Research Fellowship in Southern Quaker Studies
The Seth and Mary Edith Hinshaw Fellowship provides up to $2,000 for research using the resources of the Friends Historical Collection at Guilford College to study an aspect of southern Quaker history. The fellowship is sponsored by the North Carolina Friends Historical Society to encourage research and use of the Friends Historical Collection. The recipient will be asked to present his/her research and findings at the Society’s annual meeting.
The Friends Historical Collection, located in Hege Library, is the center for the study of Quaker history in the Southeast, with particular emphasis on North Carolina. The collection is open to Guilford students and faculty, Friends, visiting scholars, and genealogical researchers. The collection includes the written records of Carolina Friends from 1680 to the present, printed and microfilmed copies of other Friends records, personal and family papers, the college archives, printed materials by and about Friends worldwide, and sources for the study of Quaker family history.
The Fellowship
We invite applications from a range of backgrounds: dissertation, post-doctoral, and non-academic. We anticipate that the most competitive applications will involve innovative projects of the many concerns to which Friends have turned their attention, including literature, women's issues, family history, and race relations, as well as religious doctrine and controversies. Applications will be evaluated according to the following criteria:
• demonstrated understanding of the applicability of our particular holdings to the anticipated project.
• probability that the project will result in a product that will advance the worlds' understanding of the multiple dimensions of religion.
• evidence of the applicant's prior familiarity with and effective use of similar collections. How to Apply
DEADLINE: February 15, 2009
Applicants should send the following materials to Gwen Erickson, Friends Historical Collection, Guilford College, 5800 West Friendly Avenue, Greensboro, NC 27410:
• a three-to-five page statement of research goals, including what progress has been made to date; a statement of how this project will further greater understanding and/or scholarship by placing Southern Quaker history in the context of your subject area, an assessment of how Guilford's materials can further its progress, and an estimate of when the project is expected to be completed.
• a current vita or resume
• if applicant's background does not include published work, include a writing sample
• the names and addresses of three references who are familiar with both the field in which the applicant proposes to work, and with the applicant's work. Please inform your references that they could be contacted.
• permanent and any temporary addresses (e-mail and postal) and phone numbers
Gwen Gosney Erickson Friends Historical Collection Guilford College 5800 West Friendly Avenue Greensboro, NC 27410
Visit the website at http://www.guilford.edu/about_guilford/services_and_administration/library/fhc/NCFHS.html
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Kamis, 18 Desember 2008
Senin, 15 Desember 2008
There is No "Them" -- A Tale of John Woolman's Visit to Our Century
Editor's Note: I'm very pleased today to post an imagined historical visit from John Woolman, courtesy of Thomas Slaughter, author of the new biography The Beautiful Soul of John Woolman. Thanks to Prof. Slaughter for sending us this guest post based on his new book.
____________________________________________________________
Our world, a True fable.
by Thomas Slaughter
Imagine you are at home one evening and there is a knock at the door. When you answer it, you recognized the guy as someone you know by name but not well. He comes into your living room and over the course of the next two hours, he lays out to you much information that you already know, but perhaps not in the precise detail he gives you. You know about global warming, the horrendous working conditions under which many of the household items and clothing you wear are manufactured, although you didn’t know specifically how, where, and under what conditions each of them was made. He tells you the exact problem by looking around and examining labels. He explains to
you the argument for buying only products, and especially food, that are locally produced. He details the impact of your consumption of energy and the creation of waste products from you way of life and makes a particularly strong case against computers, televisions, cars, and air conditioning. Again, you’re a good person, environmentally and ethically conscientious, and try to recycle to the best of your ability. You know you do a better job than most of your neighbors and most of the people you know. You are a good and responsible person.
