Christian Nationalism is (not) a myth

Straight White American Jesus argues that Christian
Nationalism is the greatest threat to both American
democracy and Christianity.

Today we heard a talk on campus arguing that Christian nationalism is a myth - by which the speaker seemed to mean that it is made up, not real, just a "bogeyman" used to accuse one's political opponents and to scare voters.

Offered as evidence for this was Mark Hall's book Who's Afraid of Christian Nationalism: Why Christian Nationalism is not an Existential Threat to America or the Church. The book argues that the threat of Christian Nationalism is exaggerated, not that Christian Nationalism is a just a myth.  

Christian Nationalism is the conflation of the state/nation with Christianity, when the interests of the state and the interests of Christianity are fused. It could be briefly defined as “an ideology that idealizes and advocates for a fusion of American civic life with a particular type of Christian identity and culture.” Of course this is a real thing. While we can debate the threat level of this ideology, its reality and role in American cultures seems beyond question at this point. It is also a well-documented phenomenon in other parts of the world - such as in the far right Christian movements in Poland.

There is not one Christian Nationalist party or organization that we can point to, it is a more diffuse phenomenon. Catherine Wessinger, the well-known scholar of new and radical religious movements, sees Christian National as part the "Euro-American Nativist Millennial Movement" which has existed at least since the early twentieth century. It is a milieu, as described in 1972 by Colin Campbell as "an underground region where true seekers test hidden, forgotten, and forbidden knowledge." In this sense, it is a set of culturally proscribed ideas, phrases, beliefs, attitudes, and sentiments that emerge now and again as movements, parties, and groups. 

While Christian Nationalism is a real thing and a real threat, there is no doubt that the term has been used loosely by people on the Left to condemn and shut down people on the right. It has been rolled out too often, finding Christian nationalists everywhere. It has been used reductively to exclude conservatives without allowing them to have nuanced positions. It has played a role in cancel culture and used to discount people without sufficient hearing. 

Denying the reality of Christian Nationalism is disengenous. The term points to a real problem. However, we shouldn't use it to paint with too broad a brush - not all Christian conservatives are Christian nationalists. 

Hank Hanegraaf tells us that "Wokeism is the most dangerous
 cult in the world.

In this way, it is similar to the way "Wokeism" has been used on the Right.

Wokeism, at its core, is simply becoming aware that one's life is embedded in a field of power relations and that some of those power relations leverage the concept of race as a political tool. 

In this sense, wokeism has its roots in the idea of  "critical consciousness" theorized by Paulo Freire in his Pedagogy of the Oppressed, published in English in 1970. Critical consciousness was a process by which oppressed people came to understand the social forces that produced or contributed to the disadvantaged and disenfranchised conditions of their lives. By "reading the world" in a way that made power relations apparent, oppressed people could develop agency and work for better lives and a better world. 

In a sense - if I can stretch the metaphor a bit - this is what Thomas Jefferson was doing in the Declaration. His list of monarchical abuses was an attempt to raise the consciousness of colonial Americans by making apparent the social forces that were contributing to their disenfranchisement and encouraging them to take revolutionary action to change their situation.

Has wokeism been "taken too far" or been overextended and misused? Of course, it has been used to over-politicize situations, to cancel political opponents, and used to find injustice everywhere. It has been disruptive to community life in various ways. It has been weaponized by even relatively privileged people to justify absurdities. 

But it has also been misused by the Right to shut down minority communities and their valid complaints. It has been used in an uncompassionate way to justify not listening to others and caring for other people and their struggles, and to mock and ridicule political opponents just to win a political point. It has become a rallying point of disinformation - such as all the controversy on social media over women's boxing at the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris. 

Both these terms have been unfairly and inaccurately weaponized in the political fights of our day - they aren't petty, there is actually a lot at stake. But if we value our pluralist democracy, we need to be better about not reducing these idea to shallow tropes and dismissing our opponents with overly-generalized mischaracterizations.

Judge in the Delphi Case dismisses Odinism defense theory

"Meet The New Judge In The Delphi Case!" 
https://youtu.be/vpZfXD7t7ww?si=zlKpisdHZRvCAZkf

I just learned this morning that the judge in the Delphi murders case has thrown out the Odinist defense theory as impermissable in the trial. Here is the report on the judge's decision as reported by the Wild Hunt. The judge ruled that the defense had “failed to produce admissible evidence demonstrating a nexus,” meaning a connection between Odinism and the murders. Hopefully, the judge's action will finally put these speculations to rest. 

