What do the Pope, Obama, and Johnny Rotten Have in Common?: Observations on Gender and the Antichrist

by Charity Carney

Thanks to Kelly Baker for suggesting a series on masculinity and religion during Paul's hiatus. Here's the first of my installment.

Americans’ fascination with the Antichrist has only grown over the past decade with an increasing number of pop culture references and politicized rhetoric surrounding the evil symbol of a coming Armageddon. Obama was/is accused by some as being the Antichrist—Obama beginning as relatively unknown politician who rose to power swiftly and won the hearts of many Americans with a message of hope. He made promises that were too good to be true, many said, and some accused him of acting like a messiah to lure unsuspecting Americans into his trap. (Google “Obama and Antichrist” if you haven’t before. It’s amazing what people can do with Photoshop.) The racialized overtones of this depiction of the president cannot be overlooked. Many Americans were terrified of Obama’s candidacy and election because he was an “other” in their worldview and so their fear blossomed into anger and denouncements of the “Yes We Can” Man as evil. Racist motivations aside, Antichrist accusations and personas have power (to scare, to motivate, and to actually empower) and much of that power resides in the masculine meme of the position.

White Women, Rape and the Power of Race in Virginia, 1900-1960 as well as cultural works on more recent America like Michelle Alexander’s thought-provoking new book, The New Jim Crow). But beyond the masculine world of racialized sexuality and crime there are other gendered factors that contribute to the current Antichrist discourse.

An alternative view of the Antichrist is that promoted by the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod (WELS). Current Republican presidential candidate contender Michelle Bachman once belonged to this group but recently demanded a written statement from the synod about a year ago asserting that she was no longer affiliated with them or their anti-Catholic beliefs. The WELS doctrine regarding the Antichrist states:

“Since Scripture teaches that the Antichrist would be revealed and gives the marks by which the Antichrist is to be recognized, and since this prophecy has been clearly fulfilled in the history and development of the Roman Papacy, it is Scripture which reveals that the Papacy is the Antichrist.”

The Pope is perhaps the most powerful religious figurehead alive in the Western world and by imbuing him with the religious authority of the Antichrist, the WELS has given him even more influence, although that is obviously not their intention (see http://www.theatlantic.com/ for the full story). The Pope and Catholics and many other Christians (including Lutherans) certainly do not view the Papal position as connected to the Antichrist, but the debate alone grants the Papacy more power because it is simply being debated. The Pope and the Catholic leadership, too, have a preponderance of masculine authority despite their sworn celibacy. The Church has maintained its commitment to male authority since its founding and continues to rely on an all-male cast of Pope, Cardinals, and priests, etc., giving nuns duties that reflect a more maternal role (teaching and nursing, for instance). The Pope, I contend, would not be accused of being the Antichrist if it was not necessarily a male occupation and if the Catholic Church did not imbue it with masculine power.

And it is here where I will play “devil’s advocate” (pun, sadly enough, intended): Antichrist imagery can also be used as a hyper-masculine badge of honor. Take, for example, the role that Antichrist played in the punk music scene of the 1970s. The Sex Pistols’ lead singer, Johnny Rotten, even went so far as to declare himself an antichrist in “Anarchy in the UK”:

“I am an anti-christ

I am an anarchist

Don't know what I want but

I know how to get it

I wanna destroy the passerby caus’ I

I wanna BE anarchy!”

The Sex Pistols might have been Nietzsche’s favorite band. In The Antichrist, the nihilist wrote: “What is good?—Whatever augments the feeling of power, the will to power, power itself, in man.” Ultimately, the concept of an Antichrist is a positive one to Nietzsche because it empowers man to challenge a blundering God whom impedes science and knowledge. Although Nietzsche is not speaking directly of the biblical Antichrist, he is pressing the notion that anti-Christian, anti-God, anti-religious views are what give men control and intellect. The Antichrist may be the supremely masculine symbol—with power and virility and ferocity representing his most cited characteristics.

The dangers of this discourse, however, are immense. As seen with Obama, declaring a public personality to be the Antichrist only engages widespread animosity and fear, which, when combined, can lead to vehement and violent reactions. So maybe the WELS should reconsider its charged doctrine concerning the Pope as well as those who have labeled the president as the Antichrist.

