but, to add a little anecdote of my own, i distinctly remember a favoured family pastime of ours was driving along the highway to our town and looking out for the hilarious new pun-message that was left on our local church – the kind of stuff it often read (“Feeling Down? Come In For A Free Faith Lift!”) is kind of like a welcome reprise from everything you’ve mentioned – like christianity recognising and admitting that it’s literally one big joke and just rolling with that, no?

Curious, I said, “Do you think it is a sin for me to go to my church?” “Yes,” she said.

Curious, more, I said, “Do you think that I am redeemed, saved, i.e. going to heaven?” Air got thick. “No,” she said, quietly choking.

“That’s a problem,” I said, “isn’t it, not going to heaven? What should I do?” “Read your Bible,” she said.

I think I’m in trouble.

The rest of the post is brilliant, as well. I work in my church’s jr. high group, and it can be extremely frustrating, cause they’re all church kids who think they’ve heard everything before. So much of Jesus’ weirdness gets filtered out. The jr. highers (or even myself) would never think of Jesus being sarcastic and having a sense of humor. It just seems like a sad, somewhat poetic declaration delivered with those big Cavizael eyes.

I hasten to add that what I’m describing doesn’t apply to any of the evangelical folks we know in common (and who could stand to stop lurking and post a dang comment or two, people!) And I also hasten to add that this isn’t a dismissal of the importance of ritual—of doing that reading, even when it seems meaningless or pointless.

I don’t think that that un-reading is the sole defining characteristic of modern evangelicism, by any means, but I do think that it’s one significant strain within the culture—perhaps moreso in the South, perhaps not, and perhaps it’s a class thing, too—that is always battling it out with the more open-minded reading that we know many people do. I’m probably conflating evangelical and charismatic theologies too much, too, but then, they were pretty well conflated in my hometown. I had a whole thing on how End Times eschatology, which looks like analytical reading, but sort of isn’t, fits into this scheme and maybe is born out of the tension between reading and un-reading, but then I figured, heck, there’s a reason that Slacktivist link is in the sidebar, and I’m not gonna say anything smarter than him.

A couple years ago I read through the Gospels for the first time since becoming, you know, a welfare-loving, baby-hating, anti-American hippie, and I really got a kick out of this passage:

“Jesus left there and went to his hometown, accompanied by his disciples. When the Sabbath came, he began to teach in the synagogue, and many who heard him were amazed. ‘Where did this man get these things?’ they asked. ‘What’s this wisdom that has been given him, that he even does miracles! Isn’t this the carpenter? Isn’t this Mary’s son and the brother of James, Joseph, Judas and Simon? Aren’t his sisters here with us?’ And they took offence at him. Jesus said to them, ‘Only in his hometown, among his relatives, and in his own house is a prophet without honour.’”

Doesn’t that “only in his hometown” line come off as incredibly sarcastic? I mentioned to some friends that I thought for sure Jesus was telling a joke there, but they didn’t buy my theory.

Great post, Prof, but how does the evangelical Bible study fit in here? Most devoted Christians in my circle spend at least one evening a week—and a few minutes every morning, not to mention Sundays—studying the Bible, meditating over it, and trying their darnedest to “unpack” its mysteries. Granted, those studies typically operate within a fairly tight sphere of theological and ideological assumptions, but I would go so far as to say that evangelical Christians often have a higher regard for literacy than the typical American Philistine.

(Has anyone else here seen The Squid and the Whale? If not, you should, and then you, too, will be using the word “Philistine” in your day to day conversations.)

“Quick, Verna, get the axe, we may have to chop the door down if he’s bolted it from the outside. What’s that? You say the axe is made of cheap plastic and papier-mache? Hell. See if you can salvage any of the parts to make a gouging implement of some kind. Use it on me first if you love me,”

I thought you had started speaking in tongues.

But, aside from that, two thoughts:
1. Psalty! Why oh why didn’t the Jews think of that? That’s the only thing my childhood was missing–sort of.

2. You must publish this type of writing in a book collection, sooner rather than later. I do not speak lightly when I compare you to David Sedaris.