Christian Zionism, Cary Grant, Creepy Cove and sad Jordan Peterson - Beer Christianity Newsletter 6
Persecution: complex?
Hiya! Thanks for signing up! Here’s this week’s news and views.
Are Christians in the West persecuted? It’s a complex question* and one we can address at another time in more detail. But personal attack as a result of principle is a theme that runs through this issue of Beer Christianity (the email magazine)(as I like to think of it).
A more important question, I think you’ll agree, is: Am I persecuted. Not all of us. Me. I recently got a lot of flak from people I don’t know for trying to publicise this newsletter and get it out to more people. A lot of people were so annoyed by my innocuous ad (I didn’t even talk about Israel or socialism!) that they called into question my faith. Did I feel a little attacked? Yah. Did that constitute persecution? Noooo.
People can disagree with us without being evil. People can criticise us without that constituting an attack on our human dignity. The fact that all sides of political and social debate these days seem to ignore these facts is an odd confluence that worries me. We should talk about it more. But as a start, here are some examples of the theme in this issue of Beer Christianity (the newsletter)...
Ilan Pappe is an Israeli historian who has faced attack a lot in his career for speaking out about how Palestinians are treated by the modern State of Israel. Part Two of Beer Christianity’s Ilan Pappe interview deals with Christian Zionism and you can read it below.
Jordan Peterson (much beloved of disaffected young men who have fallen into the arms of the Right and stupid-person’s-idea-of-an-intellectual) has recently felt attacked (if not persecuted) for being interviewed (and you can check that out in the News section).
Our movie review, hot off the press from 1938, comes with its own story of someone being silenced for their beliefs (in this case, good ones) and even our podcast recommendation features a sermon where we seem to persecute ourselves for having flesh.
Take a look, I hope you enjoy!
News
Treading the verge of Jordan
Jordan Peterson in ‘cruel’ article
Jordan Peterson is in the news because his feelings were hurt by an interview he did in the Sunday Times this week. This isn’t quite in the same league as American Conservatives endlessly bemoaning how they are being silenced on national TV, more an assertion that the article was “cruel”.
Now, call me controversial and brave, but I am not pro-unkindness. I’d go so far as to say I am broadly supportive of kindness, niceness and, in some circumstances, goodliness. But the Peterson claim of cruelty must be seen in context.
Jordan Peterson has created something of a cottage industry telling young men (mostly) to put on their big-boy pants, pull up their socks and ‘man up’. A man who publicly disdains weakness and makes a pseudo-philosophy for the ‘facts don’t care about your feelings’ brigade is allowed his opinion. He’s also allowed, after preaching to others to get their lives in order, to get addicted to drugs and have a breakdown. I tend to draw the line at, after those two steps, writing another book of advice on how to live. It’s a question of credibility. But hey, Grace is a thing and people should be forgiven and allowed to change. I do believe that.
But perhaps let’s not give too much sympathy to a man who built his early reputation on refusing to use trans people’s preferred pronouns, a self-styled ‘Professor Against Political Correctness’, when he says his feelings have been hurt.
I don’t know why Jordan Peterson is so beloved of some Christians. Perhaps because he speaks out against the ‘cultural Marxism’ and postmodernism they see as threats (without full understanding them, as was demonstrated in his debate with Slavoj Zizek). Maybe he’s a good psychologist but a weak life coach (like Dawkins is a good biologist but a terrible philosopher) and they see him as a popular ‘thinker’ who is more or less on their side.
Whatever the reason, I find Christian pandering to this man bizarre. If we’re going to pander to an iconoclast who seems not to care about popularity while talking philosophy and politics, let’s make it Zizek. As one wit quipped:
Read this article if you want to find out more about why his views are odious, and this one for its articulation of why I think he’s silly.
Apology/retraction
Biden my time
That prison thing wasn’t so impressive after all
In last week’s issue of this email magazine, I semi-graciously semi-apologised for suggesting the Biden administration would be a right-of-centre status-quo defender, with merely cosmetic concessions made to progressive policy. Then Biden came out against private prisons. And I had to concede that that was progressive AF, so I gave credit where it was due.
Except it wasn’t that progressive at all. An American reader got in touch to point out that the order was not the landmark some in the press had made it out to be. “Don’t beat yourself up too badly about Biden cancelling the private prisons contract,” he said. “It means nothing.” Of the roughly 133,000 private prisons, the change would only affect those with a contract with the Department of Justice. How many is that, you ask?
Three.
Three out of 133,000 private prisons will lose funding thanks to this change. As this reader puts it: “In other words, it was a strictly PR move on the part of the Biden administration.”
Biden-Harris stans also hailed the new administration’s commitment to fighting climate change. And again: that’s great. Except the administration decided not to distance itself from fracking. So close. And yet, so the-opposite-of-close.
It’s easy to look better than Trump and the Republicans right now, in the same way that it’s easy to look like a better father than Lot or a better Catholic than John Calvin. Christians who care about justice can be pleased that one of the most powerful nations on earth is no longer led by a fascist-sympathising, lying racist, fo’ sho’. But we also cannot give a free ride to an administration with the power this one enjoys. Especially because of the hope that has been invested in them.
