• To follow up on that Donovan Schaefer item we looked at yesterday, here’s another look at his research into the realm of conspiracy theories in a fun interview with Megan Goodwin at Religion Dispatches: “What Role Do Feelings Play in Conspiracy, Racism and Climate Denial?”
Here’s his concluding take-away message:
There are a lot of different ways that we need to be talking to people [about climate crisis]. We need to step away from the assumption that people are totally rational and totally determined by facts, therefore the solution is just to throw more facts at them. But I also think we need to step away from the claim that some people are totally irrational and are just totally immune to facts.
What I wanted to do is get people to see climate change as this incredibly urgent zone where we need to be thinking much more carefully about how we persuade. But at the same time we need to step away from this binary sense of the pure strict rationalist — like, people will respond if we give them facts — and also move away from the idea that nobody listens to facts anymore and it’s all about propaganda. I don’t think that’s right either.
Here’s the introduction to Schaefer’s Duke University Press book Wild Experiment: Feeling Science and Secularism After Darwin. A lot to think about there so I’m going to re-read Bonhoeffer’s “On Folly” and then think about it some more.
• Here’s another item for the Empty Church Buildings files: “Evangelical United Methodist Church in Pottsville closes its doors.” The Rev. John Wallace had been serving as pastor at the church while also serving as pastor of First United Methodist in Pottsville, which is about seven blocks away.
The proximity of those two UMC churches was a relic of the 1968 merger of denominations. Evangelical was first built in 1896 as a congregation of the Evangelical Brethren Church, a 750,000-member denomination that joined with the 10 million-member Methodist Church to become the “United Methodists.” So the UMC wound up with two lovely old buildings in downtown Pottsville and kept them both going for 50-some years before finally, this month, deciding to close and sell the smaller one.
I’m not familiar with Pottsville, but if the Schuylkill County seat is anything like the Chester or Delco centers, then I’m guessing the former Evangelical UMC building is destined to become either law offices or upscale apartments. Here’s hoping the new owners don’t just tear it down.
• Talia Lavin writes about Cyrus Teed, a peddler of homeopathic cures who soon rose to the next level of all-American quackery:
In 1839, in Trout Creek, New York, in the sparsely-populated hinterlands of Delaware County, a prophet was born.
His name was Cyrus Teed, and in 1869 he claimed to have transfigured lead into gold in his laboratory. That very night he was struck with a prophetic vision: God appeared to him as a beautiful woman, who separated Teed from his body and blessed him while he stood in a numinous spirit-state. “I have brought thee to this birth to sacrifice thee upon the altar of all human hopes,” God told him, “Thou art chosen to redeem the race.”
… soon enough, in that heady era of utopian communities, he had gathered a flock of disciples, most of them women, who had faith in his sweeping visions: Cyrus Teed was the seventh prophet come to mankind, just as Jesus had; his followers were commanded to live in celibacy; the Second Coming was nigh, and would arrive in an riot of violence. He changed his name from Cyrus to the Hebrew, “Koresh”; the faith he built was called “Koreshanity,” and his followers believed they lived inside the earth, which was hollow, and contained the entire cosmos. “We Live Inside” was their slogan and greeting.
• Meanwhile, in the heartland of another church founded by a prophet from upstate New York, local newspaperman Charles McCollum writes about the new religious movement founded by Teal Swan, the YouTube guru who grew up in the small community of Cache Valley, Utah. Swan has made a career out of putting a New Age spin on the Michelle Remembers grift and McCollum is too put off by her shtick to invest much in debunking her claims, but he scratches enough to show there’s plenty there for a new generation of Hertensteins and Trotts to work with.
• Speaking of cult-like religious leaders: JD Hall — the right-wing white/Christian-nationalist pastor and blogger and president/founder/CEO of a host of right-wing white/Christian nationalist “ministries” — is entering the reaping phase of everything he’s been sowing.
“JD Hall, Pulpit & Pen founder, ‘disqualified’ from ministry by Montana church” RNS reports. “Disgraced Pastor JD Hall Investigated for Assault With Weapon, Strangulation: Police Report” Church Leaders adds.
It’s like watching the Dan Johnson story playing out again in slow motion. That’s not to say that I want to see Hall’s story end the way Johnson’s did, only to note that, as the saying goes, “If you don’t change where you’re headed, you’ll probably wind up there.” Or, in the terser variant of the kids these days, FAFO.
• This is a fun idea from Adam Kotsko: “The profit surcharge.”
Why isn’t sales tax included on the prices listed on store shelves? It’s partly because, he says, it’s an attempt to make those taxes seem like an extra, optional, surprise add-on — something not considered a part of the cost of the whole infrastructure that allows our goods and services to get to us at all. It’s an attempt to create anti-tax sentiment orchestrated by those who dislike taxes and the public goods and civilization they make possible. (You don’t need to pay for public roads, utilities, schools, security, etc., when you’ve got enough money to pay for private versions of them.)
Kotsko suggests we do the same thing with profits. Instead of a little fine-print “taxes not included” on every price tag, we could put a little fine-print “taxes and profits not included” on there, then see what customers think when they get to the register and find the actual price is not just 5% or 6% higher, but 20% or 50% or 250% higher.
Won’t happen. But I like the idea. And maybe just talking about it will, at least, lead to a more rational, more convenient world in which we stop the Hobbesian nonsense of “sales tax not included” on the shelves.
• Charles Kuffner links us to an update on “finding Baby Holly.” He also talks about the “future prestige podcast or HBOMax series that I seriously hope comes out of this” incredible, engrossing story. I’m right there with him.
I’d say the same thing about the twisted and twisting saga of the disgraced, dynastic southern attorney Alex Murdaugh who is now facing murder charges in the deaths of his wife and son. Murdaugh’s family has lorded over Hampton County, South Carolina, for more than a century. It seems unlikely to me that he is the first Murdaugh to exploit that power for personal gain and violent retribution.
• The title for this post comes from Bob Marley’s “Night Shift,” a song about his time working the overnight shift at a plant in Newport, Delaware. I first came to love this song when I was working the overnight shift at the News Journal in Newport, about two miles and 25 years from where Marley had worked. I’ve just switched back to the night shift, so once again I’m singing along with Bob about “Working on a night shift with the forklift.” And everything I do shall be upfull and bright. Got to be all right.
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