Nonetheless, you are hit hard by the specificity of his indictments of your possessions and the contents of your refrigerator and trashcan. You are appalled to know that the actual shoes you are wearing, the belt, trousers, and shirt you have on were made under conditions that exploited the workers and then were transported across the world at great cost in fossil-fuel use. You resolve to buy locally-produced cheese, locally-grown vegetables, and to stop eating beef. And yet, over the course of the evening your are moved even further. This man actually convinces you to give up your car, computer, and television, and you do the next day; he convinces you never to fly again. What is it about him that moved you so far past the compromises that good people, conscientious people in our society make every day? It’s the presentation, not just the details, the arguments that you have heard before in one way or another and that you have chosen to keep vaguely outside the realm of your specific knowledge about how you live. If you hadn’t the guilt would have kept you awake at night.
The man’s plea is emotional, but not accusatory, which is why you didn’t become defensive. He cried, but not because of the horrors he describes or because of your social sins. No, he cried because he felt so personally complicit in the devastation that humans wreak upon the earth. He was there to confess, to indict himself, to take on the burden of all the problems that modern life creates. And, he did this despite the fact that, as you know, he does not own a car, a tv, or a computer, wears only clothes that he makes or that are made locally, buys what he cannot grow in his own organic garden only directly from local producers, never flies, and disposes of no trash at all. He doesn’t use air conditioning at all and heats only to keep pipes from bursting, choosing instead to wear sweaters home-knit from local, un-dyed wool. When he leaves, you are moved beyond the knowledge, past your feelings of guilt, and have overcome the sort of alienation that has always led you, as it does the rest of us, to throw up our hands in dismay that we cannot personally change the world.
This man is John Woolman (1720-1772) or, at least, a modern, fictive version of him. In his day, he changed people’s behavior, led them to take action against their economic self-interest and the comforts of life. He taught them that they lived in a world that had, as ours does, an integrated, global, market economy. If you bought tea or cloth from India in the eighteenth century, the cost was subsidized by other goods that travelled on a ship that may have started its journey in England, stopped next in the Mediterranean before proceeding to Madras, and then hit the coast of Africa and the Caribbean on its way to Philadelphia or Boston before completing the circle. The slaves that you never saw, who were transported on one leg of that trip, and the workers in Calcutta who were paid starvation wages to produce the cloth and harvest the tea, were linked inextricably to the rum or Irish linen or nails that you bought from the ship’s cargo.
So, Woolman tried very hard to extricate himself from the web of an international market economy and the injustices immediately around him. He eventually wore clothing made only of un-dyed wool; he wore shoes without buckles; and he decline to take even public transportation because he believed that teamsters treated their horses harshly in order to make unnecessarily fast journeys. He refused to drink from a silver cup or use silver-based coins because silver was mined in Central America by Indians enslaved by the Spanish. He walked up to the houses of otherwise good people who owned slaves and convinced them that even if they were exemplary masters, even if the slaves had been born on their farms, they were complicit in the horrors of the slave trade. And he did this, not by preaching to people that they were evil, but by lamenting his own complicity and his own failures to live a life that was free from the horrors, the abuse, and by convincing people that we are just as responsible for people we have never met on the other side of the world as we are for the nuclear family that lives in our household. He was not a liberal, and not convinced that he or anyone among us is truly improving the world one step at a time, by buying energy-saving light bulbs or a more efficient refrigerator or turning off the lights when we leave a room or checking email only once a day or putting newspapers in a re-cycling bin collected by our town and then not re-cycled at all. No, Woolman said, we are all guilty; it is not “them” who started the war, or exploited the laborers, or profit greedily from the production of fossil fuels and inflating the price of drugs that poor people need or bought a car that used more fuel than ours. And this is only partly because the stock of companies that do ravage and exploit are in our retirement portfolios, unbeknownst to us because we choose not to know. No, it is all about us, all of us; there is no “them” at all.
Thomas P. Slaughter, author of The Beautiful Soul of John Woolman, Apostle of Abolition (New York: Hill and Wang, 2008).