Amuse
Beer Christianity recommends…
Church of monsters
Creepy Cove Community Church podcast
Serving the spiritual and spooky needs of a mysterious fishing village where all horror movies actually happened, Creepy Cove Community Church Podcast is a wonderfully creative project of Rev Peter Laws, an ordained expert on horror culture.
Part Welcome to Night Vale, part welcoming and affirming church service, I love the creative vision and witness of this show. It’s creepy (and it’s kooky), and it features really encouraging sermons, fun horror references and original music.
Peter Laws is a Baptist minister, a published author of thrillers with a supernatural flavour and also the author of The Frighteners: Why We Love Monsters, Ghosts, Death & Gore. Creepy Cove is his latest project and I’d love it if you checked it out.
There are options for listening to the sermon alone (check this one on Incarnation out, it’s lovely) and the immersive ‘service’ with all the drama and soundscaping featuring stars of horror like Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee. It’s super fun and I think an amazing witness to those who find little in Christian subculture to relate to.
Check out the Creepy Cove Community Church podcast here.
And if you want to support what Peter is doing, become a supporter on Patreon and get a lot of special content.
Interviews
Christian Zionism and personal attack
Interview with Ilan Pappe (Part Two)
Professor Ilan Pappe is a Jewish Israeli historian, co-author (with Noam Chomsky) of On Palestine. He talked to Beer Christianity about Israel, Palestine and Zionism. You can see Part One with a smol biography of the good Professor here.
Beer Christianity: How significant have international Christian Zionist movements, been in the situation and in propping up injustice?
Prof Ilan Pappe: They played a very important role in the origins of Zionism. They were not called Christian Zionists – in those days they were called Restorationists. But in fact, in many ways, Zionism was an evangelical project before it became a Jewish project. And after the emergence of political Zionism, the most important lobbies for Zionism (and for the idea that they had the right to colonise Palestine) were Christian Zionists, on both sides of the Atlantic. Today, I think the Christian Zionist lobby in America is highly important. To my mind it is even more important than AIPAC (the Jewish pro-Israeli lobby).
In the United States, I think that the Christian Zionist lobby is far more powerful and more effective in orientating American policy towards accepting Israeli policies without any question, as we have seen under Bush Jr and under Trump. I think they're also strong enough to have some sort of an effect even on Democratic presidencies. This is why I don't feel very optimistic about any significant change in the Biden administration, although of course, the language would be more pleasant, and probably the acts will be less fanatic. But all in all, Christian Zionism in the United States played an important role in keeping the American support for Israel in the way that it is, namely: without any significant challenge to the Israeli policies on the ground.
What do you think Christian Zionists need to know that they don't know? What would you say to them?
I think they need to understand that their support translates into daily abuses of human beings, from children to old people, women and men. And this is not a metaphor. This is the reality. Their support, their money, their political support allows this kind of inhumanity to persist.
And some of the victims are also Christians themselves. And some of the some of them are, increasingly, also Jews themselves. Therefore, it's not enough to believe in a divine dogma that says that ‘the only thing which matters is that eventually it will bring the end of times and Jews might at that moment convert to Christianity or be barbecued in hell’. You are a human being who lives also in your own lifetime. And in your own lifetime, your political position sustains inhumanity – a very unChristian reality that, as a Christian, you should be totally against, regardless of your denominations, and regardless of your overall understanding of what Christianity is. It's very hard for Palestinians to understand such a Christian position.
I also think it unnecessarily strains the relationship with other religions in the world at a time when our global community needs unity and harmony in fighting pandemics, global warming, and so on.
It's really, I think, an abuse of the Christian mission (as I would understand it) and the real essence of Christianity. I hope that the younger generation will know more than the older generation about the reality on the ground and would wake up and use its energy and goodwill to help us to end the oppression and colonisation in Palestine.
You obviously have faced a lot of criticism (as anybody who criticises the State of Israel does), even down to your own origins and your own background. How does that feel?
Well, it depends on what stage in your life... You know, when I was first exposed to such victimisation and people questioning my genealogy, my sanity and so on, it was very disturbing. Because I was still vulnerable in terms of my place of work and my place in the community.
There's a moment, I think, where you are very truthful with yourself. You have no doubt that you're doing the right thing. And at that moment, I think you're immune from such attacks, and they even start to amuse you. I think this is very important for every person: to find that moment where the basic doubts of what you're doing are over, in terms of moral issues. You may be still very wrong in the way you act, your tactics – you make a lot of mistakes, you may have a lot of things that you are sorry for a moment after you said or wrote them. But you're not sorry about your moral position.
They try to attack people like me (it's not only me). We are human beings, we make mistakes, and they try to inflate them and blow them up. But it doesn't work if you are totally committed morally to what you're doing. Then I think you're really immune. And then they cannot hurt you in any meaningful way.
