Camille, Christianity and Mormonism
Like Clio, I am a great admirer of Camille Paglia's masterwork Sexual Personae. Her work since however has tended to leave something to be desired. One cannot but admire her learning and enthusiasm, but to say that Hurricane Camille's taste is erratic is an understatement. Her social commentary too tends to be all over the place and every new piece by her seems to include at least one unfathomably stupid statement. Her latest is being shocked, shocked to find that traditional Christians don't consider Mormons to be of their own faith. Now I know that Paglia the ex-Catholic is familiar with traditional Christian theology, but I can only conclude that she knows absolutely nothing of the Mormon variety, because no one with the slightest aquaintance with Mormon beliefs could fail to see just how far from traditional Christianity, of any variety, they really are. To say that Mormons aren't Christian ought to be no more controversial than to say that Jews are not Christian or that Muslims are not Christian. In fact, by any reasonable standard, Jewish and Muslim beliefs are a hell of a lot closer to those of Christianity than are the Mormon's. After all, Mormons aren't even monotheists! Sometimes I am just rendered speechless by how silly some of Paglia's opinions are. And comments like these aren't about some complex technical subject like economics or molecular biology, where one could excuse her lack of knowledge; this is in one of the areas (religion) she claims some expertise in.
NOTE: It isn't necessarily a judgment against Mormonism to say that it is very different from traditional Christianity. In fact, many Mormons embrace their identity as a major new world religion. I should also add that Mormons tend to be very nice, productive, hardworking people. They make very good neighbours and citizens. My exasperation isn't really with them, but with Paglia.
NOTE: It isn't necessarily a judgment against Mormonism to say that it is very different from traditional Christianity. In fact, many Mormons embrace their identity as a major new world religion. I should also add that Mormons tend to be very nice, productive, hardworking people. They make very good neighbours and citizens. My exasperation isn't really with them, but with Paglia.
posted by Thursday at
4:38 PM
10 Comments:
Doesn't Sailer have a patent on shocked, Shocked!?
The big problem with your examples is that neither Jews nor Muslims believe that Jesus is God while Mormons do. The Bible calls disciples of Jesus Christ "Christians." You, on the other hand have a more manipulated definition that presupposes doctrinal orthodoxy. That doctrinal orthodoxy didn't exist for the first 400 years of Christianity. Interesting that you can write that "Mormons aren't even monotheists!!!" while comparing Muslim similarities to Christian. You are aware, aren't you that Muslims don't think you're a monotheist either? To them, your acceptance of Father, Son and Holy Spirit put you in the same class as us Mormon infidels.
1. Mormons, like various Hindu and Native American sycretistic sects, believe that Jesus is a God. This is a far, far cry from the Christian belief that Jesus is the One True God. You can expand the definition of Christian until it includes whoever you want, but by then it has become virtually meaningless. Regarding Jesus as a divine being is not, in itself, enough to make a group Christian in anything like the historical sense.
2. Colour me somewhat skeptical as to the "many Christianities" approach to early Christian history. Vast overemphasis on doctinal plurality in the early Church is a current scholarly fad and, like many scholarly fads before it, it won't hold up.
3. Muslims do consider Christians monotheists, if somewhat imperfect ones. They are included as specially protected People of the Book precisely because they follow tawhid, i.e. because they are monotheists.
Razib has a good overview of the issues. Despite a widely differing religious stance, his conclusion is pretty much the same as mine:
If you ignore that Mormons revere Christ more than Muslims do (though Jesus is highly thought of in the Koran) on a relative scale it seems that Islam or Judaism are more like mainstream Christianity than Mormonism. For example, Mormons are not really monotheists! Not only do they dispense with Trinitarian theology as philosophical gibberish and accept that the three aspects of the Godhead are actually separate beings, they accept that other gods may exist.
I suppose that Mormonism is best considered as heretical or heterodox Christianity. It could not have existed without drawing on Christianity any more than the heresies of the Ebionites, Arians, or Marcionites - or, indeed, as Belloc has pointed out, that of Mahomet. Its Christology is certainly no more bizarre than that of Islam.
Probably the best exposition of the intellectual roots of Mormonism is John L. Brooke's "The Refiner's Fire." This makes clear that Mormonism is a blending of Hellenistic neo-pagan survivals such as Hermetism an Neoplatonism with a radical Christianity of the sort exemplified by John of Leyden or the followers of the count von Zinzendorf.
