormon, noting the effect his statements have for her:

Glenn Beck is a Mormon. So am I. During the nineteenth century, my Mormon ancestors crossed the plains to live their faith without fear of attack from the mobs that had hounded them out of Missouri and Illinois.

Watching Glenn Beck threaten to "bring the hammer down" on another person of faith makes my stomach turn.

Later, there was an absolutely scathing response to Beck from Jana Riess on the Beliefnet.com "Faiths and Prayer" blog:

Dear Glenn Beck,

Have You Read the Book of Mormon Lately?

As you know, Glenn, during the last week, Christians of all stripes have debated your advice about exiting any churches that mentioned “social justice” or “economic justice” on their websites or preached it in their sermons. As you apparently hoped, you have dominated the airwaves. The good news for me is that, if you follow your own advice, you must soon be exiting The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, of which we are both members. And if that happens, I will dance a little jig.

I couldn't help but laugh out loud!

And so . . . Here is my take on the phenomenon of Glenn Beck:

It occurs to me that Beck functions for Mormons in similar ways as Stephenie Meyer and her Twilight series: He allows Mormons to enter mainstream popular culture in ways they wouldn't otherwise be able to, which can be very affirming of historical Mormon identity.

In addition, I also believe he may be an expression of the phenomenon I'm writing about in my dissertation. In a "secularized" (read: routinized, demythologized) Mormonism (which looks more like mainline Protestantism than the mystical tradition established by Joseph Smith), Beck reenchants the experience of being Mormon . . . or at the very least he reawakens the Mormon cultural memory of prophetic millennialism. In other words, Mormonism is missing that distinctiveness, that tension of persecuted otherness. The "living prophet" rarely speaks on political issues unrelated to gay marriage, so Beck becomes the prophet-cum-Ezra Taft Benson.

Finally, Beck is so nasty that Mormons are able to live vicariously through him in a whole new way--and even voice their suppressed thoughts and feelings about the way the world works. Ordinarily, Mormons behave passive aggressively because we have demonized disagreement/dissent. (I include myself in this category, though I've spent the better half of the last decade trying to learn new ways of being). But Beck has a platform that allows him (pays him generously) to say whatever he thinks. Unlike the rest of us, he doesn't have to be "nice" all the time. Mormons admire him for that and, even if just subconsciously, wish to be (like) him. He gets to be the Brigham Young who thumbs his nose at the government and everyone else. He also apparently escapes censure by church authorities, which makes him an even larger icon in the Mormon imagination.

From my perspective, Beck makes a prosperous living from inciting (an activity markedly different from in-sighting, or making in-sightful). He has an impact in the world--and not a positive one. The LDS Church felt compelled to make a statement not long ago that doesn't name Beck (or other caustic commentators) directly but responds to his type of fear-based hatemongering, ironically titled "The Mormon Ethic of Civility." Which makes me wonder at what point the church might take away his temple recommend for sowing hatred and division, but that's none of my business. (Given the kind of person one is supposed to be being in the world in order to get one of those, one might just be tempted to do a jig over that.)

(Glenn Beck image from http://www.kdwn.com/dm_images/intros/090824161309.bmp)