Professor of History
University of Rochester
tslaught AT mail DOT rochester DOT edu
____________________________________________________________
Our world, a True fable.
by Thomas Slaughter
Imagine you are at home one evening and there is a knock at the door. When you answer it, you recognized the guy as someone you know by name but not well. He comes into your living room and over the course of the next two hours, he lays out to you much information that you already know, but perhaps not in the precise detail he gives you. You know about global warming, the horrendous working conditions under which many of the household items and clothing you wear are manufactured, although you didn’t know specifically how, where, and under what conditions each of them was made. He tells you the exact problem by looking around and examining labels. He explains to
you the argument for buying only products, and especially food, that are locally produced. He details the impact of your consumption of energy and the creation of waste products from you way of life and makes a particularly strong case against computers, televisions, cars, and air conditioning. Again, you’re a good person, environmentally and ethically conscientious, and try to recycle to the best of your ability. You know you do a better job than most of your neighbors and most of the people you know. You are a good and responsible person.Nonetheless, you are hit hard by the specificity of his indictments of your possessions and the contents of your refrigerator and trashcan. You are appalled to know that the actual shoes you are wearing, the belt, trousers, and shirt you have on were made under conditions that exploited the workers and then were transported across the world at great cost in fossil-fuel use. You resolve to buy locally-produced cheese, locally-grown vegetables, and to stop eating beef. And yet, over the course of the evening your are moved even further. This man actually convinces you to give up your car, computer, and television, and you do the next day; he convinces you never to fly again. What is it about him that moved you so far past the compromises that good people, conscientious people in our society make every day? It’s the presentation, not just the details, the arguments that you have heard before in one way or another and that you have chosen to keep vaguely outside the realm of your specific knowledge about how you live. If you hadn’t the guilt would have kept you awake at night.
The man’s plea is emotional, but not accusatory, which is why you didn’t become defensive. He cried, but not because of the horrors he describes or because of your social sins. No, he cried because he felt so personally complicit in the devastation that humans wreak upon the earth. He was there to confess, to indict himself, to take on the burden of all the problems that modern life creates. And, he did this despite the fact that, as you know, he does not own a car, a tv, or a computer, wears only clothes that he makes or that are made locally, buys what he cannot grow in his own organic garden only directly from local producers, never flies, and disposes of no trash at all. He doesn’t use air conditioning at all and heats only to keep pipes from bursting, choosing instead to wear sweaters home-knit from local, un-dyed wool. When he leaves, you are moved beyond the knowledge, past your feelings of guilt, and have overcome the sort of alienation that has always led you, as it does the rest of us, to throw up our hands in dismay that we cannot personally change the world.
This man is John Woolman (1720-1772) or, at least, a modern, fictive version of him. In his day, he changed people’s behavior, led them to take action against their economic self-interest and the comforts of life. He taught them that they lived in a world that had, as ours does, an integrated, global, market economy. If you bought tea or cloth from India in the eighteenth century, the cost was subsidized by other goods that travelled on a ship that may have started its journey in England, stopped next in the Mediterranean before proceeding to Madras, and then hit the coast of Africa and the Caribbean on its way to Philadelphia or Boston before completing the circle. The slaves that you never saw, who were transported on one leg of that trip, and the workers in Calcutta who were paid starvation wages to produce the cloth and harvest the tea, were linked inextricably to the rum or Irish linen or nails that you bought from the ship’s cargo.
So, Woolman tried very hard to extricate himself from the web of an international market economy and the injustices immediately around him. He eventually wore clothing made only of un-dyed wool; he wore shoes without buckles; and he decline to take even public transportation because he believed that teamsters treated their horses harshly in order to make unnecessarily fast journeys. He refused to drink from a silver cup or use silver-based coins because silver was mined in Central America by Indians enslaved by the Spanish. He walked up to the houses of otherwise good people who owned slaves and convinced them that even if they were exemplary masters, even if the slaves had been born on their farms, they were complicit in the horrors of the slave trade. And he did this, not by preaching to people that they were evil, but by lamenting his own complicity and his own failures to live a life that was free from the horrors, the abuse, and by convincing people that we are just as responsible for people we have never met on the other side of the world as we are for the nuclear family that lives in our household. He was not a liberal, and not convinced that he or anyone among us is truly improving the world one step at a time, by buying energy-saving light bulbs or a more efficient refrigerator or turning off the lights when we leave a room or checking email only once a day or putting newspapers in a re-cycling bin collected by our town and then not re-cycled at all. No, Woolman said, we are all guilty; it is not “them” who started the war, or exploited the laborers, or profit greedily from the production of fossil fuels and inflating the price of drugs that poor people need or bought a car that used more fuel than ours. And this is only partly because the stock of companies that do ravage and exploit are in our retirement portfolios, unbeknownst to us because we choose not to know. No, it is all about us, all of us; there is no “them” at all.
