Search Results for: S. Brent Plate

A Buddhist Valentine

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By S. Brent Plate

 

Love is not a shepherd’s crook.

I am not the great shepherd

Reaching out to pull you in.

 

You cannot be my valentine.

I cannot possess love

We can only be possessed by it.

 

**

Valentine’s Day approaches and I am sitting in a room in a Buddhist monastery in the Hudson River Valley of New York. I’ve come to jump start my dying contemplative life, revive a withering body in order to reproduce a spirit, physically giving birth to a soul. I feel a long way from red and pink hearts and sticky sweet treats. Not above it, just removed, somewhere off to the side. Like I’m off the holiday commercial grid. Continue Reading →

Our Monsters, Ourselves

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A review of W. Scott Poole’s Monsters in America: Our Historical Obsession with the Hideous and the Haunting (Baylor University Press, 2011).

By S. Brent Plate

My first monster was a repeating nightmare of a headless man named “Johan” who lived in our hallway closet on Mayfield Street, San Bernardino, CA. I was about eight years old and, as far as I can remember, Johan was nicely dressed in a suit and tie. But he had no head. In its stead, there was a single flame that shot up from his collar like a Bunsen burner.

He scared me. He was spooky. Creepy. Other. (Who doesn’t have a head?!). But then I got used to him and I began to feel sorry for him, all shut in that closet and all and seemingly without many friends. In my remembered dreams I began to take him out of the closet and play with him, head or no. We played board games together. I think I even let Johan win.

We’ve all got our own “first monsters,” primal visions of the hideous and haunting. Scott Poole knows this, and that is the initial attraction of his recent book, Monsters in America. He challenges readers to confront their monsters, to call them up from the crypt of remembrance. They may be nightmares, or movies, or television shows, or ghost stories told around a campfire on a Girl Scout trip. Poole also challenges readers to review other people’s monsters, ones that might unsettle us a little. After all, we can get used to our own and need a little shaking up. Continue Reading →

The Religious Uses of Marshall McLuhan

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by S. Brent Plate

In the midst of media hoopla about another technology being laid to rest–namely the end of the space shuttle program–there was a lesser-told story in the news this week about the centenary of one of the more technologically engaged and provocative thinkers of recent years: Marshall McLuhan (1911-1980). Coming from a background in literature, McLuhan has exerted a significant influence over media studies for decades since his death in 1980. Adequate bios and overview of McLuhan and his work can be found here and here, and an interesting 1967 New York Times piece is here. Douglas Coupland (author of Generation X, Life After God, and Generation A) recently published his own quirky biography, Marshall McLuhan (see a review at the National Post, here).

But what does McLuhan mean for scholars and students interested in religion? A few have outlined these facets, some pointing to McLuhan’s conversion to Catholicism; by all accounts he was deeply committed to his faith. Of more interest are the implications of his otherwise secular, media-oriented ideas on the way we understand religion itself. A broader query would ask: what does media have to do with religion anyway? An answer to which McLuhan strangely offered little. Some of the sporadic, direct engagements between media and religion were posthumously collected in The Medium and the Light.

It would be one of McLuhan’s own students, the Jesuit priest and St. Louis University professor Walter Ong, who laid out some of the ramifications of media transitions for the practices and understandings of the verbal dimensions of religion. Continue Reading →

Atheism vs Religion: Take 253: Matthew Chapman’s The Ledge

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by S. Brent Plate

Before you’ve even heard of this film, Bill Donohue has, once again, given it a ratings boost by rebuffing it on the Catholic League website. In between press releases on “Bishop Blasted over Gay Marriage” and “New York Times is Gay Crazy,” is a little piece blasting Matthew Chapman’s film The Ledge:

People of faith, especially Catholics, are used to being trashed by Hollywood, but they are not accustomed to films that promote atheism. Yes, there was “The Golden Compass,” an atheism-for-kids effort which the Catholic League successfully boycotted (in fairness, it was the book upon which the movie was based that triggered our response, not the screen adaptation). “The Ledge” is different in that its backers are selling themselves as the real pioneers: they expect it to be a ground-breaker.

