The Row Boat

Critics, Critique, and LAWMAKERS

Nathan — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 04:35:19 +0000

I'd like to invite you, if you'll be in New York this weekend, to see the final performance of WE ARE THE LAWMAKERS, a daring play of political chaos directed by my dear friend, Marc Andreottola. It is part of this year's New York International Film Festival and will be playing Saturday, August 23 at 7:30 pm at 45 Bleecker Street. I also happen to be the show's rather bumbling publicist. And this, precisely, is about the last thing a publicist should say: Beware, the reviews have been terrible. But don't be too -ware. I still think you should see the play. I'll be there, and if the fun I had tonight was any indication, I'll be loving it. In the end, after my third exposure to LAWMAKERS, I have no choice but to declare it among the most significant statements about American democracy in 2008 I know of. […]

The Olympic War and the End Times

Nathan — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 17:19:38 +0000

There was a time when the Olympics meant a cessation of hostilities. A glimpse of the eschaton—as William Stringfellow would have put it—when our desires to dominate over each other get translated into harmless athleticism. This year, not so. The start of the Olympics (which China made sure would happen on the auspicious day of 8/8/08) marked the start of a regional war. Russia's invasion of Georgia has already become a human catastrophe. The New York Times reports 1,500 Georgian civilians killed, plus 12 Russian soldiers. […]

Do You Believe in Mother God?

Nathan — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 13:44:40 +0000

Yesterday evening in Washington Square Park (or what's left of it), just after getting off the phone with my mother, a man and a woman approached me and asked if I knew about God the Mother. At first, forgetting myself, I said I didn't want to have that conversation. Thankfully, the man (who did all of the talking) insisted, and I remembered that there are few joys greater than discovering a new line of belief. So, at least until my friend came to roll her eyes at me and truck me off to dinner, I sat and talked Bible with the Mother-lovers. […]

The Benefits of Conflict

Nathan — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 15:38:49 +0000

The Economist has already shown its interest in following the fascinating recent scientific work about the origins and functions of human religiosity. This week's article on the subject, "Praying for Health," brings up challenging questions both for the study of religion and for the study of conflict. […]

Can Creationism Go on Forever?

Nathan — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 13:22:02 +0000

AlterNet has just posted a review I did of Lauri Lebo's The Devil in Dover, an account of the 2005 evolution trial in Dover, Pennsylvania. It was a real treat to do the article, since I wrote my college thesis on the Dover trial while it was going on. As another round of my usual spats with editors about titles, I'm not at all comfortable with the title AlterNet used, "Despite Overwhelming Evidence, Creationists Cling to Unreality." In my thesis and in my review, I have tried to operate under the assumption that creationism feels like a reality, replete with evidence, to those who adhere to it. I only feel silly claiming that my reality, which they have yet to accede to, is the one with a capital R. All I claim in the article is that the scientific consensus is evolutionist, and that's what we should teach in science classrooms. I have no intention of preaching metaphysics.

Clarify Your Position

Nathan — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 02:04:48 +0000

This passage from Henry Miller's late book, Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch, has long spoken to me. I first found it when I was eighteen, the summer of a month-long solo road trip across the United States and back, the climax of which was the discovery of Big Sur. Those were my big time "writer" days, when I still fought against my own nature and tried to write fiction, when I still thought "experience" was something that needed to be sought out. It comes in the context of an answer to a young writer who asked Miller's advice in a letter:

To those who protest that they are not understood, not appreciated, not accepted—how many of us ever are?—all I can say is: "Clarify your position." (p. 396)

What the passage has always told me is, be humble and be attentive with readers. It worked against the temptation in me to declare those who might misunderstand or contradict me as dumb, or worse. No—writing is communication, at least the kind I want to do. Patience, not stubbornness. (Though, at least in his early works, Henry Miller claimed never to revise.) […]

Plato against Impiety

Nathan — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 16:56:30 +0000

It is always a wonderful sensation when one discovers something in an ancient text that feels fresh and alive and of the present. That was my experience today in reading book X of Plato's Laws, his conservative, unfinished final work. There is always this problem in doing historical work: what in our minds today was thinkable then, and what was not? For instance, there have been ongoing debates about whether the ancients were capable of atheism, or whether true atheism, as we understand it, is a recent invention of dour Victorians (or somesuch). What Plato says about naturalism here is as Victorian as can be. But first, his moving sighs of woe at the youth who fail to accept the existence of the gods and thus venture into crime: […]

Cicero’s Sin

Nathan — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 01:12:20 +0000

I guess Cicero was the original flip-flopper. Since following him in a recent boat of watching the HBO/BBC TV series, Rome, I've been reading up on the guy who before I've mainly known from heresay—from the pens of Augustine, Montaigne, etc. It was disappointing to see that the show had no interest in Cicero's (or anyone else's) life in ideas, but its depiction of him as politician still caught my eye. Though it seems that there are the inevitable historical inaccuracies (such as his role in the Senate during the rule of Julius Caesar), Rome's general gist of the man seems right: he was easily swayed and never convinced, and he didn't stand up for his convictions—which is a thing people, and particularly politicians, are supposed to do. […]

The Certainties of Ascension

Nathan — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 14:03:56 +0000

At the Church of the Ascension in Manhattan, two things can be counted on in every service (the English ones, at least): words of welcome will be made with explicit mention of sexual orientation and Sibelius's "Finlandia" will be sung, using the words by Lloyd Stone:

This is my song, O God of all the nations, A song of peace for lands afar and mine. This is my home, the country where my heart is; Here are my hopes, my dreams, my holy shrine; But other hearts in other lands are beating With hopes and dreams as true and high as mine. My country's skies are bluer than the ocean, And sunlight beams on cloverleaf and pine; But other lands have sunlight too, and clover, And skies are everywhere as blue as mine. O hear my song, thou God of all the nations, A song of peace for their land and for mine.

Every time it nearly brings me to tears. These certainties in the words are so obvious, yet every time I hear them it sounds, in this world, like a great discovery: other people have lives too that are worth living and worth keeping. "Finlandia" is particularly moving to me after having lived at a co-op house at Brown university by that name.

Dialogs and Debates

Nathan — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 14:50:52 +0000

Thanks to Tom Gilson's critique, I have already pulled back somewhat on things I said in my article this week at Religion Dispatches. And since it is a dogma of mine that there is truth in even falsehoods, I'd like to try teasing out what put me on a seemingly unwarranted attack. It all reminds me how little appetite or aptitude I have for polemics. To review: my article was a critique of William Lane Craig's cover article in Christianity Today. I alleged that, with regard to nontheists and his claims about a Christian "revolution" in academic philosophy: "Whispering to his coreligionists in Christianity Today, to his subculture, Craig does not do justice to what the revolution is up against." Gilson responded, "It seems to me in view of this that Schneider is being singularly uncharitable with respect to Craig’s treatment of the arguments." […]