"The Book Of Mormon", Theater For Young Adults

Restaurants in downtown Chicago have very close seating arrangements. The couple next to us at the sushi restaurant, who were kind enough to take our picture, mentioned that they were going to see "The Book Of Mormon" after dinner, and we smiled and said we had seen the afternoon showing. Their response was somewhat predictable.

Fellow Theater Goer (eyebrow slightly raised): "Oh, is it a good Mom and Daughter show?"

Me: "Maybe not for every mom and daughter, but it worked for us."

My daughter: "It was really good."

I should add that my daughter is in the 6th grade. 

She really likes Glee, and that show goes to some pretty dark places. From a parenting perspective, "inappropriate" shows give some good opportunities to pause the DVR and discuss. Still, before planning this trip, I desperately wanted some feedback from other parents who had taken their preteens to the show. I wasn't terribly concerned about the blasphemous parts of the show. (Although, to be sure, if you're raising your child with anything but a pluralist take on religion, this becomes a very big concern.) I just wanted some sense of how much of a challenge this was going to be for me as a parent when it came to the non-God related content. Unfortunately, the only article I could find was one from the New York Times. The reporter had been "uninvited" because his kids were... well... my daughter's age. Not exactly encouraging.

I called the theater to make sure I wasn't headed for the same scenario, and was reassured that if I felt she was mature enough to handle it, I wouldn't have any trouble at the door. Once again, I was given a strong warning that this show didn't just have "some adult themes", it was downright shocking.

Still, I'd also seen the interview where Matt Stone describes the show as their attempt to answer the question, "What would an atheist love letter to religion look like?" Good enough for me. Anything that helps me drive home the point that skepticism towards religious truth claims is healthy, but cynicism about the inherent worth, dignity, and intelligence of religious people can destroy what could otherwise be great friendships has some serious value to me as a secular mom. Tickets to premium seating in hand, I reassured her that I was open to talking about anything that didn't make sense to her or bothered her. I let her know I'd pay for the therapy if she didn't feel comfortable talking to me.

If you're not planning to see the show live (tickets can be tough to come by) or you've already seen it, feel free to watch the video below. If you haven't seen it live yet, and want to, wait for it. One of my least favorite parts of doing the research before the show was how difficult it was to avoid spoilers.

You know your kid best. The themes in this show concerning religion include its power to give people strength in the face of truly frightening odds, and the somewhat bittersweet notion that even clearly false beliefs can be used to cause positive change in the world. These go hand in hand with some other obvious truths; you can bend superstitions to say whatever you want them to say, people will embrace the things that speak to their own fears, and this isn't always a positive thing in society. The villain in this show has a superstitious fear of the power of the clitoris, and he has the guns. Enough said.

If conversations about the holocaust, gay marriage, racism, and Jerry Sandusky aren't unfamiliar territory in your home, this shouldn't be too much to handle. Really, how else are you going to get a chance to talk about the ancient practice of Chinese foot binding and relate that to the horrifying practice of female genital mutilation? Children are raped by HIV positive people in Africa, in the hopes that this will cure their condition. Do you want your teenagers completely oblivious to these facts about the human condition? If the answer to that question is yes, for you as a parent, then I'd take a pass. Even though you really do find yourself empathizing with these earnest young missionaries in their clean white shirts who are in way over their heads, you probably wouldn't be terribly comfortable with the discussions afterward. If, on the other hand, you enjoy laughing your ass off and don't mind finding creative ways to approach awkward conversations in a way that works for your teens and pre-teens, then by all means, go. The show is transcendent, and Katy Perry lyrics have much worse moral messages when it comes to sex.

For the record, coming out of the theater, my daughter let me know that she would not be needing therapy, and she sang along to a few of the songs when I popped the CD in on the way home. The worst consequence of taking her was our shared giggling over the fact that we will never, ever, be able to listen to the song "Jeremiah Was A Bullfrog" the same way again. Frogs. Hilarious.

Seriously, just go see it.

Understanding Mormons: It's A Real Problem

Mitt Romney has been under a lot of pressure lately. Not that there's anything wrong with or even surprising about that. The lead up to the presidential debates is always intense. Candidates typically respond by delivering their vision with articulate and passionate bullshit, carefully wrapped and vacuum sealed to energize the base without alienating the center. We're used to it.