The allegorical Golden Compass (2007) was derided by the Catholic League and many evangelicals who claimed it to be a pro-atheist stealth campaign. This was just two years after the allegorical Chronicles of Narnia, which upset some secular-minded people for being too heavy-handed in the Christian sub themes. Before that was Gibson’s Passion, then Scorsese’s Last Temptation, and the see-sawing controversy continues. I doubt The Ledge will make as big a splash, not because it doesn’t raise important issues, but because it lacks the big budget funding that really stirs controversy. Continue Reading →

Atheism vs Religion: Take 253: Matthew Chapman’s The Ledge

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by S. Brent Plate

Before you’ve even heard of this film, Bill Donohue has, once again, given it a ratings boost by rebuffing it on the Catholic League website. In between press releases on “Bishop Blasted over Gay Marriage” and “New York Times is Gay Crazy,” is a little piece blasting Matthew Chapman’s film The Ledge:

People of faith, especially Catholics, are used to being trashed by Hollywood, but they are not accustomed to films that promote atheism. Yes, there was “The Golden Compass,” an atheism-for-kids effort which the Catholic League successfully boycotted (in fairness, it was the book upon which the movie was based that triggered our response, not the screen adaptation). “The Ledge” is different in that its backers are selling themselves as the real pioneers: they expect it to be a ground-breaker.

The allegorical Golden Compass (2007) was derided by the Catholic League and many evangelicals who claimed it to be a pro-atheist stealth campaign. This was just two years after the allegorical Chronicles of Narnia, which upset some secular-minded people for being too heavy-handed in the Christian sub themes. Before that was Gibson’s Passion, then Scorsese’s Last Temptation, and the see-sawing controversy continues. I doubt The Ledge will make as big a splash, not because it doesn’t raise important issues, but because it lacks the big budget funding that really stirs controversy. Continue Reading →

Atheism vs Religion: Take 253: Matthew Chapman's The Ledge

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by S. Brent Plate

Before you’ve even heard of this film, Bill Donohue has, once again, given it a ratings boost by rebuffing it on the Catholic League website. In between press releases on “Bishop Blasted over Gay Marriage” and “New York Times is Gay Crazy,” is a little piece blasting Matthew Chapman’s film The Ledge:

People of faith, especially Catholics, are used to being trashed by Hollywood, but they are not accustomed to films that promote atheism. Yes, there was “The Golden Compass,” an atheism-for-kids effort which the Catholic League successfully boycotted (in fairness, it was the book upon which the movie was based that triggered our response, not the screen adaptation). “The Ledge” is different in that its backers are selling themselves as the real pioneers: they expect it to be a ground-breaker.

The allegorical Golden Compass (2007) was derided by the Catholic League and many evangelicals who claimed it to be a pro-atheist stealth campaign. This was just two years after the allegorical Chronicles of Narnia, which upset some secular-minded people for being too heavy-handed in the Christian sub themes. Before that was Gibson’s Passion, then Scorsese’s Last Temptation, and the see-sawing controversy continues. I doubt The Ledge will make as big a splash, not because it doesn’t raise important issues, but because it lacks the big budget funding that really stirs controversy. Continue Reading →

Buddha and Jesus, Together in the Tokyo Suburbs

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by S. Brent Plate

I’m just back from a few weeks researching gardens in Japan, the kind of Zen-type designs that are most idealized in a place like Ryoan-ji. The wonderful thing about Japan, like so many contemporary places, is the ancient-modern juxtaposition that stares you down around every corner. You can walk out of the austerity of a 500-year old garden and in five minutes be at the local 7-11 skimming pages of the latest manga series. Which is somewhat what I did.