Michael,
I can go with that. But then by the same token Christianity couldn't have existed without Judaism, and we don't consider Christians and Jews to be of the same religion.
On the other hand, there's loving Camille *because* she's such a loose cannon ... Would she be able to make the connections she does, let alone have the impact she does, without swinging a little wildly?
Anyway, I know what you mean about wincing at some of her reactions, opinions, and hobbyhorses. She certainly has more of a taste for gaudy, aggressive art than I do. That said, I also love the fact that I never know what she's going to go on about next ...
"This makes clear that Mormonism is a blending of Hellenistic neo-pagan survivals such as Hermetism an Neoplatonism with a radical Christianity of the sort exemplified by John of Leyden or the followers of the count von Zinzendorf."
The public libraries in the Burned-over District must have been something, eh?
intellectual pariah
Thursday - As far as Jews are concerned, Christianity is heterodox Judaism, a false messianism no different from that of Sabbatai Zevi. In like fashion, following Belloc, Islam is a heretical movement stemming Christianity, and we may say the same of Mormonism. Both are "Christian" in the sense that Christ occupies an important place in them - certainly in Muslim eschatology (I don't know about Mormon eschatology). They are not Christian faiths if your definition of Christianity involves the embrace of the Credo or Quicunque vult. Of course if you're going to be as strict as St. Athanasius was, most mainstream Protestant denominations wouldn't qualify as Christian.
Intellectual pariah - Mormonism draws on its Hermetism and Neoplatonism through Freemasonry. Joseph Smith was a Freemason, and (though I don't have any personal experience with Mormon ritual) I am credibly told that Mormonism draws heavily on Freemasonry. The so called Morgan affair, in which the spurious "Captain" Morgan had published an exposé of the Masonic degrees, and later disappeared, supposedly done in by Masons, had just taken place in upstate New York very near the home of Joseph Smith. It was the talk of the countryside and soon to become a national scandal, leading to the foundation of the Anti-masonic Party.
Smith and his didn't need big public libraries to arrive at their particular syncretism. They took a pinch of popular supersition (cf. "Long Lost Friend" and other widely distributed occult chapbooks), a dash of Freemasonry, and blended them into Anabaptist Christianity.
Such ideas as polygamy or polyamory combined with religious separatism don't need to be picked up from reading. They crop up spontaneously like mushrooms after a rain. In the 16th century John of Leyden had plural wives, in the 18th century Zinzendorf's heterodox Moravians engaged in religious polyamory, in the 19th century Mormons revived polygamy, and in the 20th century David Koresh apparently copulated with many of the females in his Branch Davidian flock.
wjWow, I'm loving your blog. Discussing Vidal and now Camille too? Heaven..
Keeping it short may I say that in the 90's Camille was a revelation; not for petty media controversies of the time (date rape!) but how to look at art and combine visual art with history, culture, sex, literature.. she opened my eyes to so many fascinating interpretations of art throughout the centuries, and I will be forever grateful.
However, lately she does sometimes seem like the crazy cat-lady on the Simpsons. Her reappearance on Salon.com is half joy half horror.
Primarily, her brutal and personal denigration of each and every Democratic candidate is above and beyond a scholar. Her personal jealousy of her contemporary, Hilary, is palpable and poorly disguised. No Democratic candidate will ever be good enough for whatever picayune reason. Republicans who've led us to disaster get a free pass from Camille.
Camille will constantly say "as a registered Democrat", and then go on to kneecap everyone in sight.
You'd think that a lesbian-left scholar who'd lived thru Vietnam where her male contemporaries were being drafted would have had some incisive commentary on Iraq. You'd be wrong.
Sure she's since said it's folly. like every other sentient being on Earth. Any of those amazon daggers for Bush Cheney Rove Rice Rumsfeld?
Meh. Not so much. Stuck in my head though, is her written valentine to Sean Hannity's radio show.
"When he was advertising those steaks, I could almost TASTE them, he's so persuasive".
Paraphrasing, but um, ew?
I'm sorry to say, but get ye to the attic, batty Aunt Camille. I loved your theories on art, but activeally smearing Dems, ignoring Republican disasters, and throwing slavish love on FOX horrors like Hannity means, goodbye.
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