Sometimes those preachers could get hot and they'd boil for the Lord. One such man was Billy Sunday. A baseball player gone public revival leader, he is said to have been quite the figure. No theatrics too theatrical for this popular figure. I think the images speak for themselves. Billy Graham is obviously the heir to this (this) Billy's throne.
Devil might have some slick tricks but Billy's got a chair!
Some Christians believe that the end of the world is near, that first the elect or church of true believers will be raptured, after which seven years of tribulation will follow under the rule of the Antichrist, after which Christ will return and reign on earth for a thousand years. This is usually referred to as Premillennialism, expecting the return of Christ before the thousand years of peace. There's also Dispensationalism, when more than one phase in human history (or should I say Biblical history) is recognized. Together neatly they are called Dispensational Premillennialism. People that believe this actually worked it out in neat charts. I love these charts because they are minutely detailed and carefully drawn out, rationally organized intricate maps of an event that is quite hard to imagine will ever take place outside of a certain Biblical frame of reference. The charts really look like step-by-step instructions on how to fix your radio.
Man of the hour seems to have been Clarence Larkin who made these and countless others of illustrations like them.
No, not about Mel Gibson's movie. It's about a local production, The Passion, provided by the Dutch Evangelical Broadcasting Community with some support from the Roman Catholic Church and the Dutch Protestant Church. It was huge and spectacular. 1.7 million people watched it on television, more than 10% of the total Dutch population. I read nothing but praise about the technical aspect and the delivery. The artists were all local celebrities. Personally, this is an instance where two loves meet for not only am I fascinated by popular expressions of religious sentiment, I do have a weak spot for Dutch local artists too. There is something pathetic and familiar about it that strangely warms my heart just as much as Christian sentiment is able to. If Christ doesn't feel strangely familiar to me then at least the Dutch artists certainly do. And here they are, celebrating the story of my buddy Jesus!
But what do I see? In 2012? Nothing but criticism from both the secular and the religious sides it seems. Most striking is that the secular side is complaining about this story being portrayed irreverently. What! If anyone the secular side should be able to recognize that the idea of religious integrity is suspect at the very least. Either the non-religious have not yet completely emancipated themselves from religious sentiment or they abuse an idea of religious integrity to bash a type of popular entertainment that they can't stand, for of course it is the intellectuals that complain about this. Most likely a combination of both.
But even from the theological side I hear complaints. Really? Well go ahead and dig your own grave with complaints for shovels then! If popular culture is seen as something that can only corrupt religion then pretty soon that religion will be over and done with. I would like to see how someone from the United States would react to this European type of criticism. "Are they crazy?" My fictional evangelical American friend might ask. "The Gospel should be told and made heard, whatever it takes," he would argue. I guess the US has more of a tradition of catering to popular sentiment, making use of popular entertainment and modern media. Also in the US the religious emphasis seems to be more on experiencing religion than subscribing to a set of beliefs. The reasons for things growing differently in the US and in Europe are many but the bottom line is, if the EU clergy isn't going to wise up they might keep an eye on the classifieds ads printed next to their angry letters in the newspapers.
So, it's been a while now that I've been wanting to talk about this. But the day is here. That dragon of a movie: Left Behind. My latest experience with this movie was in class recently where a good chunk of the movie was shown. This was for a Christianity in the United States class and everyone was paying close attention, scrutinizing for religious symbols, scribbling down notes carefully. But... nobody laughed? The poort acting, the weird story twists, the crippled dialogue? Nobody noticed?
Perhaps I'm biased about this movie, having read what especially Heather Hendershot had to say about it. The team behind it was all psyched about making the very first crossover movie success, thinking they'd take Hollywood by storm. With a movie based on a best-selling book, appealing not only to the evangelical subculture from which it sprang but also to the broader public, they did have reason to expect it.
Yet nothing more than a gush of wind it turned out to be. Or in fact, according to the reviews, a very smelly fart. A by now infamous description of the movie by the critic Desson Thomson writing for the Washington Post that reads "A blundering cringefest, thanks to unintentionally laughable dialogue, hackneyed writing and uninspired direction" pretty much sums up the common sentiment about this movie amongst reviewers. Not even the own team was all too wild about this movie, where HollywoodJesus.com didn't have too much praise to sing for it and even the evangelical periodical Christianity Today sighed out a quiet "ahem."