But there are other types of pressure that have popped up on the campaign trail for Romney this September. For example, there's the pressure of being born wealthy, white and male, which apparently makes politics hard. It sounds awful as a joke, and plays even worse when the makeup artist accidentally goes too dark on the foundation when you're speaking to a Hispanic audience. Bad timing, that. There's also the whiplash realization that 47% of the nation aren't all Obama zombies chanting "hoooope, chaaaange", and many of them actively resent being characterized as such. Rumors flying around that your running mate has taken to calling you "The Stench" don't help either, especially when coupled with the enormous pressure of party insiders shifting their support to candidates lower down on the ballot because your numbers look bad on paper. I'm sure the irony isn't lost on a venture capitalist.

And then there's plain old cabin pressure, which you'd think would be a familiar and comforting thing to someone who flies as often as Mitt does. But he has problems with that, too. High school physics must have been hell. I feel for the guy.

Underlying all of this, though, is the giant elephant in the middle of the room that has only lightly been touched on so far; Romney's tax exemptions include huge donations to a church that includes secret handshakes and sacred undergarments. Join now, become the God/Goddess of your own planet in the afterlife. Certain restrictions apply, must be married and in good standing with the church to see the face of God. What Mitt refers to as "service" in France during the Vietnam war, the rest of us call "sales".

I'm joking, of course, at the expense of good people who happen to be Mormons; I try not to do that too often, because it's a gross oversimplification of what churches do, for better or for worse. Walter Kirn has an excellent article which handles both his troubles with blind faith and his utter disdain for people who make jokes about magic underwear, even though he's not a Mormon anymore. Along the same lines, the carefully focused criticism leveled by Brigham Young's great-great granddaughter, who left the church when she was 50, is more compelling on every level than the obvious cheap shots about Native American Jews. Stories like these lend texture and perspective to an ex-Morman friend of mine's outrage over the way that the church stepped in on Proposition 8 to pit black voters against gay and lesbian couples, and to her ultimate take on the position of women in the church:

"I saw it as what it was - exclusion through exaltation. Motherhood is so wonderful you should be happy god gave it to you instead of the silly priesthood.... The power structure of the church is a huge problem. And the women feel it but it is kinda an "emperors new clothes" thing. No one wants to be the first to say they don't wake up filled with the glory of gods plan!...  The women are the enforcers of it on the other women as the culture is spread and reinforced."

The real question is how Mitt Romney's faith informs his vision for America. Is it one where women like my friend and Brigham Young's great-great granddaughter feel valued for more than just their skills in raising children? Or is it a vision that puts women on a pedestal and then tells them to stay home and clean the toilets? Is he a pluralist who believes in the inherent dignity of humanity, regardless of race, opinions about religion, gender, sexual attraction, or socioeconomic status? Or does he have blind faith in a single path to salvation that excludes 99% of the world? These questions stop being about "freedom of [read: to legislate in favor of a specific] religion" and start becoming terribly important when a President starts making recommendations to the Supreme Court. If you're going to be Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces, I'm interested in whether or not you expect churches to provide lifelong care for severely wounded soldiers instead of the VA. I want to know if you're going to tell a woman who has five kids that she needs to keep that eight-week-old fetus even though there's a risk to her life and only a 50% chance of survival for the child. I probably won't vote for you if I know your interpretation of your role as a bishop involves trying to bully a single mother who used to take care of your kids with threats of excommunication if she doesn't put her soon-to-be-born second child up for adoption. These are, obviously, not random examples.

[edit for clarity] All that being said, I'm not opposed to a Mormon President any more than I am to a Christian one, so long as the person following the religion doesn't try to force their religious values on me. There's something inherently (at the risk of sounding like a zombie) hoooope-ful about a presidential race between a Mormon and an African-American. I wanted to see the Huntsman-Obama debates, and I wish the primary voters had picked the better man. Maybe next time around.

Bless her Little Heart

It's one of those phrases that can mean so many things-- kind of like "praying for you".