I have no expertise in this case, nor in ritual killing, and I am not claiming any. I definitely don't want to participate in or be dragged into a true crime drama. I am not an Odinist nor a practitioner of Norse Paganism. I am a scholar of religion and new religious movements, who has researched and written on Norse Paganism and has put in a great deal of effort to understand this religious movement. In my estimation, this defense theory is an example of how marginal, controversial religions can be used and mischaracterized in order to generate fear, doubt, and scapegoating in the mind of the public. We should remain aware of the potential for Odinist violence and hold Odinists accountable for crimes they commit, which are heinous enough without fabricating tales of ritual Odinic sacrifice to stir the pot of conspiracy theory and true crime speculation. 

 
The defense suggested that the evidence was best explained as a ritual sacrifice performed by Odinists - white nationalist Norse Pagans who are devoted to the god Odin. To support these allegations, the defense brought in Dawn Perlmutter as an expert witness. Perlmutter has an expertise in ritual murders and has acted as a consultant to law enforcement agencies who investigate these crimes. She wrote a 2003 book on the subject, Investigating Religious Terrorism and Ritualistic Crimes. I will discuss the book in another post.

At a recent pre-trial hearing on the Delpi Case, Perlmutter offered testimony that the murder were ritual sacrifice, stating unequivocally that "In my opinion, this was a textbook ritual murder. It has all the elements listed there.” According to a Knoxville, Tennessee news station reporting on Perlmutter's testimony, she pointed to several signs of ritualistic murder: (my comments are in italics)

• "The place of the killing was outdoors."  
• This sort of overgeneralization is concerning. It surely does not narrow this down as a ritual sacrifice. What is the percentage of murders (ritualistic or not) that occur outdoors? 
• "February 14 is a sunup to sundown Odinistic sacrificial holiday." 
• I was not aware of February 14, Valentine's Day, as a significant Heathen holy day and have never heard it mentioned by practitioners. A few contemporary Heathen sources mention Vali's blot being observed on February 14, "probably because of the similarity of the name to Valentine." It is sometimes called the "Heathen Valentine's day" and as a spring observance is celebrated as "the returning light, of romance, and of marriage. Even the Odinic Rite called the Feast of Vali a "Festival of the Family" and a celebration of Nature's fertility, planting, and remembering "Frey’s wooing of Gerd," which is another Norse myth of love, desire, and marriage. That said, in the Poetic Edda, Vali was the son of Odin who avenged the death of Baldr. So if someone wanted to find it, there is a theme of violence, murder, and revenge in the Vali story.  However, it is not prominent in contemporary Heathen interpretations of Vali's blot.
• "The symbolism of the sticks and body positions were consistent with Odinistic Runes."    
• First, not sure what "Odinistic Runes" are. And the interpretation of the sticks or branches as runes is really in the eye of the beholder. According to the prosecution, the branches were simply thrown over the bodies to hide them. So is it a rune or a random pile of branches? If you know the runes, the Court TV sketch that has been displayed online is not conclusive. But I haven't seen actual crime scene photos, so who knows what it looked like in real life? Could I rule out that these branches were meant to represent runes? No - but the description that appeared in the defense filing does not sound like Odinism. If you wanted create a runic association or correspondence, why not bring a rune set and leave an actual rune stone at the scene?
• The defense memo claims that the sticks were arranged as a hagalaz rune over one of the bodies. See blood pattern below.
• "Body positioning"  
• I have seen a sketch of the body positioning and the defense is claiming that one body was  positioned intentionally to represent the elhaz or algiz rune. Again, that is an interpretation and the sketch is inconclusive. Certainly, there are mystical connotations to Algiz in runic lore and Volkisch and Nazi esotericism as the life and death rune.
• "Atypical blood pattern" 
• Perlmutter is probably referring to a mark on a tree at the crime scene that allegedly depicts an ansuz rune. The defense memorandum and all the media coverage call this the "F tree" claiming that the blood mark on the tree resembes a letter F. I was confused by this until reading the defense memorandum, which clarifies that this "F rune" is actually meant to be an ansuz. No Heathen practitioner nor anyone with knowledge of the runes would refer to Ansuz as an "F rune." So this is a major strike against this claim, in addition to the inconclusive nature of the mark itself. 
• The defense claimed that the presence of both these runes - the hagalaz made of crossed sticks and the ansuz marked in blood on the tree - are symbolic of "Hail Odin." And that these are a clear indication that this is a ritual sacrifice. Certainly hagalaz is associated with "hail" but usually of the precipitation variety. And there is an associated between Odin and ansuz as the rune of wisdom and insight. These two runes could be an abbreviation for Hail Odin. That said, using these two runes mixes the Elder and Younger Futharks - but that could be a mistake that a new Odinist or an unaware Odinist might make. However, the evidence is highly ambiguous, unclear, and inconclusive. Neither are obviously runes at all. It is a major leap to the conclusion that this marks the crime scene as an Odinist sacrifice. 
• "Cause of Death" 
• I am not sure that the cause of death has been released officially in this case. However, Perlmutter believes that this particular cause of death ("throat is slit with a sharp object") is almost always ritualistic in nature. This is discussed on page 378 in her book. I would just as that there are ritual sacrifices described in Heathen sources, including sacrifices to Odin. There is a clear pattern or typology of Odinic sacrifice in the Lore  involving stabbing with a spear and hanging by the neck. This typology is evident, for instance,in the death/sacrifice of Vikar in Gautrek's Saga, as well as in Havamal 137. If a Heathen wanted to recreate or enact an Odinic sacrifice, they have a symbolic precedent. And this cause of death does not follow that pattern of ritual sacrifice described in those Norse sources. 

