Religion when everyone is a priest

I read today an editorial titled, "Is There an Evangelical Crisis?"NY Times 27Nov2017.  The core of the essay concerns an apparent disconnect between the teachings of Christ and the ideals of the Trump-led Republicans.  Certain evangelicals are described as an 'embattled and thriving' group of religious believers who are bound together by their simultaneous rejection of traditional religion and the secularization of society trending towards no religion.  While leaders of the evangelical movement have trended towards Trump and his plutocracy, these evangelical members are abandoned orphans, having no institutions or leaders to host them.

One of my difficulties with religion in general and with Christianity in particular, especially Protestantism, is the scholastic dimension.  In the wake of Martin Luther, parishioners were encouraged to have no priest intercede between God and their soul.  This was followed by mass production of 'The Bible', translated into native tongues, to allow each person to read, pray, and commune with the Almighty.  “Next to theology I give music the highest place of honor,” writes Luther.  This sentiment conveys the sense of experiencing God through faith and without instruction. Righteousness is what you feel it to be, and no one can deny your own understanding of God's plan for you.

But if this religion by personal revelation dominates behavior, then scholasticism, (the derivation of meaning through study, logic, interpretation, debate, etc.) is relegated to the point of irrelevance.  In  this confusion, I think many people default to a rather primitive 'theology' of self.  The simple logic is that

1) I am a human being entitled to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness by my Declaration of Independence.

2) All policies that interfere with my progress towards my definition of 1) are to be opposed, irrespective of society as a whole.

3) While I accept that the government is necessary and is dictated by our Constitution, I should continue to grouse and otherwise fight towards maximizing my outcome with respect to item 1).


Sadly, my own philosophy is also conflicted.  That is, I can understand intellectually that individuals are at once discrete and part of a whole.  I can only understand my own experience (and even that understanding has limits), so I cannot dictate how others should behave.  Yet I believe we should feel some collective responsibility, especially for community health, defense, and commerce.  Without agreements on community matters, we are all imperiled and especially vulnerable to circumstances of birth and other random cruelties.  I can have empathy for the helpless, and I can advocate for a society that strives to eliminate senseless suffering.  Indeed, I can sacrifice towards this ideal, in the spirit of Matthew 25:40

"And  the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you,  Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren,  ye have done it unto me."

But this is my personal religion.  I cannot force others to accept that they should have empathy and concern for the less fortunate.  I cannot force others to imagine that their own existence is advanced when their fellow citizens are free from hunger, homelessness, ignorance, and disease.  I cannot make anyone accept that a threat to anyone's freedom is a threat to their own.

Returning to the theme of this essay, the crisis in religion in America is a crisis inherent in the reformation, wherein each person becomes their own priest.  Such an arrangement in the context of a religion makes each person an author of their own religion!  There is nothing quite like self-righteousness as granted by the Creator of the Universe to empower selfishness, bigotry, and blind pursuit of personal wealth and advantage.  But is a society better served having citizenry in a zombie-like state of adherence to strong leaders telling them what to do and how to think?  Perhaps today's crisis is a stage towards a more just, stable, and peaceful world, where each person appreciates our dual responsibilities to ourselves and our community.

Hammett Plantation and the Battle of Kettle Creek

My mother's mother, Roxanne Kathrine Jones (Hammett), (1905-1984), descended from Hammetts that were part of the American Revolutionary War in Georgia.  I learned this from my cousin Karen Hammett Cook today.  She has long pursued family history and she alerted me to this gem after I obtained what I believed to be new information on the Hopper branch of the Hammett lineage.  Here is the sequence.

Mark Stidham: Fama Stidham (Jones) (1928-2013): Roxanne Jones (Hammett)(1905-1984): Americus (Mack) Christopher Hammett (1870-1923): John Robert Hammett (1820-1873): James Hammett (1797- after 1860).  The connection with James Hammett who owned the track of land on which the Battle of Kettle creek was fought is not quite clear.  In research on the internet, I found reference to a James Hammett, orphan of Edward Hammett, who was adopted by James Hammett.  It could be that Edward had a son, James and a brother James.  His son James could have had a son named James (born 1797), this one being the bona fide member of my particular Hammett branch and the one who married Elizabeth Brooker in Green County, Georgia in 1813.

The Hammetts at the Battle of Kettle Creek (February 14, 1775) included William Hammett and two Hammett brothers who were casualties according to one account reference .  The accounts of the battle indicate more of skirmish.  Its fame derives from the outcome that British loyalists were defeated by the Patriot militiamen at a time the British were counting on their "southern strategy" to win the war by recruiting loyalists.  The British went on to control Charleston on May 17, 1780.  Many more British victories came in the summer.  But in October, Cornwallis stopped his advance toward North Carolina, falling back to South Carolina.

