New Title

After some thought and more in line with my semi-detachment from politics--not sports--and increasing emphasis on matters theological and literary, I decided to change my blog's name to what you see above. It's a way I can acknowledge both parts of my interests through a reference to the novel that accelerated my moving toward a full-time academic life. In reading Moby-Dick, a near-re-conversion experience took place and I've been "on the road to Galilee" ever since. My geographical reference comes from Mark's resurrection story as the young man in white tells the unnamed followers that the one they seek wants them to tell the (male) disciples to meet him in Galilee. The notion that as disciples, we're on the road still means a lot to me and Melville's novel is a primary way I grapple with what that "trip" and "road" mean.
Needless to say, however, I'll always be attune to sports, especially my belovedly frustrating Memphis Tigers (Joey Dorsey's mouth being the latest example) and the other teams that have captured my allegiance over the years. Nevertheless, where I feel my interests going are an intermixing and dialectical tension (unresolved) between theology and literature. I rather enjoy that.

Scopes and Wind, Part II

I read Inherit the Wind for the first time about twenty years ago, the summer of 1987 I believe. The introduction of my edition indicated that the play's authors--mentioned in the NY Times article I posted earlier--specifically did not write a historical recounting of the Scopes Trial in 1925. They clearly indicated the borrowing of certain exchanges from the trial transcript, but their emphasis--in the 1950s--had to do with the spectre of McCarthyism then engulfing the country.
In other words, the play never was intended to be "history" as much as a commentary on contemporary events through the medium of art. It draws rigidly clear lines of Right and Wrong, portrays characters in overly stark manners and creates too much pathos through Matthew Harrison Brady's death while trying to make the speech defending his principles the day following his losing battle under cross-examination by Henry Drummond. William Jennings Bryan's actual death one week after the trial didn't make for the sort of climactic drama that both stage and screen visualized through the play.

For that matter, except in the most allusive of ways, the play did not refer to Clarence Darrow's defense of Leopold and Loeb--the University of Chicago students who planned in Nietzschean style the "perfect" murder--only a few years before he travelled to Dayton for "The Trial of the Century" (at least before the OJ Simpson disaster). The play also mentioned nothing about John Scopes actually volunteering to be arrested and tried for breaking the Tennessee statute against teaching evolution. In other words, the entire historical episode was designed (intelligently if you will) to create just the sort of confrontation that happened between Darrow and Bryan. The result rested on Darrow's use of Bryan's ego against himself in order to get him away from speech-making (Bryan's best forte) to cross-examination (Darrow's).
None of those complexities, however, have mattered in the 72 years since the trial. None of the biblical, theological, historical (the Civil War played a large, hovering role in the events that led to the trial), social, economic, and cultural factors are explored in the play or, except for sparsely-read books, throughout the culture. Nothing is mentioned about Higher Biblical Criticism and its--more or less--beginnings in 1835 and the efforts by many Christians to accept the new discoveries of science with their proclamation of faith throughout the rest of the nineteenth century. Some, but perhaps not many, folks are aware that if Bryan had given his post-examination speech, what he wanted to express was a fear of Social Darwinism that he understood as the logical consequence of evolution and materialism. Even given its performance in the 1950s, the play does not even hint that the historical H. L. Mencken all but advocated racial and social policies in much the same manner as the Nazis did throughout the 30s and 40s. The somewhat apparently awkward choice between defending either a narrow--and idolatrous--biblicism and barely restrained Social Darwinism does not leave one feeling too good about either who "won" or who "lost" at Dayton.

Unfortunately, the image of Darrow reducing Bryan to phrases such as "I don't think about the things I don't think about" is all that most people remember about a very complex series of events and an equally important set of questions. Proclamation of faith, in any manner of which I am aware, is not an easy way to live in an age of technology and--all too common--condescending skepticism. Each manifestation of faith, including secularists, makes various claims of Absolutism with the result of creating suspicion and alienation with people in other proclamations. Much bloviating and little listening takes place; we seem less and less capable of even agreeing to see things differently and, as a former professor of mine interpreted the Abraham and Lot story, to say "you go your way and I'll go mine." What we refuse to recognize is that any claim to Absolutism roots itself in the ambiguities of history, context and circumstance. That does not mean Absolutes aren't somehow "real." I, for one, believe in the Absolute I call God and experience in some way through Jesus of Nazareth. I recognize--at my best--my own context, history and cultural background that shaped my ability to make my profession of faith and subsequent inability to experience the Absolute in any other manifestation. I have Moslem, Buddhist and Christian friends who are much more conservative in their approach than I in mine. I believe God is with them as God is with me.

The American playwright Eugene O'Neill is credited with saying that the search for God rests at the center of life. He did so from the standpoint of a lapsed Roman Catholic and Lord knows he had good reason to be lapsed and to search. I search from the vantage of a "recovering Baptist." Whether my reasons pass muster I don't think matter ultimately. What matters is the search itself.