Overall, I don't find this testimony to be persuasive. The main issues I have are 1) the so-called evidence is too general - I mean, "outside"? Come on. 2) The evidence is too ambiguous - are they runes or piles of sticks? 3) Dawn Perlmutter and the defense team are not experts in Odinism or Norse Paganism and they are making connections that aren't accurate - from the February 14th thing to the "F rune" the evidence doesn't seem like a pattern of Norse or Odinist activity. 

 

It points to the importance of scholars of religion who have developed a rigorous methodology and studied religions in some depth. An attorney, scrupulous or not, can see what they want in the evidence if it helps their case. But it the interpretation actually consistent with the religion in question? A scholar of religion hopefully knows the religion well enough,  and knows its symbols, discourses, and culture to make strong interpretations.  

Zachary Babitz and the AFA

Zachary Babitz as a Heathen
and member of the AFA

Last week, I was contacted by a reporter from Santa Fe, New Mexico who wanted to talk about the Asatru Folk Assembly (AFA) and the case of Zachary Babitz.

Here's the story: Zachary Babitz was arrested in Las Cruces on August 11th after robbing an Arby's restaurant. He had recently been released from prison on parole in March (which of course has local politicians calling for tougher sentencing.) He has also been charged for an earlier bank robbery in Albuquerque on July 31, 2024 as well as a carjacking in which he shot and killed an elderly man. Just horrible stuff. This statement from the U.S. Attorney General District of New Mexico contains a link to the official criminal complaint. So evidently, Babitz was released and tried to stay straight. He lasted for about four months and then fell back into criminal activity. Babitz's prison tattoos indicate his white supremacist connections. He has "1488" tattooed on his fingers: "14" stands for the 14 Words of infamous racist murderer David Lane, and "88" represents the double letter "H" the eighth letter of the alphabet, signifying "Heil Hitler."  

The reporter contacted me because Zachary Babitz was a member of the AFA. Not only that, but in mid-July just a couple of weeks before all this went down, Babitz had been named an apprentice Folkbuilder for the AFA in New Mexico. (All references to this had been deleted from the AFA's social media, soon after Babitz went on the lam. A Google search found links to those posts, but they had been deleted on the actual webpages.)

 

Screenshot of my Google search results
for the Folkbuilder announcement

So what happened and how was the AFA involved? Please note that I did reach out to a local Folkbuilder for a comment about this case, but have received no response. What I am writing here is my own current interpretation based on what I know, although could and probably will change. I think the case shows us a few things about the AFA as an organization.

The Asatru Folk Assembly has always been a folkish Asatru group, meaning that they interpret Heathenry as a religion for those of Northern European heritage. It was founded specifically as a folkish group by Stephen McNallen in the mid-1980s, primarily to combat the rise of "universalist" Asatru as represented by the Ring of Troth organization, now The Troth. (See my book Being Viking for more discussion of this history.)  For the AFA, this has come to mean "white Americans" in particular. So they have always been attractive to working-class people with a racial or a racist worldview. Since 2016, the AFA under Matt Flavel has been very open about this and has sought to raise its profile on the far-right, by appearing on far-right internet shows and courting white nationalist groups.

However, the AFA has always presented itself as a family-oriented religious group, a church so to speak. That is, it has never been a skin-head group like the Hamerskins, nor a militia like the 3 Percenters, nor a far-right white nationalist group like the KKK or Proud Boys, nor a neo-nazi group like the National Socialist Movement. 

Babitz (on the right in cowboy hat)
at the AFA New Mexico moot

Babitz is actually pictured as a family man on the AFA social media in a photo of the New Mexico moot on July 1,2024. The photo shows two seemingly happy families enjoying a social event. The photo tones down, or even washes out the white supremacist and violent felon image of Babitz. This is in keeping with the AFA ethos. The photo in no way signals what Babitz was about to do one month later. (The day that Babitz cut off his ankle bracelet and began his crime spree, he actually left a note on the door of his home stating that his wife knew nothing about what he was about to do.) 

Babitz likely made contact with the AFA while in prison and formalized that connection after his release on parole. I believe that he became a part of the AFA in his attempt to re-enter society, jump start his family life, and stay straight. But in the end he couldn't hack it - he ditched his family, went on a drug-fueled crime spree, murdered an innocent man, and significantly embarassed the AFA.