Along the way I stumbled upon the manga title Seinto oniisan, which usually gets translated into English as “Saint Young Men,” but also carries “brotherly” connotations. The brothers in question are none other than Jesus and Buddha, who take a vacation from otherworldly life to shack up together in the Tokyo suburb, Nachikawa. They share a spartan, tatami-clad flat, wonder over new technology, do their own laundry (mostly jeans and t-shirts with various Buddhist and Christian references), visit amusement parks, get their food from the local 7-11, and celebrate Christmas and Shinto festivals. The local school girls are attracted to Jesus because he looks so much like Johnny Depp, which makes him happy since people in the 21st century might actually like him; he comes off as a bit of a hippy slacker and wears his crown of thorns around like a bandana. The Buddha enjoys napping, usually sleeping in the pose of the great reclining Buddha, or downing a can of Sapporo beer in response to too much asceticism, while the young girls think he looks like Buddha and the Western tourists think he looks like a ninja. Continue Reading →

Lost and Religious Mortality

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by S. Brent Plate:

“This is the end, my only friend the end . . . I’ll never look into your eyes again”

-Jim Morrison/ The Doors.

Along with 10-20 million others, I just left the island for good, saying goodbye to my friends who have occupied me for the past few years: the scientists and skeptics, the faithful and flaky, those motivated by riches, those by redemption, those by reincarnation. “I had not thought death had undone so many,” said T.S. Eliot in “The Wasteland.” But what does death undo and redo?

There’ll be plenty in the news about the fallout, the end, but here is one thing that won’t be much mentioned in the mainstream press: Everyone needs help. Everyone needs someone else. Everyone dies. Even the heroes are not told “you are one of a kind,” but rather, “Now you’re like me.” To be special means you take your place in line among others: adoptive mothers, friends, and comrades. You are one of many, which doesn’t diminish their responsibilities. Continue Reading →

Beyond the Best

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13 dispatches from the forgotten frontiers, crooked paths, and cul-de-sacs of religion reporting in America.

By Jeff Sharlet

Last week, I rounded up my favorite religion-related stories of 2008, and, over at Religion Dispatches, my favorite religion-related books of 2008, along with “best of” lists from a number of Revealer contributors. For the quiet week between Christmas and New Year’s Day, here’s a list of 2008’s 13 best Revealer links to the margins of faith, as found in compost, Tulsa, and other people’s conversations. In chronological order:


1. “The Sodfather” — I’m here to capture the rapture and the resurrection,” says master composter Tim Dundon, self-proclaimed “guru of doo-doo.” By Daniel Chamberlain, in Arthur.

2. “One Nation Under Elvis” — “Elvis is God” stories are a staple of “wacky religion reporting. Contrarian prose-psalmist Rebecca Solnit dispenses with kitsch to seriously explore the theological paradoxes of rockabilly religion. In Orion.

3. “Master of the Orgasm” — Gideon Lewis-Kraus resurrects Wilhelm Reich for Nextbook.

4. “God is a Monster” — Gabriel McKee on sin and redemption in J.J. Abram’s monster movie, Cloverfield, in Religion Dispatches. McKee’s SF Gospel is the best source for religion in sci-fi/horror/superhero movies we know.

5. “Only Visiting This Planet” — S. Brent Plate remembers when Christian rock was weird, on The Revealer.

6. “Fetal Rock” — in which I argue here on The Revealer that Christian rock is getting weird again, with illustrations from Flyleaf and an album called Silent Screams.

7. “Bad Moon Rising” — If Don Delillo had taken a lot of acid and grown a funny bone before he wrote Mao II, John Gorenfeld‘s fabulous investigation of the Reverend Moon is the book he might have come up with. Excerpted on Alternet.

8. “Blasphemous Lollipop” — a Bloggingheads.tv “diavlog” with Daniel Radosh about his book, Rapture Ready, and sacred suckers.

9. “An ‘Ooga Booga’ Cleanse” — NPR reporter Jennifer Sharpe describes a pleasant immersion in the cult of Father Yod. With musical slideshow.

10. “Tulsa, City of (Somebody’s) Dreams” — Akshay Ahuja on tour with Indian death metal band Cremated Souls. On Guernica, one of my favorite new online magazines.

11. “Can I Borrow a Feelin’?” — God and the worst album covers ever, in the Florida Sun-Sentinel.

12. “Private Conversation” — Kio Stark mistakes the most personal of intimacies for religion, and much more, on her fascinating new blog, Municipal Archive.

13. “Ann Coulter Takes Peyote and Channels Patty Hearst, Our Evil Robot Future, and the Bug in Her Brain.” Via Townhall. Continue Reading →