Thomas P. Slaughter, author of The Beautiful Soul of John Woolman, Apostle of Abolition (New York: Hill and Wang, 2008).
Professor of History
University of Rochester
tslaught AT mail DOT rochester DOT edu
Kamis, 11 Desember 2008
More on the Beautiful Soul of John Woolman
By John Fea
If you did not see it, this weekend Book TV aired a great lecture by Thomas Slaughter on his new book, The Beautiful Soul of John Woolman. It is about one hour long, but I would recommend watching the first ten minutes and then go and read the book.
If you did not see it, this weekend Book TV aired a great lecture by Thomas Slaughter on his new book, The Beautiful Soul of John Woolman. It is about one hour long, but I would recommend watching the first ten minutes and then go and read the book.
Senin, 08 Desember 2008
Beautiful Soul of John Woolman
Paul Harvey
Thomas Slaughter, author of The Beautiful Soul of John Woolman, Apostle of Abolition, is interviewed here about his new book, just out with Hill and Wang. A brief excerpt:
What does Woolman's life say about modes of radical activism in the 18th century? Can we consider him a "prophetic" leader?
Woolman is not an example of Enlightenment reform but of Old Testament prophetic reform. He was no liberal. On the contrary, he was unusually focused on the Old Testament over the New and uncompromising on the Truth. The Enlightenment and Liberalism is all about compromise, about improving the world by increments. Woolman believed that there is no compromise on the Truth.
Here's a description and brief review of the book.
Not many today know about the New Jersey Quaker, mystic and social activist John Woolman (1720–1772). But William James, in The Varieties of Religious Experience, characterized Woolman as a saint. John Greenleaf Whittier called him the founding father of the abolitionist movement. As Slaughter (The Whiskey Rebellion) shows in this superb narrative, it may be argued that the pious, simple-living Woolman—by rejecting not only slavery but also the accumulation of wealth, economic exploitation of all kinds and all forms of violence—created the prototype for every pacifist and nonconformist to come after. Woolman always dressed simply in clothes he stitched himself, white clothes meant to mark him as a man of God. He advocated his causes in lectures and sermons across the eastern United States and England (where he died of smallpox) and through extensive writings. He made a point of owning nothing he did not need and giving away every and anything he could not use. In our own age of conspicuous consumption, the complex soul Slaughter so ably and beautifully resurrects is full of contemporary relevance as an example of principled living.
Thomas Slaughter, author of The Beautiful Soul of John Woolman, Apostle of Abolition, is interviewed here about his new book, just out with Hill and Wang. A brief excerpt:
What does Woolman's life say about modes of radical activism in the 18th century? Can we consider him a "prophetic" leader?
Woolman is not an example of Enlightenment reform but of Old Testament prophetic reform. He was no liberal. On the contrary, he was unusually focused on the Old Testament over the New and uncompromising on the Truth. The Enlightenment and Liberalism is all about compromise, about improving the world by increments. Woolman believed that there is no compromise on the Truth.
Here's a description and brief review of the book.
