"So the Unitarian Universalists have issued a fatwa against Garrison Keillor! Never thought I'd see that!"
In my mind we come down always to that sticky wicket of who owns culture - everybody claiming it, it seems, and fighting everyone else's "misappropriation." This is a completely separate issue from intellectual property, which is an area of law, and the law, as we have heard tell, is an ass. But in the realm of religion and culture, I have just a few, hopefully relevant, observations or assertions to make:
- Once any cultural or religious custom, practice, or artifact enters the public arena, it has no owner and is equally the property of all. If Christians wanted to maintain "ownership" of their customs and carols, they had the primary obligation of keeping them to themselves. Plain and simple, without in any way claiming Christmas not to be a Christian holiday, it is much else too. And all the carols that have been sung door to door and in shopping mall concerts are free game for anyone to do with as they please. Does this mean everyone will be happy with what is done with any particular artifact? Of course not! They just have to grow up and get over it.
- Unitarian Universalism is not a Christian religion, but its Universalist and Unitarian roots are fully Christian, if heretical. Therefore, everything that was part of Unitarian Christianity or of Universalist Christianity is part of our heritage. No exceptions. No one has the standing or would be in the right to deny any organization its legitimate inheritance. And every heir within a particular lineage has both the authority and the need to reinterpret his or her own heritage in ways that are meaningful to that heir.
- Any person who grows up Christian but chooses to follow a different path is still a full heir of everything s/he was raised with. All the customs. All the images. All the words and thoughts and expressions. You cannot cease to have the history and cultural experiences you have. So any person in this position is still an heir and "owner" of that heritage, which is his or hers to reinterpret as desired and needed.
So on every count on this issue, Garrison Keillor had his head stuck someplace ludicrous. But let's refrain from getting bent out of shape at his getting bent out of shape. That only leaves the whole world twisted and ludicrous.
The time for a fatwa has not come.
12 responses:
This is the second time in a few months that a group of bloggers and facebook members who mostly aren't Christians and are only about 50 percent theist, have jumped up to the defense of UU Christians and theists and I'm happy to see it. Nobody's issuing a fatwa here. I don't want people to listen to Garrison Keillor, or if they do I want them to know what they are listening to.
I think the central message of what people are saying is "don't confuse bigotry with humor." No religious decrees involved.
CC
Excellent post Paul. Are you SURE it's not time for a fatwa!? OK OK OK, fine! But I'm going to whine very loudly to my local NPR affiliate.
Fatwa-ous remark. Equating critique, deconstruction, and a call for people to respond to what he's *said* and *meant* is not issuing a fatwa (which in its common English usage is rooted in the introduction of the term by the Iranian Shiite fatwa against Salman Rushdie, calling for his death. It's not nuanced...).
I used to listen to GK, and stopped. I didn't really spend the time to fathom why... but it occurs to me now that it was his "just joking" hostility, in part. I've just been through a unit of CPE--in my case, six months of hospital chaplaincy--n which I worked closely with people (other chaplains) of other faiths. There was plenty of nudging of each other over various religious issues--but there was also open appreciation. GK, in all the years I heard his stuff, never indicated any appreciation. It's just acidity in a velvet glove. Laughing at, not with. In context, it's not anything other than demeaning. Hostile.
A fatwa? Nah. A fuck you, yes. Deservedly.
His whining about Christmas carol lyrics is pure pissy triviality. There are far, far more substantial alterations of the (translated!) lyrics for purposes that aren't even vaguely religious or spiritual. Keillor's bitching and whining is that someone--us--doesn't see and understand things the same way he does. He wants to claim the collective work of Christianity as his to determine what is acceptable and correct. We long ago decided what we thought of such attitudes.
Pound sand, Garrison. Your people are frequently celebrating holidays you misappropriated and completely rewrote to your liking. In some cases, the carols (and lyrics) weren't Christian either--but y'all merrily misappropriated them and bowdlerized them, too.
It's only a problem when it's the mote in someone else's eye, right?
/just amiable joking with Garrison.
There was nothing fatuous or unnuanced in Walter's use of the term fatwa in this context, nor in my echoing it, Patrick.
Ok, I missed it, Paul. Illuminate this for me, please.
(The use of "nuance" referred to the common Western usage. Thus the two definitions offered below...)
1. Islam a religious and legal decree or edict issued by a council of religious leaders
2. loosely a death sentence imposed through, or as through, such a decree
Meaning number one (or an even superior version of that definition) wouldn't apply. No one involved is Muslim, nor a religious leader, nor is the statement (whose?) in question a scholarly religious legal opinion or edict.
And the latter usage is, as I observed, just nonsense. There's not even a protest vigil by Unitarian Jihad called for, much less any suggestion of harm.
If the analogy is just a religious community being hostile to a literary figure... well, the comparison looks more like a single candle lit on the moon, compared to a sunlit day in the Sahara.
But it's been a long six months, and maybe I just entirely missed the point. I am most sincerely open to having it explained.
You're riding it too hard, Patrick. Loosen up on the reins a bit. :)
Addition to the post:
At 67 years old:
major dispute with the next door neighbors over property values issues;
heart valve surgery;
recent stroke -
Perhaps a little compassion is in order even if it is a one way street.
No matter what anyone says, I love GK because of all the stuff he created that reads/listens like this.
"So the Unitarian Universalists have issued a fatwa against Garrison Keillor! Never thought I'd see that!"
Well said Walter.
Gotta laugh at how *seriously* some U*Us are taking your waggish throw away comment about Garrison Keillor's faux pas.
What *is* that U*U World coming to?
For further discussion of altering lyrics, see the blog post on Using Language and the comment to it by yours truly from the first of the month at the blog A UU Minister in the South.
Paul, thanks for your thoughtful and balanced perspective on Garrison Keillor's column. We don't need a fatwa, nor a fatwa in a teapot. A rejoinder that is as humorous as Keillor's seems more appropriate.
In all fairness to Ogre, that you first responded that the comment WASN'T fatuous or un-nuanced made me also thing that you were seriously standing behind this person's words.
CC
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