When Stephen McNallen talked about "coming home" to Asatru - he had in mind middle-class white American families. McNallen started his Asatru Community Church in a branch of the local library, after all! That says a lot about his intended audience. He believed in mainlining Asatru for the average white American nuclear family. 

Matt Flavel, the current Alsherjargothi of the AFA, has a slightly different idea. For him, "coming home" refers to the "lost" boys - down-and-out young white Americans with racist tendencies who are struggling with life, who can't hold a job, who struggle socially, perhaps have been in prison or in racist groups. Coming home means finding the AFA, entering a community that will accept and affirm them, that will give them a structure, a sense of meaning and community, order and purpose, help them get on their feet, find a job, start a family, and become a productive and contributing member of society. And the AFA hofs serve as these regional face-to-face communities where people can come and connect with a strong community of "like-minded" others. Probably, Flavel sees himself and his own life trajectory in that story. This means that the AFA is reaching out and taking risks with people on the margins, with racist, violent, and criminal histories. They see those lost, overlooked whites as their own people. They believe that Asatru can help. They see the struggles and criminality in part as a result of anti-white sentiment in America - that America has turned against white people, especially working class whites. That is part of the social narrative the AFA is telling. Largely, this strategy has been successful for the AFA - many of their members were struggling, lost in life, then found the AFA and are doing better. 

So the AFA became that for Babitz - a struggling guy who wanted to go straight. He evidently had someone in the AFA vouching for him, to account for his rapid appointment into an entry-level leadership position. The apprentice Folkbuilder in the AFA is sort of a test-run, trial position. So I think that the AFA was trying to help Babitz aspire to a better life. But obviously, they misjudged him and couldn't really help him. This can happen to an organization that is expanding too rapidly and promoting marginal people into leadership positions without significant vetting and time. 

Review of Eruption by Michael Crichton and James Patterson

My phone camera is done

This month our book club read Eruption, by Michael Crichton and James Patterson.

To a great extent the book reads like a screenplay. Short chapters sketch out the action, each ending with a small cliffhanger of some sort. It is a thriller and much of the action is compelling, with some intense and engaging descriptions of volcanic eruptions, fiery death, and havoc. The pace of the novel is inescapable, with an "hours until eruption" countdown at the top of most chapters. Of course, it is not just the eruption that drives the plot. There is a military cover-up that amps up the stakes to an apocalyptic level, the fate of all life on the planet hangs in the balance. 

Only a few heroic characters stand in between us and the impending destruction. These heroes are made for the movies, as Rob Merrill writes in his AP review, "The book’s characters are straight out of central casting."  Ron Charles' review in The Washington Post points out that the "casting suggestions are embedded right in the text," which at various moments compares characters to a certain generation of movie stars like George Clooney, Pierce Brosnan, and Halle Berry. The protagonist is the passionate, no-nonsense, chief scientist of the Hawaii Volcano Observatory, John MacGregor, aka Mac, who has a soft heart for those he loves. He teams up with the rugged, take-charge General Rivers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who has flown to Hawai'i to coordinate the disaster response. The beautiful but overlooked planetary scientist Jenny Kimura hangs around in the background waiting for moments to console love-interest Mac. And so on, with a host of other made-for-cinema characters including a young, gorgeous demolitions expert; a young, gorgeous NYT reporter; and a few young, handsome Hawaiian surfers ready for a few scenes catching the waves on Hilo beach.

The book becomes more interesting if we turn to some questions that can be raised adjacent to the storyline. Here are a couple I've been thinking about that tie into religion:

This is a doomsday story about the impending destruction of the world - literally a fire and brimstone scenario of biblical proportions that is about to be unleashed on humanity. It is an apocalyptic story. While the eruption of the volcano is a natural phenomenon, it enacts a sort of justice on human foolishness and hubris. The volcano chasers - arrogant, rich, attention-seeking dilettantes - are the first to go in a morality play sort of way. But the potential for worldwide destruction is the result of a military experiment-gone-wrong. Hidden away on the slope of Mauna Kea are hundreds of canisters of a secret military herbicide code-named Agent Black, an unstable chemical agent that makes Agent Orange look like Kool-Aid. Contact with the lava would release a chemical plume so toxic that it would contaminate the entire globe and wipe out all life on earth. The impending apocalypse draws this human flaw into focus, this sin of military-industrial hubris, the urge to control and to wield death as we would choose, now threatens all life. 