Not many today know about the New Jersey Quaker, mystic and social activist John Woolman (1720–1772). But William James, in The Varieties of Religious Experience, characterized Woolman as a saint. John Greenleaf Whittier called him the founding father of the abolitionist movement. As Slaughter (The Whiskey Rebellion) shows in this superb narrative, it may be argued that the pious, simple-living Woolman—by rejecting not only slavery but also the accumulation of wealth, economic exploitation of all kinds and all forms of violence—created the prototype for every pacifist and nonconformist to come after. Woolman always dressed simply in clothes he stitched himself, white clothes meant to mark him as a man of God. He advocated his causes in lectures and sermons across the eastern United States and England (where he died of smallpox) and through extensive writings. He made a point of owning nothing he did not need and giving away every and anything he could not use. In our own age of conspicuous consumption, the complex soul Slaughter so ably and beautifully resurrects is full of contemporary relevance as an example of principled living.
And a brief note in the New Yorker:
The journal of the Quaker mystic and abolitionist John Woolman has never been out of print since 1774, when it was first published. Along with Woolman’s pamphlets and speeches, the journal was instrumental in persuading the Society of Friends to give up owning slaves. In this meditative biography, Slaughter provides sensitive readings of Woolman’s writings in order to draw a picture of a “prophetic Old Testament radical” who practiced a patient and methodical mode of activism. Woolman balanced a workman’s life in New Jersey with visits to Indian tribes and to Friends’ meetings in other states, preaching a doctrine of asceticism and human perfectibility. His staunchest acts of protest, which he performed politely, were refusing to pay war taxes during the French and Indian War and compensating other Quakers’ slaves for their work.
I'll try to put up a more extensive review of the work sometime in the future, as the figure of Woolman has long fascinated me but I've never really read up sufficiently on him; I'm looking forward to doing so now.
Senin, 07 Juli 2008
Royalism and Savagery in the New Common-Place
By John Fea
The July 2008 Common-Place went on-line yesterday. There is not much on religion here, but two book reviews caught my eye. First, Kathleen DuVal reviews Peter Silver's Bancroft-Prize winning Our Savage Neighbors: How Indian War Transformed Early America. This is the story of the violent relationship between the Scots-Irish (mostly) and native Americans on the Pennsylvania frontier. I have given the book a quick skim (perhaps I will give it my own review here when I eventually get around to reading it) and I think the readers of our blog might find it interesting. In many ways, the conflict on the eighteenth-century Pennsylvania frontier was a religious and racial war, with the white Presbyterians displaying savagery toward the Indians, and white Quakers suffering persecution for defending the natives and advocating for peace. Duval writes:
Silver's superb analysis and stunning prose create unsettling implications for other times of war. Lambasting Quakers' efforts at peace and toleration as "collusion with killers" (108) and accusing thoughtful people of being "tasteless" (85) for discussing context when white bodies had been damaged—these attacks on reason are hardly confined to eighteenth-century Pennsylvania. In Silver's skilled hands, they are both historically specific and frighteningly timeless.
The other review is of Brendan McConville's The Kings Three Faces: The Rise and Fall of Royal America, 1688-1776. (See my coverage of the book on this blog and my HNN Review). Benjamin Irvin writes:
Readers who wish to burn their own golden calves must lace up their boots, for McConville ranges far and wide. His analysis of rough music and skimmington as rituals for the enforcement of early American gender norms ranks among the very best treatments of the subject. And yet not until a belated and maddeningly brief discussion of patriarchy and family roles does McConville relate those folk customs to the rise and fall of royal America. (Would that the Elizabethtown Regulars who flogged a notorious wife beater on his "Posteriors" had instead branded the royal arms on that same spot [183].) Similarly, McConville's chapter on imperial reform offers a fruitful exploration of the many imaginative proposals floated by imperial consolidators for the reorganization of Britain's eighteenth-century dominions. Aligning this book with a late renaissance in imperial history, this chapter points the reader toward a breathtaking vista of Albion and Indian what-might-have-beens. It further discloses certain colonists' willingness to resolve their political grievances within a constitutional framework, a testament to their thorough integration into the British Empire. And yet this chapter stands apart from the rest of the book in its detachment from the ceremonial and material culture by which British North Americans avouched devotion to the Crown.
