Faith With A Capital "F You"

What is it these days with the so-called "faithful?"

Recently, a segment of the monumental PBS series America at a Crosroads explained how fundamentalist Muslims in Indonesia are gunning to transform the country into a theocracy. Their acts of terror and sedition range from bombing night clubs to accusing women stopped and searched in the streets of "prostitution," with no evidence to support the charge - and then levying stiff fines on the accused.

One cross-dressing cadidate for a transvestite beauty contest - one of the cultural things that drive Indonesian Islamic fundamentalists crazy - told the camera that, "This is a country of law." She was confident that the law of the land would prevail.

But a leading cleric had other ideas: Inodnesia, he said, was not country run according to Koranic law yet, but the time is coming. He was every bit as confident of his prediction as the cross-dresser was of hers. Moreover, he believed he had God on his side, and the mere reference to his credentials as one of "the faithful" as enough, in his mind at least, to excuse any execrable behavior, and any terrorist violence, that he and his followers might cook up.

"Well and good," you might nod, unconcerned because this is all happening far away in another country and another culture. "But what does it have to do with me?"

The answer is: Everything, because the same trends are taking hold here at home--only under the guise of a different religion. In our case, it's Christians who feel entitled, due to their faith, to disregard the rules of civility and the law of the land--or else to attempt to rewrite the law of the land so that it parallels their own faith-based jurisprudence of dicrimination, violence, bloodshed, and terror.

Take the story that broke out of Ohio last week, for example. Services at Christ of the Warrior King Church in Massillon have reportedly been conducted at such a high volume of screaming, chanting, singing, and music, that neighbors have repeatedly turned to the local police to get the church to proceed with its services in a more civil, thoughtful manner. The church has not been impressed with visit from the police, so the neighbors have taken the additional step of petitioning the city to take action.

The church, in response, has declared itself under attack. The Revered Troy Sowell told a local nespaper, "It's not 'noise.' We're going to praise the Lord and worship. We're talking 50 members [generating the current level of volume]. We plan on filling it up. What are they going to do then?" A little later, the Reverend added, "The only way we'll move is if we outgrow the building. If they want us out, come on over and help us fill it up."

It sounds like a minor dispute of the sort that goes on all the time in many a neighborhood. But think of it in terms of law and of civility. Think of it in terms of the so-called "broken windows" theory from law enforcement: A few unkempt buildings invite destructive elements into a neighborhood as a whole, and pretty soon the whole place is an collection of crack dens and warrens of vice. Well, this is wort of similar, even if it is--nominally--the opposite extreme, something along the lines of enforced virtue... and a highly suspect stripe of virtue at that. Loudly proclaiming their freedom to worship, fundamentalists take over the social machinery and squash concensus, debate, democracy, and any hint of disagreement. They do it with a complete (and mistaken) assurance in their own moral superiority.

This is what you might call "Faith with a Capital F You." It's popping up more frequently these days, and it's especially noticeable in Massachusetts, where an upcoming constitutional convention by the state legislature will consider whether or not to allow a proposed ballot initiative changing the Commonwealth's constitution to reverse the Massachusetts law allowing same sex couples to marry has generated a huge racket from a tiny minority of the state's residents--most of whom say that God intends for one man to marry one woman (all evident of polygamy in the Bible notwithstanding).

If Massachusetts is the bluest of blue states, Cambridge is the bluest of blue towns--so blue, in fact, that residents proudly hail their city as "The People's Republic of Cambridge." But on April 19, the People's Republic had an unnerving brush with neo-crusaders who chose to express their disapproval of the language used in a one-man show by getting up en masse and leaving... but not before one of them destroyed the performer's notes by pouring water all over them.

The venue was the American Repertory Theater's Zero Arrow Street location in Cambridge, and the show was a monologue titled Invincible Summer. Monologuist Mike Daisey had just reached the part in his monologue in which he makes reference to "fucking Paris Hilton," and in the video from that night posted on YouTube, you can see a look of surprise and puzzlement come over Daisey's face as eighty-seven high schoolers and their adult chaperones rise as a group and begin to file out of the theatrical space.

As silhouettes of departing audience members file past the camera, one man steps up to Daisey, where he's sitting at a table onstage with his notes before him. The man--balding, wearing a gray sweatshirt--pours his bottled water all over Daisey's notes and then disdainfully drops his bottle upside-down into Daisey's water glass, as the monologuist looks on, appalled.

Daisey described the incident from his own point of view in a blog posted on the ART's web site. Quoting from Daisey's account:

I am performing the show to a packed house, when suddenly the lights start coming up in the house as a flood of people start walking down the aisles-they looked like a flock of birds who'd been startled, the way they all moved so quickly, and at the same moment... it was shocking, to see them surging down the aisles. The show halted as they fled, and at this moment a member of their group strode up to the table, stood looking down on me and poured water all over the outline, drenching everything in a kind of anti-baptism.

It is a face I have seen in Riefenstahl's work, and in my dreams, but never on another human face, never an arm's length from me - never directed at me, hating me, hating my words and the story that I've chosen to tell.

Subsequently, a few more details emerged. The eighty-seven departing audience members were a high schoolers from a Callifornia public school, though they later described themselves as hailing from "a Christian community"--their reason, evidently, for reacting to "the F word" by interrupting the performance, committing an act of trepass, and assaulting, if not the artist himself, then certainly his art. At the time, however, none of this was known.

In the YouTube video, Daisey can be seen regarding his ruined notes with shock and saying, "That's the craziest thing I've ever seen." He then rises from the table and follows the departing Christians off camera, but his voice registers clearly as he demands, "Hey, do any of you people who are leaving want to stay and talk about this, or are you all going to leave like cowards?" A girl's voice can be discerned, saying something about not wanting to hear his story's use of "the F-word," and after a few moments and a few more exchanges, Daisey can be heard addressing one of the group's adult members, saying, "Ma'am, take a message back to your people--in the future, find out what you're going to see before you see it!"

The YouTube video goes on for some time after this, as stage hands clear up the mess and Daisey returns to the stage to entertain the audience. True to his profession as a monologuist used to working from notes and outlines, rather than a fixed script, Daisey comes up with some hlarious material on the spot, wondering what such an audience would make of a theoretical play in which a struggling man, dragging himelf across a blood-drenched stage, looks up and mutters, "Fuck!"

"Would they all come up and pour water on him and then run away?" Daisey wonders, as the audience cheers him and applauds. Daisey then invites the audience to make use of the vacated seats closer to the stage: "Would anyone like to come down?" he asks.

When an audience member queries what the attack was all about, Daisey responds, "Usually, terrorists say what [their goal is]... I dunno... there was no statement, they just left."

Well, not quite. They did not "just" leave. One of their chaperones--evidently modeling what now passes for Christian behavior among adults--trespassed on the stage and vandalized Daisey's property; then they left.

Be it Islamic fundamentalists killing partiers and bombing night clubs, or a church that celebrates a vision of a savior who is a "Warrior King," or vandals at the gates of the theatrical arts, this is the problem with Faith with a Capital Fuck You: that in the name of God and righteousness, petty, angry people could act in such an unregenerate, primate manner. By itself, the faithful of this sort provide strong empirical evidence for the theory of evolution and prove that not only do we come from lower life forms, but also that we're still half-animal--that evolution's work is not yet finished.

Whether the fanatics hijack indonesia--or America--is up to those who live in the neighborhoods where windows are broken, ear-splitting noise is excused as "worship," and acts of wanton destruction are inflicted upon storytellers. We can fix those windows and insist that the faithful learn to live with the rest of us here in the mundane world--or we can become the sacrifice they offer to their strange and violent gods.