Motherhood, Morality, and, Ultimately, Madness: My Thoughts on the Casey Anthony Case

by Charity Carney

Will it never end?! Not the Casey Anthony media craze. There’s no hope there. But the complete lack of awareness on the part of the American public of their obsession with motherhood, proper familial relations, and these moral boundaries that so many claim exist but cannot agree on what they are and what they mean. I have to admit, I’ve been watching my fair share of Nancy Grace's commentary lately—the subtle movements in Anthony’s face, the ridiculous analysis of her hairdo (to ponytail or not to ponytail?)—and I keep watching because I have become entranced with the concepts of proper American motherhood AND fatherhood situated so squarely in our television sets. What this case has elicited is more than talk of mob rule and justice for a murdered child. It has revealed how the American mainstream views modern motherhood and family life and how their commitment to those ideals often trumps the mandates of the justice system and Constitution.

Casey Anthony is pretty. She is young. She is white. And all of these are reasons that she has captured the country’s attention for so long. But alongside these factors runs a strain of judgment based on maternal standards that have made themselves extremely clear over the past few months. Dubbed “Tot Mom” by Nancy Grace, Anthony has been criticized for not “acting” like a mother should (a penalty that many have said warrants death in and of itself), for being a liar (the temptress that she is, fooling policemen and her parents alike), and for even living with her parents after the birth of her child (unsure of who the father was and unable to take care of her daughter herself as a 22-year-old single mother). Despite the gruesome facts surrounding the court case, there is something to be learned about American morality when it comes to gendered subjects: even within a “modern” society where many women defy maternal stereotypes, the court of public opinion still retains a very conservative understanding of what moral parents do.

Pitted against Casey Anthony’s “immoral” behavior are the accusations against and defenses of her father, George Anthony, of child abuse and molestation. When Casey’s defense attorney’s brought this accusation to light and used it as a central part of the explanation of “Tot Mom”’s (ugh, it hurts to write it) actions, the media had a field day. The majority of newscasters, analysts, lawyers, and interviewed citizens rejected the idea that any father could do that to his daughter or cover up the death of his granddaughter. Not casting personal blame on any person, I simply observe that our patriarchal system is still firmly in place, you’ll be happy to know. In case anyone was worried, it’s doing just fine. The stark contrast of the moral questions cast upon Casey Anthony’s motherhood and George Anthony’s fatherhood is an indicator of the gendered status of ethical parenting.

Not that we did not realize this already, but I have not seen in recent times a more clear example of gendered judgment of moral/immoral behavior. I do think that the fact that the O.J. Simpson verdict has been held up as a comparison to the Anthony case only encourages this idea but the difference is that the Simpson trial was held up as a race-based incident and the Anthony trial is stuck in American psyches when it comes to any kind of higher gender analysis.

Judgment Day Approaches... Again

by Charity Carney

This past weekend my husband and I took a much-needed respite before the onslaught of finals week to see a WILCO show (a rockin’ one I might add) in Denton, TX. We drove four hours through the Piney Woods of East Texas up into the DFW area for a little taste of civilization before spending the bulk of our summer cooped up in tiny Nacogdoches. As >we approached the metroplex, I saw evidence of the new apocalyptic fad that has thrown their millenarian lot and quite a few bucks in with Harold Camping, who has predicted that the Rapture will occur next Saturday (May 21). On the side of the road with about a dozen ads of Fergie selling Cherry Dr. Pepper (apparently it’s” smooth,” like her), the group has peppered in its own billboards declaring that the world will end this Saturday and urging passersby to prepare for Judgment Day. There is an excellent user friendly Salon article on the group and its beliefs (anti-orthodoxy/organized religion and End Times theology), which is especially good at describing the principle beliefs behind the Rapture and the way in which Camping has determined the date:

Camping and his affiliates present at least three explanations -- what he refers to as "infallible, absolute proofs" -- for May 21 being the day.

• It's the anniversary of Noah's Flood: A great deal of effort has been made by biblical literalists over the years to identify the exact chronology of the events dictated in the Old Testament. Some scholars, including Camping, adhere to the theory that the Biblical Flood took place on May 21 in the year 4,990 B.C. Then, in Genesis, God told Noah seven days before the Flood to warn people of the impending cataclysm. And Camping posits that this figure, seven days, holds greater significance than meets the eye. According to the biblical passage 2 Peter 3:8, "one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day." Therefore, argues Camping, Rapture should occur 7,000 years after the Flood. And the 7,000th anniversary of the biblical deluge, by his math, falls on May 21, 2011.
• It's the anniversary of Creation ... sort of: Another piece of evidence -- explained by Family Radio affiliate eBibleFellowship -- suggests that the world began in 11,013 B.C., and its 13,000th anniversary came and went in 1988. During that year, apparently on May 21, the end of the "church age" came to pass. Then, a 23-year time of "tribulation" began, during which Satan claimed dominion over all the world's churches. (Camping also supports this notion. He claims that the number "23" -- far from just being a poorly received Jim Carrey film -- also represents "destruction" in biblical symbology.) The end of this particular period of cosmological strife is said to fall on May 21, 2011.
• Divine Numerology: This elaborate line of reasoning first argues that Jesus Christ was killed on April 1 in the year 33 A.D. Using that date, the crucifixion would have occurred exactly 1,978 years and 51 days -- or 722,500 days -- before May 21, 2011. It turns out that 722,500 is also the product of an equation -- (5 x 10 x 17)^2 -- that includes three different numbers of significance, according to Camping. Five means "atonement." Ten indicates "completeness."And 17 signifies "heaven." Thus: Armageddon.

