17AR22-14

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AR 22:14 - Islam's "Romeo in a turban"

In this issue:

EVANGELICALISM - new secular book "certain to be a standard text for understanding" the movement

ISLAM - Quick! Name the Muslim who's "one of the best-selling poets in the United States"

Apologia Report 22:14 (1,334)

April 5, 2017

EVANGELICALISM

The Evangelicals: The Struggle to Shape America, by Frances FitzGerald [1] -- Shelf Awareness <www.goo.gl/1XbOQ7> notes that FitzGerald only covers "white evangelical movements in the United States" while locating "some of the deepest roots of U.S. culture in the two Protestant revivals of the 18th and early 19th centuries. ... Their version of Christianity dominated the U.S. for a hundred years and 'brought a populist anti-intellectual strain into American Protestantism....'"

It was evangelicalism that evolved in "reaction to forms of Christianity that emphasized strict church hierarchies and a vengeful, disapproving God who doomed most of humanity to hell...." Uh huh.

At least Library Journal's Prepub Alert (Oct 17 '16) relays that FitzGerald gets it right when she finds that evangelicalism is "not a strictly right-wing phenomenon."

Publishers Weekly (Feb 13 '17) considers it "a compelling narrative history of 'the white evangelical movements necessary to understand the Christian right and its evangelical opponents.' [And in which FitzGerald] explains issues such as fundamentalism, biblical inerrancy, Christian nationalism, civil religion and anticommunism, the charismatic movement, and abortion.... Also present, though less prominently featured, are members of the evangelical left, such as Ron Sider and James Wallis. Attention to intraevangelical theological and political differences is especially welcome at a time when evangelical and even Christian have become stand-ins for the Christian right."

Booklist (Feb 1 '17) adds: "Far more important than hanging chads, it was praying Evangelicals who put the born-again George Bush in the White House in 2000. But Bush's electoral victory figures as just one episode in FitzGerald's capacious history of Evangelical American Protestantism. This rich narrative ranges across the various Evangelical denominations while illuminating the doctrines - especially personal conversion as spiritual rebirth, and adherence to the Bible as ultimate truth - that unite them. FitzGerald particularly excels in limning pivotal Evangelical personalities: from the brimstone-preaching Jonathan Edwards, who kindled Colonial America's Great Awakening; through the indefatigable Dwight 'Crazy' Moody, whose Bible societies preserved faith during the Gilded Age; to Billy Graham, whose Evangelical charisma vaulted him into twentieth-century celebrityhood. The Evangelical movement takes on a newly political character when Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson enlist late twentieth-century coreligionists as Religious Right warriors on issues such as school prayer, abortion, the Equal Rights Amendment, and same-sex marriage. Conservative readers may judge FitzGerald too one-sided in her indictment of Evangelicals for having polarized America on these matters. But few can dispute her conclusion that conservative Evangelical leaders have lost clout, millions of those in Evangelical pews blithely ignoring their leaders' anathemas against the casino-building womanizer Donald Trump. A complex and fascinating epic."

Kirkus (Feb 15 '17) is less favorable, describing the book as "centering on the roiling conflict among American brands of [a] hidebound Christianity in the form of the anti-humanist Christian right, 'declaring holy war against "secular humanism" and vowing to mobilize evangelicals to arrest the moral decay of the country' [up to the] latest religio-revanchisms from Colorado Springs or Lynchburg [even though] after the Scopes Monkey Trial of 1925, 'most informed people thought fundamentalism dead.' ... In the 1960s, she notes, 'most conservative Christians were horrified by the counterculture, but a number of young evangelical ministers, most of them Pentacostals [sic], saw the potential in it for conversions.'" And although "the Christian right is, in the author's view, mostly a reaction against the social revolution of that era, what has happened since is truly fascinating: the right wing of evangelical American Christianity has made a devil's bargain with politicians such as the sitting president, who claimed the Bible as his favorite book but 'did not seem to remember even a verse of it.' In making that bargain, it also may be making a last stand, since millennials are abandoning religion in droves, and those who do go to church are 'on the whole more sympathetic with progressive positions than with those of the right.' Overflowing with historical anecdote and contemporary reportage and essential to interpreting the current political and cultural landscape."