I have been spent the last week or so in the archives reading the letters of Anglican priests. The combination of Irvin's review and my own findings has reminded me that there was a very vibrant religious royal culture in early America. But the concerns of Anglican clergymen about those pesky "Dissenters" also suggests that this culture was constantly under attack. Whatever the case, McConville's work will serve as a staring point for some of my own work.
(Also of note: Lloyd Pratt reviews Matthew P. Brown's The Pilgrim and the Bee: Reading and Book Culture in Early New England).
The July 2008 Common-Place went on-line yesterday. There is not much on religion here, but two book reviews caught my eye. First, Kathleen DuVal reviews Peter Silver's Bancroft-Prize winning Our Savage Neighbors: How Indian War Transformed Early America. This is the story of the violent relationship between the Scots-Irish (mostly) and native Americans on the Pennsylvania frontier. I have given the book a quick skim (perhaps I will give it my own review here when I eventually get around to reading it) and I think the readers of our blog might find it interesting. In many ways, the conflict on the eighteenth-century Pennsylvania frontier was a religious and racial war, with the white Presbyterians displaying savagery toward the Indians, and white Quakers suffering persecution for defending the natives and advocating for peace. Duval writes:
Silver's superb analysis and stunning prose create unsettling implications for other times of war. Lambasting Quakers' efforts at peace and toleration as "collusion with killers" (108) and accusing thoughtful people of being "tasteless" (85) for discussing context when white bodies had been damaged—these attacks on reason are hardly confined to eighteenth-century Pennsylvania. In Silver's skilled hands, they are both historically specific and frighteningly timeless.
The other review is of Brendan McConville's The Kings Three Faces: The Rise and Fall of Royal America, 1688-1776. (See my coverage of the book on this blog and my HNN Review). Benjamin Irvin writes:
Readers who wish to burn their own golden calves must lace up their boots, for McConville ranges far and wide. His analysis of rough music and skimmington as rituals for the enforcement of early American gender norms ranks among the very best treatments of the subject. And yet not until a belated and maddeningly brief discussion of patriarchy and family roles does McConville relate those folk customs to the rise and fall of royal America. (Would that the Elizabethtown Regulars who flogged a notorious wife beater on his "Posteriors" had instead branded the royal arms on that same spot [183].) Similarly, McConville's chapter on imperial reform offers a fruitful exploration of the many imaginative proposals floated by imperial consolidators for the reorganization of Britain's eighteenth-century dominions. Aligning this book with a late renaissance in imperial history, this chapter points the reader toward a breathtaking vista of Albion and Indian what-might-have-beens. It further discloses certain colonists' willingness to resolve their political grievances within a constitutional framework, a testament to their thorough integration into the British Empire. And yet this chapter stands apart from the rest of the book in its detachment from the ceremonial and material culture by which British North Americans avouched devotion to the Crown.
I have been spent the last week or so in the archives reading the letters of Anglican priests. The combination of Irvin's review and my own findings has reminded me that there was a very vibrant religious royal culture in early America. But the concerns of Anglican clergymen about those pesky "Dissenters" also suggests that this culture was constantly under attack. Whatever the case, McConville's work will serve as a staring point for some of my own work.
(Also of note: Lloyd Pratt reviews Matthew P. Brown's The Pilgrim and the Bee: Reading and Book Culture in Early New England).
Selasa, 02 Oktober 2007
Legislating Love, or why Art Might Be an Internet-Ordained Minister
“Legislating Love,” by Art Remillard
Not long ago, a friend asked me to conduct his marriage ceremony. “You have a Ph.D. in religion,” he argued, “and you have read the entire bible!” With such a strong line of reasoning, I had a difficult time formulating a counterargument. But I might not need to. Consider the following. In 2006, a couple living in central Pennsylvania had a “pagan” minister carry out their marriage ceremony. A judge has since declared their marriage invalid, noting that the minister was not legally viable since she had no congregation, which the state apparently uses as a standard to determine legitimacy. The minister also received her ordination online, a growing point of contention in Pennsylvania. Recently, some state legislators have proposed a bill that would deny legal recognition to Internet-ordained ministers. Remarked one proponent, ‘‘The institution of marriage as a model and foundation of our society is protected by law, and states have a strong interest in ensuring that marriages are valid in order to provide certainty that persons who enter into unions can rely on such legal protections.” The Universal Life Church, which specializes in Internet ordination, has offered objections to both this legislation and the court ruling. “It is our position,” a ULC representative declared, “that any infringement upon the rights of our ministers is an infringement on the protections of the First Amendment.”