What happens if this Saturday passes with no major supernatural incident? Well, I guess they’ll just have to follow the Millerite example and do some recalculating…

But what’s really interesting about the group is that it taps into some of the themes recently discussed on this blog by writers like Kelly Baker, Paul Harvey, and Randall Stephens. That is, this group like many others has turned to commodification and mass marketing in order to advance their beliefs. While they are tapped into American religious traditions in many ways (disavowing denominationalism, promoting prophecies) they also demonstrate the continued modernization and progression of those traditions--plunging their message into the mainstream with expensive advertising campaigns and widely broadcast shows declaring their steadfast belief in the impending Judgment Day. While American religious groups have certainly evangelized through the air waves and have utilized the market before (Sister Aimee, Billy Sunday, Oral Roberts, Billy Graham….) we seem to have reached a new era in which proselytizing has become even more secularized/reliant on secular media to reach potential converts.

Fortunately for my husband, the hyper-analysis of the billboards only lasted for a couple of hours before I was distracted by pyrotechnics and awesome guitar riffs. And if the Rapture does come next Saturday, at least I can say that the two of us went out with a bang.

Guest Post: Single Pastors and Unpaid Helpmeets

Today's guest post comes Charity Carney, a religious historian at Stephen F. Austin State University. She received her doctorate from University of Alabama in 2009, and her book, Ministers and Masters: Methodism, Manhood, and Honor in the Old South (Louisiana State University Press), will arrive on book shelves in October. This book provides a much-needed look at the place of masculinity in Christianity, particularly among ministers. Her post today engages the "problem" of single pastors and the roles of minister's wives in the contemporary period. Please welcome, Charity!

Single Pastors and Unpaid Helpmeets: The Problem of Marriage and Evangelical Leadership

By Charity Carney

In yesterday’s NY Times article, “Unmarried Pastor, Seeking a Job, Sees Bias,” journalist Erik Eckholm examines the lives of single pastors (particularly those belonging to more conservative evangelical denominations) and the obstacles they face in finding employment. Most churches want to have “family men” (the subtext here is not gay and not interested in getting into the panties of the females in the flock). While the article is interesting, what it posits is not new. It mirrors a debate that has received little attention but has plagued evangelical religious figures since the Christmas Conference or Cane Ridge. Should pastors be single or married? Today, that question has some addendums: single or married? man or woman? straight or gay? But for conservative churches, the social narrative arc has remained surprisingly the same even as church policies have changed. First, a bit of the article [emphases added]:

Like all too many Americans, Mark Almlie was laid off in the spring of 2009 when his workplace downsized. He has been searching for an appropriate position ever since, replying to more than 500 job postings without success.

But Mr. Almlie, despite a sterling education and years of experience, has faced an obstacle that does not exist in most professions: He is a single pastor, in a field where those doing the hiring overwhelmingly prefer married people and, especially, married men with children.

Mr. Almlie, 37, has been shocked, he says, at what he calls unfair discrimination, based mainly on irrational fears: that a single pastor cannot counsel a mostly married flock, that he might sow turmoil by flirting with a church member, or that he might be gay. If the job search is hard for single men, it is doubly so for single women who train for the ministry, in part because many evangelical denominations explicitly require a man to lead the congregation.

Mr. Almlie, an ordained evangelical minister who lives in Petaluma, Calif., has also had to contend with the argument, which he disputes with scriptural citations of his own, that the Bible calls for married leaders. “Prejudice against single pastors abounds,” Mr. Almlie wrote in articles he posted on a popular Christian blog site in January and February, setting off a wide-ranging debate online on a topic that many said has been largely ignored.

Some evangelical churches, in particular, openly exclude single candidates; a recent posting for a pastor by a church on Long Island said it was seeking “a family man whose family will be involved in the ministry life of the church.” Other churches convey the message through code words, like “seeking a Biblical man” (translation: a husband and a provider).