This really is the religio-ethical function of apocalyptic literature - to draw attention to the sins, flaws, immorality that we tend to overlook or accept as normal, especially the structural and systemic conditions that subjugate, dehumanize, and inflict suffering on common people. Apocalypse pulls back the veil of normality and reveals the hidden ethical tensions, the fatal flaws -  that are embedded in human societies. Apocalypse reveals how power is distributed and flows in ways that perpetuate injustice, violence, and evil. By revealing and condemning these inequities, forecasting their imminent destruction, apocalyptic literature calls us to pay attention to our social injustices in one way or another. Too bad this book will be taken for simply a thriller and its implicit critique of the military-industrial complex and the long-term global environmental damage we have done will be ignored or lost to most of its audience. Likely, it will not compel its white conservative American readers to take stock, reject militarism, acknowledge the real environmental crisis we have created, and to come together around real solutions and social change.

The second religious theme is that of animism. The book explores or at least references a good deal of volcano and earth science, very interesting stuff. The use of popular fiction to explore science along with its triumphant and horrific implications is Crichton's specialty. However, the book also puts forward the possibility that despite everything the scientists know, there is another way to look at the volcano, another frame of reference that is preserved in the animism of the Native Hawai'ians. The best description of animism comes in a conversation among the Native youth surfers as they argue about who really knows about the volcano. Lono, a Native teenager who is mentored by Mac the chief scientist of the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory, takes the side of science but not without some cognitive dissonance. 

    "I know what I heard and what I saw," Lono said. "These guys are scientists. They know what they're talking about" 

    "Haole scientists," Dennis said. (1)

    "I'm telling you, they were talking about something loa big," Lono said. "And loa bad." (2)

    Lono, kama'aina like his friends, knew all the myths and legends about volcanoes, the way old people like Dennis Lee's grandmother thought of them as powerful living creatures who were not to be interfered with for fear of their response. (3)

    (Crichton/Patterson, Eruption, 168-69, italics are in the original text)

I bought this poster of Pele, by Herb Kawainui Kāne, 

when I was at Hawai'i Volcanoes National Park in 1995.

This short passage is not a bad description of animism. The Native elders (aka Dennis Lee's grandmother) are the keepers of traditional knowledge. They comprehend and relate to the volcano not as a thing and not through the physical data of science but as a person, a being. To them, the volcano is "a powerful living creature" as Crichton/Patterson puts it (although I would use the term "being" instead of "creature" - the volcano is a goddess, a creator more than a creature.) This description is consistent with animism and works better than the older terminology of "spirit" or "spirit being" which tends to overly spiritualize the sacred being as somehow otherworldly or ethereal.) We are not talking about a spirit that lives in the volcano, but the volcano itself in the world as a being of immense power, presence, and agency capable of giving and creating land and life and also capable of acts of great, cataclysmic destruction and violence. The human beings dwell on the island with this powerful living being, in the presence of and in relationship to her. In the course of this relating, this powerful being is sometimes thought of and addressed as the goddess Pele. She is the volcano, or the volcano is the embodied aspect of Pele. 

Despite this quick glance, the book missed the opportunity to present a more robust and compelling picture of animism. None of the main characters expresses or supports an animistic view. The passage relegates the animist perspective (rather than entrusts it) to a very minor character's grandmother who never actually appears in the book. In a later passage,  animism appears again, in the one brief appearance of Lono's fundamentalist, anti-science, fatalistic Native mother. Despite the impending danger, she "stubbornly refused" to listen to reason and evacuate. (Eruption, 400) Note that the  authors use the word "refused" three times in a row here to characterize Lono's animistic mother as both ignorant and contrary). Instead of evacuating in the face of imminent danger, she tells her son:

    "The goddess has always provided for us . . . . It is Pele's will at work now. Not mine or yours. Not your friend Dr. MacGregor's."

    "Are you saying it's her will for us to stay and die in this house?" Lono asked.

    "You must have faith," she said. "You were raised in the ways of the natural world, and you were also raised in the ways of the spiritual world."

    But I'm growing up in the world of science, he wanted to tell her. In the real world.

(Eruption, 401, italics are in the original text.)

      

This passage seems wildly out of touch with the actual lived animism of Native Hawai'ian people. This artificial conflict between "faith" and "science" is more characteristic of the conservative Christian stance against evolution, and even there it is more nuanced. Unfortunately, Native Hawai'ians have been characterized frequently and unfairly in this way. During the protests against the Thirty Meter Telescope on the slope of Mauna Kea where so much of this book takes place, scientists called the protestors “a horde of native Hawaiians” and wrote stupid things like "It seems to me that it's an argument about returning to the stone age versus understanding our universe and it'll be interesting to see who wins in the end." Yet as Native spokespeople made clear: "The conflict was never between our culture and western science,” said Wong-Wilson, who is executive director of the Lālākea Foundation, a group of cultural and spiritual practitioners. “We’re as fascinated with our view of the heavens, our view of constellations, and our relationship [with them] from the Native perspective as anything.” Rather, she said, the issue was “the use of particular areas of land, of which there may be conflicting interests.” 