Hammett, James -  The 450 acre plat surveyed for James Hammett is found in Plat Book G, page 176.  The warrant for the survey was issued on December 22, 1783 by Benjamin Catching, Senior Justice, presiding at a Land Court held in Wilkes County. The survey was executed on January 14, 1784 by James Finley, D.S., and Samuel Creswell, C. Surveyor. The rectangular plat is bounded by Vacant on the east, Unknown on the north, Thomas Brown and Vacant on the west and Vacant on the south. Kettle Creek forms the property line on the southwest and south. A road is shown crossing Kettle Creek and entering the plat from the south. Soon after, the road forks and the eastern fork of the road is thought to have led to Karr’s Fort. This plat was the site of the Battle of Kettle Creek.  Patriot forces coming from Karr’s Fort discovered the British near War Hill, located just south of the fork in the road. A skirmish ensued and the British, once their commanding officer was killed, were driven back to the south, down the road and across Kettle Creek.

 from http://www.hiddenancestors.com/wilkesga/narrative.htm

The Passing of Robert Pirsig and thoughts on Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

I first read this when it was first published.  I was a senior at UC Irvine having completed requirements for my BS in Biological Sciences, I loaded the year with enough chemistry courses to gain me a B.A. in Chemistry as well.  I was working part time at Disneyland as a short order cook, and I had applied to graduate school.

In my junior year I had taken a 'Humanities Core' course that had broadened my way of thinking like nothing else before it.  In the course, we were required to keep a journal, and I have kept that habit to this day.  The combination of finding new ideas and recording personal thoughts was akin to opening a valve, accessing a stream of water that turned formerly idle turbines and nourished nascent regions of my mind.  At this time, Pirsig's book appeared.

Here I record some of the ideas I recall from reading Zen.

Gumption Traps
Throughout the book, Pirsig describes the quest to maintain his motorcycle.  In the quest he observes that the spirit required to pursue the various maintenance procedures needs encouragement.  His son-in-law and daughter accompanying the main character and his young son are clueless about maintenance and actually disinterested in the activity.  They connect mechanics to some kind of soul-killing devotion to technology and rationality, themes antithetical to their pursuit of artistry and spirituality.  He argues that mechanics and technology are just as much a part of the spiritual.  However, the performance of motorcycle maintenance requires a quiet mind, proper tools, instruction and a dedication to understanding.  Such preconditions are susceptible to distraction, and these are termed 'gumption traps.'  The character states that an organized and complete tool set, and a minimum of distraction helps him to bring the state of mind that can sustain concentration and attention.  Also of help is frequent practice, which help deliver understanding as well as a subject with best chances of being maintained.  The idea of 'gumption traps' itself helps me overcome inertia because it helps me put emotions and irrationality off to the side, leaving only the work to be done.

Language and Reality
Several aspects of my own philosophy came from discussions in the book about the relation of language to 'reality', however one wants to define it.  One is the disdain some ancient philosophers had for the written word.  Their inclination was to have a dialogue in order to understand.  The written word was felt to be a substitute for memory.  The insight I gleaned from this discussion is how readily our culture gravitates towards the written word as if it was somehow superior to experience or other forms of understanding.  From a certain perspective, one could argue it is the medium of least fidelity!  And yet, when the written word, prose or otherwise, attains a common understanding throughout cultures and generations, something magical is attained.

A second aspect concerns an analogy he makes about reality and comprehension (measurement, recording) as a train, with the leading edge being 'reality' and the rest of the train being the record of the reality.  I need to reread this to recapture this thought, but it seems intuitive that we often mistake the sensing of an event as the event itself.  I find it useful to keep this in mind, especially when we are trying to understand events.  Of interest here are famous case studies of the fallibility of eye witnesses that have failed to alter our esteem for such evidence.

Both of these aspects along with a host of others describe my philosophy or belief that every individual creates their own 'reality', and all of these creations are simply mental reconstructions.  They must be so!  This philosophy does not deny that there is a kind of reality independent of experience.  Rather, it denies that one can talk about it or write about it or even think about it except by analogy.  And language is often itself at the root of misunderstanding between people because it such an imperfect representation of reality.

For me, the consequence of accepting these fundamental limitations is to become less judgmental in a way.  It also allows or even demands respect for each individual in their struggle to understand.  Perhaps I am too smug in my belief in this way, and I often forget this understanding when I become exorcised about this action or that calamity of the day.  When I am at my most centered, I feel some peace, a release from a struggle, while I become more excited about the admittedly pointless attempt at perfect understanding.  It is a little bit like accepting the certainty of one's mortality; the fear leaves and somewhat paradoxically, you become emboldened to experience as much as you can.