“I’ll get an e-mail saying ‘wonderful résumé,’ ” Mr. Almlie said in an interview. “Once I say I’m single, never married, I never hear back.”

…

Mr. Steen later married and for family reasons moved to Long Island, ultimately leaving the ministry. He now markets accounting services to churches.

Some religion experts suggested a less charitable reason for the marriage requirement: the expectation that a pastor’s wife will provide unpaid labor, perhaps leading the choir or teaching Sunday school.

“Sometimes, parishioners have an unspoken preference for a happily married male with a wife who does not work outside the home,” Cynthia Woolever, research director at U.S. Congregations, wrote in a 2009 article. “She also volunteers at the church while raising ‘wholesome and polite children.’ ”

Mr. Almlie notes that during the first 1,500 years of Christianity, “singleness, not marriage, was lauded as next to godliness.” Martin Luther, in his break with Rome, preached against mandatory celibacy and got married himself.

As he searches for a job, Mr. Almlie is also looking for a life partner. He has tried Christian dating services and even eHarmony, but nothing has clicked. He says that he understands the desire to have a model family, but that he faces too many myths and fears.

“Ultimately, I do begrudge not being hired,” he said.

Noble of Almlie, but some early evangelical minister might have begrudged churches, just for very different reasons. In the early 19th c. bachelorhood was viewed as the norm for Baptist and Methodist preachers, even though communities worried that single ministers would engage in inappropriate relations with young or even married women. Their single status also led to an image of "effeminacy" (subtext here may not be gay, but definitely not "manly" enough). Despite these social concerns, church leaders impressed upon ministers (especially circuit riders) the need to be single and celibate because the work was hard, there was little pay on which to subsist, and a wife and child may distract them from God’s work. The Virginia Conference in 1809 was termed the "Old Bachelor Conference" because there were so few married men in it. The denominational narrative has obviously shifted, but the social fears of congregants (who largely determine the direction of churches nowadays) remain the same and evangelical churches have bowed to cultural prescriptions once again. [See Heyrman, Southern Cross, of course, regarding young ministers’ image in southern society especially]

I also take interest in the role of women in this story—not simply the female pastors who are fighting their way into ministerial positions but the wives of the men who seem to be having more luck getting those jobs. The role of “helpmeet” has held a precious place in evangelical culture and women have played an important role in evangelical religion in America [Ann Douglas, The Feminization of American Culture, still holds here]. In some of my own research, I have run across very early debates over the role of Methodist ministers’ wives (most of these sources are dated late-antebellum as more ministers married—including the infamous debates surrounding James O. Andrew’s marriage and the pursuant denominational break in 1844). One of my favorite examples is an account of a minister’s wife’s experience that appeared in 1859 in the Southern Methodist Itinerant. Several women in one church practically persecuted their pastor’s spouse for neglecting her duties, not attending all church meetings, and attending to things that did not contribute to her husband’s ministry. Some of the “leading ladies” in the community went to the woman and told her that she needed to either teach Sunday School or join the Missionary Society if she wanted her husband’s church to prosper. The wife’s response is classic: if the church would like to pay her, she would be happy to serve but since they hired her husband and not her, they had no special claims to her time and energy. She said: “That the minister’s wife is expected to keep her house and clothe her children upon the lowest range of income, that will not allow her competent help” is work enough without having to “spend half of her time in gossiping among the idle or well-to-do ladies of the congregation—take part in their sewing circles, and attend all their various meetings for good or doubtful purposes.” This response is certainly not typical, but it does demonstrate the pressures placed on minister’s helpmeets from very early on.

What may have contributed to the persistence of this gendered vision of the holy household is actually the very commercial imagery of husband and wife preaching teams that invade our televisions on networks like TBN and advertise on billboards alongside the smiling insurance agents. In my current town of Nacogdoches (East Texas), a Baptist church hired a young pastor and the billboard denotes his position as “Head Pastor” and his spouse as “Wife,” an official title for an official (and officially unpaid) church role. For nationally recognized couples like Joel and Victoria Osteen, Creflo and Taffi Dollar, the Hagee clan, Kenneth and Gloria Copeland, the patriarchal dynamic is retained even if the wife has a larger role in the ministry. Single women like Joyce Meyers and Paula White (the “messed up Mississippi girl”) who have carved out a space still speak in sexed terms about faith and living one’s religion. Thus the debate continues (married/single, man/woman, straight/well, straight) with mainline evangelicalism—a page taken out of the past and pasted in the Times.