Welcome back.

In this issue

• Saint Francis and John Wayne (and a motorcycle)

• Ornithopoetics, entomontology, paleoneurofuturism and other scholarly pursuits

• Math rock lullabies

• Goats

• Reader contests

• Hester Chester, Reuben Rawbone and Comfort Cripes

Haiku

The woodpecker’s frame
Buckles like summer lightning
In hungry rhythm

Gleaming treetop songs
Alight on the next tree’s branch,
Quiver in the cool

From restless rushes
And grass, does a bittern watch,
Concealed in stillness?

Saint Francis, John Wayne, evangelicals and authenticity

I recently wrote a piece for Anxious Bench summarizing my thesis exploring evangelical appropriation and interpretation of the most famous of medieval saints, Saint Francis of Assisi. You can read it here. In two sentences: evangelical leaders from the 1970s onward began adopting St. Francis as their own. Their divergent (and selective) interpretations of the saint reflected differing values within splintering evangelical networks, but shared the idea that St. Francis represented an authentic Christianity.

The field of scholarship of 20th- and 21st-century evangelicalism has exploded since I was in school. I’m currently playing catch-up. Unsurprisingly, many recent scholars have sought to make sense of the overwhelming white American evangelical support for Trump by looking at the history of issues of race, conservative politicking, gender, anti-intellectualism, and cultural alienation among American evangelicals. Kristin Kobes Du Mez’s excellent Jesus and John Wayne is likely the best known of these histories. Du Mez explores the popular entrenched tough-guy evangelicalism, willing to tolerate (and even celebrate) misogyny and violence for the sake of winning. Think the Francis Schaeffers and Jerry Falwells and Tim Lahayes and James Dobsons and Mark Driscolls: the loud, angry faces of public evangelicalism.

This is a very different evangelical culture from what the writers and leaders who admired St. Francis were trying to promote (for the most part). So, what does Saint Francis have to do with John Wayne? What does “Praised be You, my Lord, through Sister Mother Earth“ have to do with “I’m the stuff men are made of”? Are Du Mez and I even talking about the same evangelicalism?

One difference is source selection. The nature of my topic limited me to historically-engaged evangelical thought leaders or young evangelicals disenchanted with megachurches and the religious right or others who simply liked St. Francis. I studied the more moderate strains of evangelicalism closest to my own past, a milieu represented well by Molly Worthen’s history of evangelical intellectual life, Apostles of Reason, or by the internationalist evangelicals covered in David Swartz’s Facing West (mentioned in the last issue). A few of Du Mez’s characters show up in my thesis, but often as foils for the evangelicals talking about creation care, mystical experience, nonviolence, or Christian community. Since reading Jesus and John Wayne, I’ve been thinking about how my own experience of a bit more cosmopolitan evangelicalism shapes the way I’ve studied the movement. (I’ve also been reflecting on how this John Wayne-style faith was never far away, even if it didn’t capture my interest). So who is a quintessential evangelical? If the voting booth is the guide, Du Mez is spot on. If Christian college contemplative prayer retreats are the guide, then my thesis comes closer. These may be two edges of a large movement, but Du Mez’s subjects have had much greater influence on the centre.

I also think that evangelicals (and people in general) are not consistent, or not very pigeonholeable. Apparently irreconcilable ideas can happily coexist in one mind. Francis Schaeffer, the ideological father of the religious right, wrote an environmentalist book. Some of the same college kids in the aughts listened to Mark Driscoll’s hypermasculine hellfire sermons and admired Shane Claiborne’s stories about peace activism and working with Mother Teresa.

The John Wayne evangelicals and the Saint Francis evangelicals (and the others) may have one thing in common: an overriding concern for “authenticity.” Preaching to birds, joyfully praising God, and stripping naked in front of family and the town bishop to wed lady poverty can be authentic. So can telling it like it is and shooting first. Authenticity knows no moral code and is a surprisingly slippery thing to pin down. The subjects in my thesis basically all agreed that St. Francis was an authentic Christian (and used that word often), but their versions of the saint differed wildly. As many evangelicals have moved toward holistic, this-worldly, pop therapeutic, and “authentic” views of the self, is it too surprising to find John Wayne lurking nearby, saddled up and ready to raise hell?

