Three Religion Fails

I. In 2005 I went to Rome, in search of the biggest, oldest, and most beautiful things I could see. I was not disappointed. The Vatican especially (see photo below) was a stirring monument to the enduring power of the Church: massive-scale architecture, masterpiece art everywhere, and much of it revered relics from centuries long past. Now that's a proper sense of awe, and ain't nobody does it like Rome does it. For the first time, I felt that rare connection to the whole of human history.



II. Every winter, I go to my hometown in upstate New York to spend the holidays with my parents. Every year, my sister, my mother and I attend Christmas Eve mass at St. Mary's, listen to a variation on the "be nice to your neighbor, it's the holidays" homily, and watch the exact same group of girls wearing the exact same robes do the exact same entry-level liturgical movement routine to the exact same song (Shepherd of my Heart).

III. On Christmas Eve afternoon, I posted the following status to facebook:

ok St. Mary's. It's Christmas, and by God, you are the Holy Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church, heir to two thousand years of unprecedented power and worship throughout the entire Western World. Let's see some freakin' PAGEANTRY.
December 24, 2009 at 1:53pm · Comment · Like


IV. The communion wine was grape juice.



I want to believe, religion, really I do. But it's like you're not even trying.

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Also while I was at home, I saw a more-disturbing-than-usual "as seen on tv" type ad, for this lovely product



https://www.prayercross.com/ver58/

It's a cross necklace with the Our Father inscribed in it like the old write-your-name-on-a-piece-of-rice trick. Just hold it up to the light and HOLY SHIT! THE MOST GENERIC PRAYER IN ALL OF CHRISTIANITY!

Made me think back to Taste class with Maria Koundoura, and how something I find so obviously gaudy and kitsch can be an actual viable piece of sentimental jewelry to so many other idiots. (For "only 2 payments of $19.99." Classy.) Another issue: Why would you need a "certificate of authenticity" for this thing? What the hell kind of authenticity would it even have? Yes this is an authentic mass consumer good? Yes that is authentically the Lord's Prayer you got written in there? It's not even made of precious metals--just Austrian crystal.

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The Christian Side Hug Video has been making the rounds on leftist blogs. There's very little information about it, or why these guys are spittin' about the unholy dangers of fully-clothed genital-to-genital contact, but everyone seems to be taking it at face value and bemoaning how backwards those darn Christian fundies are. The problem is that's too easy. Blah blah oppressive paranoid anti-sexuality, blah blah co-opting African-American art forms for pussified whiteperson agendas, etc. etc. Instead, I think that the side hug rappers aren't 100 percent genuine, that there is some kind of commentary going on here, though it's hard to say on what level.

The lyrics are here, and pretty damn hilarious...not quite bad enough to be clearly authentic, not quite good enough to be clearly comic. Why would a group fanatical enough to condemn "front-hugging" be referencing "Democratic shift in the Congress," and taking potshots at Angelina Jolie buying babies? One opinion I read in my exhaustive googling of this topic was that the side hug rappers were of a more liberal denomination (think Unitarians) making small fun of their more conservative counterparts. That would explain the crowd reacting the same way to Obama references as they did to Holy Spirit ones.

Chorus is as follows:
Gimme that Christian side hug
That Christian side hug
Gimme that Christian side hug
That Christian side hug
I’m a rough rider
Filled up with Christ’s love
Gimme that Christian side hug
That Christian side hug

Blahblah ironic juxtaposition(rough riders | filled up with Christ's love)
Blahblah complete reversal of the actual motivation behind "street" music forms.

And my personal favorite verse:
I’m a married man
You know I can hold hands
Front hug all day long
With no other demands

Oh dayum son. Your marriage be freaky up in this piece!

What's sad then about this situation is not the performance itself, with its thug pretensions and side hugging message. It's the fact that either hypothetical is completely plausible: there may well be fundamentalist groups sad enough to be frightening kids that something as simple and rewarding as human contact (e.g. hugging) is sinful, but on the other hand, everything you see on the internet might well be a parody of something else you saw on the internet. And we can't tell the difference.


PS check out those two black guys just standing upstage. are they there for tacit acknowledgment ("ok honkies, we get it. don't worry, it's all cool"), or to stop fans from potentially rushing the stage and front-hugging the performers?