Ultimately, there are no strong or compelling Native Hawai'ian voices in the story, even though the book is set in the geographical heart of Native activism in Hawai'i. The traditional Native religious perspective is circumscribed and misrepresented despite the fact that Maua Kea has been the site of Native activism and organizing for years and despite the many articulate explanations of Native Hawai'ian spirituality. Yes, the Thirty Meter Telescope protests occurred from 2014-22 and Crichton died in 2008, so his original story predates that event. But Patterson's rewrite could do a lot more to frame the story in light of Native Hawaiian worldview, religion, and resistance. Yes, the novel includes a protest in Hilo - but it is quickly coopted by the two main haole characters - the scientist Mac and the army general Rivers, whose voices and perspectives dominant this book, subverting the alternative visions, identities, and solutions of Native people and religions. 

Notes:

1. The Hawai'ian language term haole emphasizes that these are white scientists, outsiders, who shouldn't be completely trusted.

2. Loa is an important Hawai'ian concept of distance and measurement. After reading this article, I think it is communicating the sense of something cosmic, an event with a magnitude that transcends human comprehension and scale, beyond the human ability to control and handle. It signifies the sacred nature of the volcano and the magnitude of its agency.

3. Kama'aina literally "child of the land" refers to those native to the Hawai'ian islands. According to Kiope Raymond at the University of Hawai'i, the word carries connotations of the Native Hawai'ian animistic relationship to the kalo plant, from which the Hawai'ian staple food, poi, is made.

Ecosystems: Dune vs Fantastic Beasts

My family are fans of the Wizarding World of Harry Potter. My children grew up reading the books and watching the movies repeatedly. I have also watched the movies and read a few of the books. We have always enjoyed the world that J.K. Rowling created and continues to develop. 

I was excited about the Fantastic Beasts movies and enjoyed them. The animal theme was particularly appealing. There were so many animals and plants in the original novels of which we only get quick glimpses or brief interactions. This is an entire dimension of the Wizarding World that could be explored. 

But something always seemed missing. I was disappointed that the beasts - the animals who inhabit this world - were not really the point. While the various creatures take on a larger role, more screen time, than in the original movies, they are still a sideshow to the primary plot and the human characters. The creatures provide entertaining and comical episodes. They provide moments of the  sublime, wonder, and amazement. They provide help to the characters at important moments of the story. But they are always ancillary to the human characters.

In addition, the human-animal relationships never sat well with me. The creatures are primarily kept in the protagonist Newt Scamander's suitcase, which is something like a magical zoo. The scenes inside the suitcase are remarkable - it is a whole dimensional space with multiple rooms or ecostyems for the various animals. Ostensibly, their confinement in the case is for their safety. And one of the subplots of Fantastic Beasts (okay, it is not really a plot, it simply provides the reason or motive for Scamander to be in the United States) that is Scamander has rescued Frank the Thunderbird from animal traffickers and is transporting the Thunderbird back to the American Southwest in order to release him into his native habitat. All that is fine. But the reality is that most of the animals are kept in the suitcase. One of the repetitive themes in the movie involves the various creatures escaping from the suitcase. Scamander is always tracking them down to recapture them and put them back in the case.   

Maud Dib, the desert mouse from Dune

While listening to the Imaginary Worlds podcast, I realized something else that was missing from Fantastic Beasts. The world is truncated, without well developed ecosystems in which these animals live. The podcast episode was actually about Dune and the fictional ecology of the desert planet that Frank Herbert created. The podcast episode quotes Veronika Kratz, now a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of English at Queen's University in Ontario, Canada. She admires how Frank Herbert was able to create and portray a complex ecosystem in Dune.     "I think that just that representation of a complex ecosystem is something that in my mind very few authors have done, period. Even still today. That development of a really complex world that feels lived in, that feels . . . and not just lived in by people, but by lots of different creatures and lots of different forms of life and that its changing and evolving. That's something that's really hard to capture. And most writers, when creating fictional ecosystems especially, often don't bother. You''ll find really simplified ecosystems."  Imaginary Worlds, "The Ecology of Dune," 19:02-45

Kratz pinpoints the larger problem with Fantastic Beasts. There is no attention to the worlds of these animals and the ecosystems of which they are apart. No animal can live without its ecosystem. We tend to abstract animals from their ecosystems - but in reality no animal can thrive or perhaps survive for long apart from its place in the ecosystem. The animal and the ecosystem are intertwined. But in Fantastic Beasts, the ecosystems are not developed. For all the love that Nest Scamander has for these animals, he is still a collector. The animals are abstracted from the enivroment, confined in the suitcase, and live truncated lives in a human-oriented world. The animals and their worlds are missing and that made the movies feel disappointing.

