On Wrecking of Online Conversation Spaces by Trolls: Recent Commentary

Because I happen to have run across two very good pieces of commentary in the past day or so, about how trolls are trashing open discussion spaces online and causing some news sites to shut down their commentary threads, I commented on this topic on Facebook today. I thought some readers of Bilgrimage might be interested in what I had to say.

Historical Memory and Political Imagination: "When the Discourse of Politics Amounts to a Choice Between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton"

What's that I hear you say? More history, please! Or perhaps I'm hearing, at this far distance through the ether of cyberspace, the sound of only one hand clapping as I bring up the topic of history again.

As I was recently telling my friend Alan of the excellent Hepzibah blog (it's in the blog list here), history fascinates me because of how it undercuts the predictability of our expectations about the present and the future. Many historical narratives certainly do seek to smooth out the wild unpredictability, the stubborn odd facticity and givenness of history as it actually unfolded, but those flattening narratives are commonly superimposed on historical events that are far from smooth or flat.

Nicola Denzey's The Bone Gatherers: The Lost Worlds of Early Christian Women — Book Notes

My last posting was, in some respects, a piece of historiographical commentary. It was a meditation of sorts on how historians might face the challenge of the lacunae, the aporias, the silences (along with the lies and secrets, to echo Adrienne Rich) buried within historical documents, artifacts, texts, etc. My posting pointed you to a recent Salon essay by openly gay Irish novelist Colm Tóibín in which he argues that the pro-marriage equality side prevailed in the Irish referendum about same-sex marriage because gay Irish people — and the families of gay Irish people — chose to make themselves visible in a new way in Irish society, so that many of their fellow citizens could fill in a blank that had not been filled in previously, and recognize that they knew gay people, that they had close ties to families with gay sons, daughters, brothers, sisters, fathers, and mothers. Tóibín's essay is an excerpt from his foreword to a forthcoming book by Charlie Bird — A Day in May (Dublin: Merrion, June 2016)— about how the marriage equality battle was won in Ireland.

More Commentary on Pope Francis and Women Deacons: Jamie Manson and Mary Hunt — "He Believes That God Simply Cannot Work Through the Female Body in the Way in Which God Works through the Male Body"

Here are two more pieces of good commentary I'd like to recommend to you, regarding the discussion of the possibility of studying the place of women deacons in the Catholic church and Pope Francis's recent remarks to a group of women religious about this. I discussed this topic last week.

Sharing Our Life as Theology: Another Videotaped Theological Conversation with Ivone Gebara, About Diarmaid MaCulloch's Silence, Christian Amnesia, and Gospel Mandate for Inclusivity

I've previously shared with you two videotaped conversations that I had the honor of having in the past year with the distinguished Brazilian theologian Ivone Gebara (here and here). As I noted when I shared these videos, Mark Shumway and Rachel Fitzgerald Shumway, who maintain the evolving deep forms blog, organized and videotaped these conversations (with expert technical assistance from Mark's son Chris Shumway and Rachel and Ivone's friend Marlene Denardo, who speaks Portuguese and helped facilitate the conversation when Ivone and I needed her wonderful linguistic skills).

Diarmaid MacCulloch Again, on How Anger of Aggrieved Heterosexual Males Drives Many Christian Churches Today

As I think about the firing of Tony Spence of Catholic News Service this past week and about the underlying heterosexist and male-privileged worldview that the all-male ordained leaders of the Catholic church keep defending as recently as the document Amoris Laetitia, as I look at the wave of hot male anger feeding the campaign of Mr. Trump in the U.S., and as I think about the ugly spate of hateful legislation targeting LGBTQ people now pouring forth in one legislature after another, the following passages from Diarmaid MacCulloch's Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years (NY: Penguin, 2009), which I've shared with you previously, keep ringing in my ears:

"There Is Almost Complete Silence on Homosexuality" in Amoris Laetitia: There's Silence and Then There's Silence — Interpreting the Silence of Amoris Laetitia About LGBTQ Lives

So, silence. What to do about silence? Massimo Faggioli writes about Amoris Laetitia, 

Diarmaid MacCulloch on Historians, Silence, and Sexual Orientation: "As a Gay Child and Teenager, I Also Effortlessly Developed . . . An Observer Status"

A few days ago, I made some connections between Diarmaid MacCulloch's book Silence: A Christian History (NY: Penguin, 2013), which I had just finished reading, and the silencing of abuse survivor Peter Saunders by the Vatican abuse commission, which has expelled him for speaking out about the inaction of Pope Francis vis-a-vis clerical abuse of minors and its cover-up. An interesting theme of Silence, and of MacCulloch's work as an historian in general, is how his growing up gay (and the son of an Anglican parson) informs his work as an historian.

Peter Saunders, Member of Vatican Abuse Commission, Silenced, and I Finish Reading Diarmaid MacCulloch's Silence: A Christian History: Making the Connections

Silences such as Christian involvement in child abuse, anti-Semitism, slave-owning, demand constant rupture. On such noise does the health of Christian society depend. 

~ Diarmaid MacCulloch, Silence: A Christian History (NY: Penguin, 2013), p. 216.

Diarmaid MacCulloch on Anger of Heterosexual Men Driving Religious Conservatism, and Mess Anglican Leaders Have Made for Themselves

I've shared these observations with you in the past. I think it might be helpful now to gather them together in one posting, following the recent decision of Primates 2016 to discipline the Episcopal Church USA for its full embrace of LGBT human beings as children of God equal to other children of God. These are three incisive statements by a member of Oxford's Faculty of Theology and Religion, historian Diarmaid MacCulloch. MacCulloch grew up in the household of an Anglican parson. He also happens to be openly gay.

Theological Roots of Bitter Battle of Some Christians Against LGBT Rights: The Bible Can't Be Wrong (We Can't Be Wrong, and Heterosexual Men Rule)

Here's a set of interlocking observations that, to my mind, share a common theme: 1) a comment an Episcopal priest made to me yesterday about why some streams of Christianity are so adamant today in their opposition to LGBT rights; 2) Diarmaid MacCulloch on the same topic and how it's all about shoring up the supremacy of heterosexual males; 3) David Marr's commentary on why the Australian Catholic bishops are bitterly opposed to legalization of same-sex marriage; and 4) Fred Clark's account of the baffling determination of some U.S. white evangelicals to continue, generation after generation, choosing the wrong side of the moral arc of history in battles for human rights:

Historian Diarmaid MacCulloch on Why Angry Conservatism Characterizes Many Religions Today: It's About Threatened Heterosexual Male Power and Privilege

The graphic should enlarge if you click it. And I want to add a note of gratitude to Rachel Fitzgerald for recommending Diarmaid MacCulloch's work to me.