Had an interesting discussion this morning with someone who just really, really failed to get it. It began, as most warm mornings with a clear blue sky when the calendar reads 9/11 do, with a discussion of how we reacted on that day. One person said it was her last day as a Christian. Another chimed in quickly to say she would pray for her.

Now, there are quite a few kinds of prayers. Some are grounded in empathy or grief. They are an expression of the deepest wishes a human being could possibly have that a bad situation will improve, that pain will be healed, and that good things will happen in the wake of horror. They are the silent agonizing thoughts that desperately hope for intervention from some force outside of the natural world to make things better, like the ones I and every other even remotely "spiritual" person in the world had as they watched the twin towers crashing down into rubble eleven years ago. They are usually private. When they are shared, they are often shared from a position of humility in the face of something huge, not knowing if they will be answered, or even heard.

I may take some flack for this, but atheists have them, too. We are tiny clusters of very old and well organized stardust, and our lives are over in a brief flash in human history. They don't even register in the long view of time. The ultimately inconsequential truth of our fleeting existence does not mean that we don't hurt for humanity as a whole when we see suffering on the scale that we saw it eleven years ago, or that we do not want to make the world a better place.

When tragedy strikes, we bypass the supernatural part. We talk with our friends. We write to leave a record of what we feel, not always knowing if anyone will hear or care, and not always in the public eye. I don't think it's too far off to say our blogs and our journals and our hopes to be that change we want to see in the world are our secular prayers. I recognize these things for what they are-- our hopes, our dreams, and (when we act on them) our legacy to future generations. They are the glue that holds society together and causes us to reach out to one another for support and comfort when we need it, and to give it when and where we can. We are, in a very real sense, little more than what we share with one another. We grow when we confront what we might otherwise hide from ourselves.

Some prayers, on the other hand, are less noble. Call them "selfish prayers": the prayer of an exasperated mother that an overtired child will go to sleep; the prayer that a sticky work situation will be go away after a good night's sleep; or the prayer that an unexpected windfall or the kindness of others will help solve financial problems. (More on that later.) Atheists have these thoughts too, but tend to handle the day-to-day trials and tribulations from a strictly pragmatic approach. We look for advice from our friends, family, social networks, doctors, and lawyers. We bring meals to our sick friends. We argue for what's right and hope it finds a receptive audience. I'm not saying that people who appeal to a supernatural power do these things any more or less than atheists do. We just cut out the thoughts directed towards the middle man when we do them.

But there is that final kind of prayer... the kind of prayer that atheists get from believers who are sad to hear that we have "lost" our faith. Call it a "pity prayer", or an evangelical prayer. It's the kind of prayer that asserts one Truth, and flatly rejects the possibility that this truth may be wrong. It's the kind of prayer that assumes those "other" belief systems are wrong, and many if not all of the world's problems would be solved if only everyone would convert to the True way of thinking. It's the kind of prayer that condescends, while simultaneously demanding respect.

Atheists have these sorts of sentimental wishes, too, when it comes to religion. In the past, we were sometimes silent out of fear we would be killed, beaten, burned as witches, or simply cast aside by society. To be very clear, that's still a risk today. We are social animals, and callous rejection and judgment based on religious beliefs or lack thereof can cause real pain. Or, you know, risk of death if enough people don't react to actual persecution loudly enough. I'm going to call it what it is, self-righteous garbage of the most dangerous sort. We mourn the atheists in foxholes who have died protecting the people who cause that pain, and we get angry when their very existence is denied, belittled, or ignored. This attempt to claim a monopoly on the moral high ground is base tribalism, and does not play well with others.

Don't like it when we deliver a dose of reality? Then, please, hear our "prayer".

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As an important aside, if you like the pendant, and you want one, click the pic. The proceeds are being used by the artist to help fund a custody battle for his daughter, after being totally cut off from all contact for far too long. Earlier this year, he had to fight against a move to terminate his parental rights. Why? Because he's an atheist, and the grandparents didn't want their grandchild exposed to that. That little girl who loves her daddy is who I think of when I hear the phrase "attacks on religious freedom", and the back story here might help explain my particularly strident mood today. The discussion I mentioned at the beginning of the post? Yeah, it happened on his Facebook page. Please feel free to share with your friends. At $10 a piece, they won't pay off the lawyer, but every little bit helps.