Scopes and Wind, Part I

I'll have more to write about the play's revival later today. In typical pop-culture fashion, the Yahoo! article doesn't quite replicate the context of either the play itself, the trial, William Jennings Bryan or the biblical account(s) of "creation." Since the overwhelming majority of responsible scholars today posit that Genesis has two creation stories--which was in common understanding, both pro and con, in 1925,--to express controversy about "a" story is to inaccurately relate what actually was heppening in Dayton or, for that matter, in the 1950s when the play first saw production. As I say, however, more later today--

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A revival of a major Broadway play that tackles the U.S. debate over Darwin's theory of evolution is more topical now than when it was first staged more than 50 years ago. ...
"Inherit The Wind" pits Charles Darwin's theory of evolution against the biblical account of creation. It is the fictional account of the 1925 Scopes Trial, otherwise known as the "monkey trial," where science teacher John Scopes was tried and convicted in Tennessee for teaching evolution.
The play's Tony Award-winning director, Doug Hughes, citing efforts in recent years to weaken the teaching of evolution in public schools in such states as Kansas, Pennsylvania and Georgia, said the work had more relevance today than when it first opened in 1955.
"The idea that 50 or more years later there is more controversy about its teaching than there may have been in '55 ... is amazing," said Hughes.
The play by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee was written in response to McCarthyism -- the post-World War Two era of anti-communist fervor and investigations.
"The plot, the gizmo, of this play is actually aligned pretty closely with what is currently going on in the body politic," Hughes said.
The play was adapted into a 1960 movie of the same name, starring Spencer Tracy and
Fredric March' name=c1> SEARCHNews News Photos Images Web' name=c3> Fredric March.
Reviews of the latest revival were generally positive and hailed
Christopher Plummer' name=c1> SEARCHNews News Photos Images Web' name=c3> Christopher Plummer's performance. Most noted the timing of the play's subject matter, including a chilling line uttered by Plummer: "You don't suppose this kind of thing is ever finished, do you?"
New York Times critic Ben Brantley noted that "while the subject of teaching evolution and religion in public schools is even more topical" than when it was first staged, "Mr. Plummer at play is something sacred."
AN AMERICAN DEBATE
The play, which opened on Thursday, shows what is an inherently American debate between biblical and secular thought, Hughes said.
"Fundamental belief seems to be very important to us in America. We are among the most religious countries on earth, he said.
"And yet our democracy is founded on an extremely secular document, the United States Constitution, and therein lies the paradox -- how do you square those two things?"
In the play, Plummer and
Brian Dennehy' name=c1> SEARCHNews News Photos Images Web' name=c3> Brian Dennehy play characters based on the real-life opposing attorneys during the Scopes trial, which pitted famed civil liberties lawyer Clarence Darrow against the politician and devout Presbyterian William Jennings Bryan, a three-time Democratic Party nominee for president.
Hughes said the play did not support either side of the debate, recently reignited through a theory called "intelligent design." It argues the variety of living things on Earth is so complex that an intelligent force, which some say is God, must have been responsible.
He predicted the outrage felt by some people that humans could have descended from a "lower order of animals" rather than being "divinely ordained" would persist and could be traced to the Puritans who colonized parts of the United States.
"I don't expect in my lifetime to see unanimity about Darwin's theory or the biblical account of creation," he said.

Stumbling Toward What is

A cousin recently asked why, if relatively few people read what I write here, I spend the time to compose my thoughts. That's a good question, one about which I have thought some since my cousin and I spoke. Frankly, if "blogs" didn't exist, I wouldn't bother to keep a diary, even though I did as a teenager thirty years ago. I also continue to believe that technologies such as "blogs" provide convenience, but we as people have turned them into indispensable idols that give "centering" shape to our existence. In other words, I doubt "blogs" and cell phones and satellite television and those combination computer, email, address and phone book things that my friend Jaymeson showed me do more good than harm. We as people have, I think, thought very little about the price we are paying--and it's increasing by the megabyte--to have these myriad of conveniences, toys and highly advanced playthings.
I suppose that's one reason I write. By using these forms of technology, I can raise questions about them, if only for my own final satisfaction. I am always reminded of Spencer Tracy's major speech during Inherit the Wind about how much we are willing to relinquish to gain what we say we want. All one has to do is update his references and the point becomes immediately relevant. Asking those questions, of course, is not what most people want to do. We all seek security, absolutes and certitude in a world that by its nature offers none. Faith in something beyond ourselves provides access to what most traditions call--in one way or another--the Absolute, but we only experience that in ambiguous, clouded and fleeting ways. Our experience, most traditions say, does not mean we have, as it were, the Keys to the Sanctum Sanctorum. So no matter the issue, be it technology, faith or literary criticism, I feel led to ask questions, read provocatively and admit my lack of final understanding. In writing, reading, thinking and grasping toward being fully human, every once in a while, I'll stumble toward that which I seek.