Perhaps that is a lesson for us - a glimpse into the shrinking worlds of wild animals. As we continue to massively alter global ecosystems, the animals who will survive are those who can adapt to living within the human-oriented world and ecosystems that are radically changed by human interventions and interference. 

Can Horror Serve as Lament?

Why aren't the dead mourned in horror?  In horror, the focus is on surviving, on not being dead - so the camera and the audience's attention quickly moves off the dead and onto the living, the survivors. In some way, death makes the dead impure and survivors must flee, distance themselves from the dead unless they too end up dead.

Horror often moves fast - to stay alive, you have to be one step ahead of the killer - so one cannot linger with the dead. Consider this scene from The Walking Dead, Season 1, Episode 5 in which Andrea's younger sister - an innocent - falls prey when the camp is over run by a zombie horde. Andrea kneels over her sister, mourning her death. "Amy, I am sorry," she says "for not ever being there. I always thought there would be more time." But there simply isn't time. The mourning turns into horror as Amy gradually revives. First a soft breathing, then the reanimated corpse slowly almost tenderly raises her arms as if to embrace Andrea, then snarling and attacking as a fleshing-eating zombie. Andrea pulls out a pistol, whispers "I love you" as she shoots her zombie sister in the head. 

(Caveat: In the full scene, Andrea is actually granted much more time to mourn - an uncomfortable and excessive amount of time for some of the group. She sits with her sister's corpse for hours, maybe a whole day or more, holding a sort of vigil. In fact, the group is busy burying other dead people, not wanting these deaths to be unrecognized and devoid of sentiment. The group grants her and themselves some time and space to mourn. But only contingently - they hover around her in their nervous distress, interrupting politely but insistently to hurry her up, to end the delay, so the group can move on. Everyone knows that the sister's corpse will turn into a zombie sooner or later.)  

Here we see both the theme of impurity -- the sister's corpse is infected, impure, it must be destroyed. To live means to separate from it, to avoid being infected by it. The dead are contamination, waste material. There is also the theme of haste - there is no time to mourn because this must be dealt with immediately, lingering makes us all more vulnerable. Perhaps mourning is ultimately stupid or misguided from an existential perspective because the person is no longer there and what returns is a threat. 

At time in horror, the dead are protrayed as responsible for or at fault for their demise. If they had been smarter, faster, stronger, more observant, more ethical then perhaps they would have avoided death. The silly frivolous sexually promiscuous teenagers of the Halloween and Friday the 13th films may be examples of this. The victims in these slasher films tend to be those engaged in "illicit sex, illegal drugs, and general adolescent irresponsibility" while the "final girl" fights back, fortified "because she represses these very impulses and desires, in particular, retaining her virginity. . . .Abstinence and rectitude evidently give final girls the power to fight back and survive" (Rick Worland, The Horror Film: An Introduction, 228-29). Their death is a judgment, the killer's vengeance is something like a secular wrath of God that is visited upon the sexually immoral. Jess Peacock writes "In the world of Friday the 13th where teens take drugs, engage in wanton sex, and…gasp…go skinny dipping, Jason Voorhees appears as a nightmarish fundamentalist Christian champion, God’s unstoppable angel of Death. He imposes judgment on those who fail to sprinkle their door with the blood of moral uprightness. He is the arrow straining against Jonathan Edwards’ righteous bow [referencing his sermon "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God"]. In these examples, the dead aren't mourned, cannot be mourned, because they just got what they deserved.

This theme came up in a question I was asked at the AAR in San Antonio. In Old Gods of Appalachia Season 1, Episode 2,  a group of African-American workers are brought into Barlo, Kentucky to break the strike at the Old Number Seven mine. These workers are all killed in the mine explosion. In my reading, the podcast portrays these strike-breakers in a sympathetic light. They are victims of the merciless capitalist system, exploited workers reduced to a state of inhumane vulnerability without protection, dignity, or even names. The podcast portrays their deaths and their subsequent internment in anonymous mass graves as a moral offense. 

At the AAR Religion and Science Fiction session, the questioner asked me if this portrayal was nuanced by the moral complexity or culpability of the scab. The questioner referenced Jack London's short essay "The Scab," in his book War of the Classes, which presents the scab as a traitor, worse than Judas. "When a striker kills with a brick the man who has taken his place, he has no sense of wrong-doing.  In the deepest holds of his being, though he does not reason the impulse, he has an ethical sanction. . . . In addition to the use of bricks, clubs, and bullets, the selfish laborer finds it necessary to express his feelings in speech. . . . the selfish laborer applies the opprobrious epithet a 'scab' to the laborer who takes from him food and shelter by being more generous in the disposal of his labor power." Following Jack London, the questioner was asking if the scab is morally at fault? Not just a victim of capitalism, but someone who has chosen a morally wrong path--the scab is essentially stealing someone's job, stealing the food from off their family dinner table. Thus, the violence perpetrated on the scab is simply justified as retribution or justice. Much like Michael Meyers, the scabs receive their due by dying in the mine explosion.