What to make of this? We see the ULC’s appeal to civil religious piety, invoking the constitution’s mandate for religious freedom. And the subtle sounds of “family values” rhetoric emerge from the anti-Internet ordination individual, echoing arguments deployed in the gay marriage debate. Finally, I am reminded of David Chidester’s Authentic Fakes (I’ve mentioned the book in a previous post and reviewed it for the Journal of Religion and Popular Culture). Among the book’s many keen insights, Chidester discusses the problem of “adjudicating authenticity” when it comes to Internet religion. No doubt, groups like the ULC make it increasingly difficult to determine what is, and is not, a “real” religion. But even the marriage practices of commonly accepted denominations can raise questions. Recently, county officials in Pittsburgh denied a marriage license to a Quaker couple, claiming that their planned “self-uniting” ceremony would not meet the state’s standards. A federal judge soon overruled the decision. Despite the favorable outcome, notice the painful irony that a Quaker marriage practice became legally questionable in the very state established by a Quaker.
All of this leads me to wonder: Will the day ever come when we decide that governments should focus on tasks like building roads and repairing bridges, rather than trying to determine who can properly dispense wedding vows? Who knows? In the meantime, I need to figure out how to get ordained quickly—my friend’s wedding is near…
Not long ago, a friend asked me to conduct his marriage ceremony. “You have a Ph.D. in religion,” he argued, “and you have read the entire bible!” With such a strong line of reasoning, I had a difficult time formulating a counterargument. But I might not need to. Consider the following. In 2006, a couple living in central Pennsylvania had a “pagan” minister carry out their marriage ceremony. A judge has since declared their marriage invalid, noting that the minister was not legally viable since she had no congregation, which the state apparently uses as a standard to determine legitimacy. The minister also received her ordination online, a growing point of contention in Pennsylvania. Recently, some state legislators have proposed a bill that would deny legal recognition to Internet-ordained ministers. Remarked one proponent, ‘‘The institution of marriage as a model and foundation of our society is protected by law, and states have a strong interest in ensuring that marriages are valid in order to provide certainty that persons who enter into unions can rely on such legal protections.” The Universal Life Church, which specializes in Internet ordination, has offered objections to both this legislation and the court ruling. “It is our position,” a ULC representative declared, “that any infringement upon the rights of our ministers is an infringement on the protections of the First Amendment.”
What to make of this? We see the ULC’s appeal to civil religious piety, invoking the constitution’s mandate for religious freedom. And the subtle sounds of “family values” rhetoric emerge from the anti-Internet ordination individual, echoing arguments deployed in the gay marriage debate. Finally, I am reminded of David Chidester’s Authentic Fakes (I’ve mentioned the book in a previous post and reviewed it for the Journal of Religion and Popular Culture). Among the book’s many keen insights, Chidester discusses the problem of “adjudicating authenticity” when it comes to Internet religion. No doubt, groups like the ULC make it increasingly difficult to determine what is, and is not, a “real” religion. But even the marriage practices of commonly accepted denominations can raise questions. Recently, county officials in Pittsburgh denied a marriage license to a Quaker couple, claiming that their planned “self-uniting” ceremony would not meet the state’s standards. A federal judge soon overruled the decision. Despite the favorable outcome, notice the painful irony that a Quaker marriage practice became legally questionable in the very state established by a Quaker.
All of this leads me to wonder: Will the day ever come when we decide that governments should focus on tasks like building roads and repairing bridges, rather than trying to determine who can properly dispense wedding vows? Who knows? In the meantime, I need to figure out how to get ordained quickly—my friend’s wedding is near…
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