OK… no more evangelical historiography for a couple of newsletter issues. Probably.

The definitive ranked guide to time signatures

1. 7/8 A drummer’s delight! The unexpected metre keeps a song cruising forward in style. You can unexpectedly drop a bit at the end of the usual 8 beats or go for a driving quarter-quater-quarter-1/8 note rest-quarter-quarter-quarter-1/8 note rest rhythm that aims to please. 7 works for Anathallo in “Dokkoise House,” for meletron solos on the bridge of never-ending prog rock songs, and a very satisfying Frère Jacques. The biblically perfect number.

2. 6/8. The crooning ballad of time signatures, sure to get you swaying, possibly crying, definitely feeling strong things. Perfect for when you don’t want the world to see you, cause you don’t think that they’d understand.

3. 5/8 and 5/4. This spritely signature will carry you on a lopsided Mission-Impossible gallop into psychedelic jazz-rock. Plus, “Take 5” is a great jazz tune and Big Red Machine makes 5 sound so smooth (thanks Joel).

4. 7/4. It’s 7/8 if it could win a Grammy.* Think “Money,” “All You Need Is Love,” “Solsbury Hill” and the bridge of “Heart of Glass.”

5. 4/4. Often neglected, some are unaware of the major hits in 4/4 time, including “Intergalectic” by the Beastie Boys, “War (What is it Good For?)” by the Temptations, and “Who Let the Dogs Out?”.

6. 9/8. Are you looking for extra in life? Do you like just a little too much of a good thing? Or do you prefer everything tripled? Try 9.

7. 3/4. What makes waltzes and oom-pa-pas so fun? 3/4 is what!

8. 2/4. This is mostly for country dance music, double time marches, and 50-second hardcore punk songs. When you’re in the mood to polka…

9. 13/16. This is hard to do.

10. 12/8. A poor attempt to spell out jazz rhythm for people who don’t have that swing.

11. 18’ & 3/16”. It’s time that Canada switched to metric measurements for wood cuts.

Preparing for this list unearthed this fantastic collection of soothing math-rock/jazz/electronic instrumental nursery rhymes. I am impressed.

*For my Canadian friends: the Grammys are the American version of the Junos.

Reader contests: Name that field of study! Find that goat!

My friends, this interdisciplinary age of ethnomusicology and bioinformatics calls for ever more academic super groups. What two (or more) disciplines belong together? Does something entirely new need studying? The best new discipline name wins. A (brief) elaboration is appreciated. Here’s my entry:

• Gastroepistemology: “When you know it in your gut.”

Please send me your ideas!

Additionally, Dave (who is responsible for the newsletter’s return) would like you to find all of the animals in this overhead picture of his hobby farm. The reader who finds the true number is the winner. Hint: this is an absolutely unfair trick question. Just guessing a number might be a safer bet than counting. But, ya know, giv’r anyway, hey?

Quakers and their names

A scholar recently shared an accumulated list of names of 17th- and 18th-century Quakers that she came across while writing her thesis. Aspiring and expecting parents, please consider bringing these back.

Stuff of the issue

• Onomatopoeia: Flit

• Bird insult: Lesser White-fronted Goose

• Book: Salman Rushdie – Haroun and the Sea of Stories

• Highbrow takedown: “Anyway, at this point I shall largely leave the new atheists, fundamentalists of every adherence, and Intelligent Design theorists all to their own devices, and perhaps to one another, and wish them all well, and hope that they do not waste too much time chasing after one another in circles.” – David Bentley Hart, 2013

• Saw: Table

• Song: Wilson Pickett – “Land of 1,000 Dances”

• Birding hotspot: Goat River Road, Creston, BC

-Paul&