But all this made me ask "Can horror help us to see the dead in new ways? Can horror serve as lament?" 

In Old Gods, the scabs return as zombies "burned Things" and destroy Barlo, tearing the entire town down. At first, I thought this was a type of justice, vengeance for the town's treatment of them. But I don't think so - even in their death, these zombie scabs can't escape their exploitation. Revived as zombies, they continue to serve the interests of the Dark, tortured and exploited even in death, given no rest, perpetrating even more horror on the town and people of Barlo.  

Why aren't they mourned? Why doesn't Old Gods take a moment to stand at the mass grave of these exploited workers and lament? It was a missed opportunity in Old Gods - these scabs come back as zombies to wreck the town, to take vengeance, and to enact a sort of moral accounting for their deaths. But there is no sense of memorializing them. Perhaps Old Gods could have taken time to treat these workers with more complexity and compassion, to tell those stories or to erect a virtual monument to the memory of those who died in the mines. However, there isn't really any lingering with these dead. There is a buildup of moral outrage, but not a transformation in the audience's perspective.

Image #1: AI image generated by Bing Copilot Designer with the prompt "mourner standing by a lonely overgrown grave in the woods dark colors drawing sketch pastels"

Image #2: AI image generated by Bing Copilot Designer with the prompt "worn overgrown gravestone cemetery gloomy trees mourner standing laying flowers crying sketch drawing black and white"

The Blue Line Project, Circular Church in Charleston, SC

 Almost every year at our academic conference, someone brings up the relevancy of these meetings. Are we just talking without any effect? In our Religion and Nature section, we are trying to make connections to local activists and eco-justice projects. It is something that we have been thinking about for a couple years and I was able to pull it off this year.

Circular Church,
Charleston, SC
photo by author

I just started searching the internet for churches and community groups in Charleston, SC that were doing work in environmental justice. I found Circular Church, a UCC congregation pastored by Jeremy Rutledge who did his doctoral work in religious naturalism. The church has its own Climate Work Group and also participates in the Charleston Area Justice Ministry. Pastor Rutledge as keen to be involved, so things started tracking from there.

On its historic campus downtown, Circular Church has set up a Blue Line Project that shows anticipated sea level rise and storm surge. As the church website states, "Blue Line Projects are found around the world in coastal communities seeking to draw attention to the climate crisis. Many blue lines mark the height to which sea levels are expected to rise."

Circular's blue line marks the height of the storm surge if the 1989 Hurricane Hugo were to land in Charleston again. Hurricane Hugo was a big and devastating storm. Of course, the reality is that with climate change and rising ocean temperatures, storms are becoming bigger, more powerful and dangerous. The next hurricane to land in Charleston may indeed be worse than Hugo. 

Circular's Blue Line Project is pretty modest, to be sure. It consists of four small informational placards, and future storm surge levels marked on the wall of one of the church buildings. 

What do you think about this as 1) a type of environmental justice action, and 2) as a religious practice?

The religious and the environmental are not separate of course - the blue line project is both. As the signs indicate, this awareness of climate change and its impact arises from the religious and ethical imperative to love the world and care for the neighbor.

Blue Line Project at Circular Church,
photos by author

As a religious practice, the signs serve as reminders of what or where one's core ethical commitments should be. 

As people - congregation members or visitors - walk through the historic cemetery surrounding the church, they have the opportunity to be aware of the place where they are - note how the placards point out that Charleston is particularly at risk, how "you are standing at 10.4 feet above sea level" on the church campus, how the public housing projects - such as the one by Gadsden Creek - are in lower-lying areas. 

So it is a very place-based sort of approach. The blue line project is a sort of augmented reality. It overlays a future potentiality onto the present. By marking potential storm surge, the blue line asks us to see the place from a different perspective. It's not "what if" but "when this place is underwater." Can you see the place with this in mind. If you have that awareness of "when," the inevitability of that, then how does that change the way you live in the place now?

In The Location of Religion, Kim Knott writes about the simultaneity of space - that spaces are "synchronically dynamic because at any time they are overlapping, co-existent, in parallel with other spaces, and because they are internally in tension, being made up of multiple, contested, real, and imagined sites and relations." Synchronous spaces, she writes, "contain the past within them" like a palimpset (Knott, 23).

But they may also contain the future within them. Or potential futures that can be marked or indicated in certain ways. And that is how I understand the blue line project. It indicates this simultaneity of space - that both the past - like Hurricane Hugo - and potential futures - like devastating storm surge - are present, contained within the space in the present, all simultaneously experienced if we can become aware of it. As Knott points out, these are not "layers" like a slice through time, but the "dynamic and simultaneous coexistence of social relations" in that space (Knott, 20).