A more recent review in Library Journal (Mar 1 '17) begins: "Evangelicalism might appear as a monolithic movement that regularly rises and flames out while attempting to impose its will upon society. ... The first third of this book is a historical overview.... FitzGerald's focus ... is a detailed exploration of the last 50 years, with a particular emphasis on the rise of the Christian Right and its role in politics and the Republican Party. Given the relatively compressed time frame, FitzGerald does a remarkable job of navigating through the weeds, putting caricatures of evangelicals to rest." Conclusion? It's "an excellent work that is certain to be a standard text for understanding contemporary evangelicalism and the American impulse to reform its society."

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ISLAM

Rumi's Secret: The Life of the Sufi Poet of Love, by Brad Gooch [2] -- In Azadeh Moavenijan's review we learn that "Few religious figures in the history of civilization have as successfully crossed borders of faith, language and geography as nimbly as Jalal al-Din Mohammad Rumi, the great 13th-century theologian and mystic poet." His persona and influence are painted thus: "Rumi the Aleppo-trained imam, whose sermons beguiled both the orthodox and the subversive of the medieval Islamic world. The theologian who likened writing to sticking his hand in tripe. The abstainer from wealth, who hid in the toilet to avoid the company of princely visitors. The Muslim who prayed toward Mecca five times a day so assiduously that he said, 'Whoever looks into my face remembers to pray.' Rumi, one of the best-selling poets in the United States. The poet of love and ecstasy, whose verses inspire Deepak Chopra and Madonna and make their bowdlerized way into soundtracks played on catwalks and in humid rooms at Jivamukti yoga. Whose sayings can adorn your life on shower curtains, branded mats, Christmas tree baubles and iPhone cases. The stated inspiration for a number of workshops at Esalen, the Gestalt retreat in California where people sit naked in hot tubs overlooking the Pacific. ...

"The son of an eccentric and ambitious Muslim preacher, Rumi ... is known in the Persianate world as Mowlana, 'our master'...."

Nearing middle age Rumi began "infusing the lines of his masterwork, the 'Masnavi,' with allusions to his spiritual teachings. That work remains one of the most widely read texts in the Muslim and Persian-speaking world, both for its Sufi wisdom and poetic force.

"Within Islam itself, Sufism is a centuries-old current that sees religious practice as a means to oneness with God. Sufis have traditionally infused their devotion with poetry and music, and reached for love as a metaphor to describe the human longing for a relationship with the divine."

Moavenijan finds that Gooch "projects too much conventional romance onto a relationship that was left deliberately ambiguous in Rumi's writings. ... Like most popular literary biographies, Rumi's Secret may not be especially masterly as a work of criticism. For those who want a more precise portrait, Franklin Lewis's scholarly biography [3] remains the definitive work. ...

"Nearly 300 years before Rumi, the Sufi saint Mansur al-Hallaj declared, 'I am the truth,' an utterance that Sufis understand to this day as the recognition that there is a bit of the divine in all of us. ...

"He identified that all religions were fundamentally in pursuit of oneness with God. But his openness to other creeds did not mean he believed Islam was subsumable into some monotheistic mystical soup. ... If Rumi arrived at a place of tolerance, it was from within his Islamic tradition, not beyond it."

We had to smile as Moavenijan notes Gooch's "tendency to cast Rumi as Romeo in a turban." Moavenijan also reports that "Many contemporary translations of Rumi [divest him] of his Islamicness - which is what today's culture seems to demand of him - we miss the significance of his role in the history of Islam. ...

"It was not always the case that strict orthodoxy was viewed as the most authentic expression of the religion. Rumi was one of the earliest bearers of what [the late scholar Shahab] Ahmed calls 'explorative authority.' ...

"Each era will construct its own Rumi. But ultimately it is only by acknowledging his faith that we can appreciate the profound significance of the Islamic world's tolerance for his dissidence...." New York Times Book Review, Jan 22 '17 <www.goo.gl/du8gEx>

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SOURCES: Monographs

1 - The Evangelicals: The Struggle to Shape America, by Frances FitzGerald (Simon & Schuster, 2017, hardcover, 752 pages) <www.goo.gl/w4cq3b>

2 - Rumi's Secret: The Life of the Sufi Poet of Love, by Brad Gooch (Harper, 2017, hardcover, 400 pages) <www.goo.gl/wdXcs4>

3 - Rumi - Past and Present, East and West: The Life, Teachings, and Poetry of Jalâl al-Din Rumi, by Franklin D. Lewis (Oneworld; 2nd ed, 2007, paperback, 712 pages) <www.goo.gl/NEjErh>

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