Reviews
Vested interest: Squeezing Cary Grant through the eye of a needle
Holiday (1938)
An under-watched masterwork about ambition and meaning
You come to Beer Christianity for the latest, freshest, cutting-edgiest news, views and reviews, I know. Things to help inform your chat around the Zoom water-cooler. Here’s the hot take on a film from 1938 you’ve been itching for. Holiday is about as far as you can get from a Marvel movie or the Disney dynasty while still radiating Hollywood. And its core theme of not serving money, though flawed, makes it strangely relevant today. But that’s not why you should watch it. You should watch it for the stars.
For a start, it has Cary Grant on the cusp of greatness. Cary got better with age. Like Matthew McConaughey, his early work could have been done by anyone – probably better. Cary Grant in the ‘40s and ‘50s owned the screen with an ease and charm that belied his depth. Young Cary has a weightlessness about him. And yet, in Holiday, we see the mannerisms, the subtle wryness and the combination of vulnerability and cool that we grew to love emerging. He still over or under-acts a little. But, then, Holiday isn’t about him.
The plot is about a man on the verge of marrying into an obscenely wealthy family and the sacrifice to Mammon they demand of him as a price for belonging. But the film is about his future sister-in-law, played by Katherine Hepburn.
Kat is an atom bomb of emotional intensity. And while the more famous clips from Holiday are sadly those where the film lapses into melodrama, the subtlety and nuance of Hepburn’s performance is at times literally breath-taking. To a potentially light scene where she asks to host a party, Hepburn’s Linda almost blots co-star Doris Nolan out of view, such is the ambiguous intensity that simmers beneath everything she says.
Hepburn is incredible, but the show is stolen by Lew Ayres who plays her little brother Ned – a tragicomic character whose interactions with Linda contain some of the best lines of this film (or any film).
Linda (asking him to come with her): You won’t?
Ned: Can’t.
Linda: Caught?
Ned: Maybe.
Linda: I’ll be back for you.
Ned: I’ll be… here.
It’s little touches of dialogue like this that make Holiday spectacular. From the poignant and often achingly subtle nuances of word and expression to the ideological speeches setting out materialism and idealism (in a non-philosophical sense, and both against the backdrop of immense privilege and entitlement) and the iridescently witty banter of Grant’s friends the Potters (Edward Horton and Jean Dixon), it’s the script that shines.
Holiday was written by Donald Ogden Stewart, who also wrote the more famous Grant-Hepburn collab, The Philadelphia Story (the remake of which, High Society, doesn’t hold a candle to the original, despite featuring Frank Sinatra, Louis Armstrong and Bing Crosby). From Grant’s Johnny exclaiming: “Judas!” on discovering his fiancée’s palatial mansion to his surprisingly contemporary desire to opt out (in a pre-echo of the flexible working revolution, perhaps?), Stewart’s script is stellar. Take these to snippets, Johnny explaining why he wants to stop pursuing money:
“I've been working since I was 10, I want to find out why I'm working. …I want to know how I stand, where I fit in the picture, what it's all gonna mean to me. I can't find that out sitting behind some desk in an office, so as soon as I get enough money together, I'm going to knock off for a while.”
Or trapped free spirit Linda talking to her alcoholic brother:
Linda: What's it like to get drunk, Ned?
Ned: Well, I... how drunk?
Linda: Good and drunk!
Ned: Oh, it's wonderful. You see, you think clear as crystal. But every move, every situation is a problem. It gets pretty interesting.
Linda: You get beaten in the end though, don't you?
Ned: Sure, but that's okay.
Linda: Where do you wind up?
Ned: Where does anybody wind up? You die... that's okay, too.
Linda: Oh, Ned! that's awful!
Ned: Think so? Other things are worse.
That’s honestly one of my favourite scenes in any movie. It’s not super surprising that David Ogden Stewart also wrote the crackling Philadelphia script as well as working on the wonderful An Affair To Remember.
What’s more surprising is that his Hollywood career pretty much ended in the ‘50s after he was blacklisted for being a Communist. I love that. Stewart was able to write upper-class characters with affection and grace while still lampooning the self-importance and blindness of privilege (and throwing in little details like Linda having been a supporter of workers’ strikes). He was punished for his left wing politics (he started out in the Hollywood Anti-Nazi League, was a Communist Party member and as late as the 70s was an activist against the Vietnam War) but left us some wonderful films that avoid the clumsiest clichés of the Marxist aesthetic, seeing to entertain, delight and capture beauty more even than they attempt to change minds.
It’s the kind of approach I would love to see in more Christian (and Leftist) artists. Create something true and beautiful and you have earned the right to speak about beliefs.
Holiday is the second best of the Hepburn-Grant four-film collaboration. But, considering that, in my hierarchy, position 1 and 3 are occupied by The Philadelphia Story and Bringing Up Baby respectively, it’s strange that Holiday somehow gets ignored (the other two have over 50,000 ratings on IMDB – Holiday has fewer than 15,000). You can cheaply watch Holiday on YouTube right now. Or, you know, stream it.
Booze
On the Podcast
We interviewed Peter Laws of Creepy Cove fame ages ago on Episode 8 of Beer Christianity. Take a listen!
*It’s not complex. The answer’s Nah. Also good on you for taking asterisks seriously.
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