Granted, in the long (long long) run, it did generate some money with video sales. However, it was meant to shine at the box office. 17 million going in, just over 4 million grossed... that's a far cry from the spectacular success that the makers had anticipated. The idea that they could live up to the Hollywood norm with this movie is beyond naive. But why did the team behind this movie think it then?
Hendershot touches on a couple of reasons. One is that the producers thought this movie was quite subtle because they cut back on all the “Jesus”es flying around. Still, for any outsider watching this movie, it’s pretty clear what’s going on. It’s a good bit of end-times propaganda. You almost watch it not as a fiction movie but as a scenario for what is about to happen according to its creators. Also to me it seems these people had no critics at all. They sort of just... went along with it. I know that bands sometimes tend to think they made the greatest record ever because they convinced themselves of this fact in their isolated bubble and not because they critically compared their product to other ones out there. Usually also then, cold harsh reality tends to prove such bands wrong. The feel of this movie very much reminded me of such bubble-reasoning. Whatever the reason might be though, it presented us with a pearl of oblivion from the evangelical subculture!
PS: I do remember now, that when I did finally see the movie after having heard so many bad things about it, I did think: Was that it? I had somehow expected to see the very worst movie ever. In fact, I was looking forward to this. Give me the worst movie to end all worst movies! It was bad, sure, but that bad? I didn't really think so. Could it be then that there was a little bit of politics involved? Secular media cranking the critique dial up a notch or a few to punish the unrealistic expectations of the high-and-mighty evangelicals? The production team did present itself for target practice going on and on about how great this movie was and how it would show all people the way of movie-making of the future, but I don't know if it deserved quite the all-devastating criticism it got. I for one have seen worse. Far... far worse!
So lets talk about the fierce Sister McPherson. She was an active evangelist in the early twentieth century. She was an itinerant revival priest as they are called, roaming the world and preaching the gospel. Her services were quite something alright, hailing from the more expressive side of the Pentecostals, extravagant even for Evangelist norms. Tongues swinging, drunk on the love for the Lord, letting out some of that good old glossolalia. And of course bodies dropping to the floor everywhere and people getting up dancing, shouting and of course an occasional faint here and there. Du religion spectaculaire mesdammes et messieurs! Also, McPherson was a pioneering spirit in that she made use of the all-new mass-medium, the radio, to reach her audience everywhere. Her persona was an inspiration for a lot of fictional characters too, like for instance the preacher boy in the movie There Will Be Blood and I'm pretty sure she was a source of inspiration for the character of Sister Shara in the movie Elmer Gantry. Good movies by the way. But back to Aimee then. She was, in short, one hell of an entertainer, be it for the heavenly cause.
Preach it Aimee!
Screw the Batmobile. This Gospel Car is my kinda ride!
I talked before about Precious Moments. But the book Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory, by Randall Balmer, made me see that there is besides the revoltingly sweet figurines also a Bible produced by this company. Kickass! You might want to crank the brightness/contrast settings on your computer to be able to see them though, given how nearly see-through the front covers are.
If you're not a Catholic, you'll explode if you read this one.
Life in the early English colonies on the American continent was tough. Because of nature giving the settlers a hard time, but the settlers were giving themselves an even harder time sticking to a hard-line Puritanism. Tongues being burnt, public shaming, it was a time as violent as it was religious one might say. And then up stood this rebel, Anne Hutchinson. Not a cultural rebel, oh no, a religious rebel, following instructions straight from God. She defied Puritan ethics on theological grounds and this must have been by no means an easy battle. She was put on trial, and this trial became infamous. Ever since she is looked up to as a woman of strength standing her ground in an almost Martin Luther like way. Standing proud in defiance of false theology, in defiance of the Devil's lies! A symbol of independence, strength and purity. Yes you can feel the twist coming, a romantic personification of ideas, making her a choice tool to depict them with.
Oh hey and what do you know, she was brutally murdered by Native Americans because the Dutch mistreated them and they took it out on Anne. Yeah, that's typical Dutch culture for you alright! The Almighty God sure did put her in the wrong place at the wrong time!
It's not uncommon to run into those framed embroidery renditions of Christ or the Virgin Mary when you walk around sometimes, usually you see it hanging in someone's hallway or when you look inside someone's house, usually hung in a place of pride. I can very much imagine old 80 year old ladies patching away their retirement days. Found dead one day with their needle still in their rigor mortis hand. The ones I found just now are nice but I've seen far better in the wild. Striking that a lot seem to be from the Orthodox Church rather than from the Catholic or Protestant.
John Wesley (1703-1791) was a revivalist (and let's not forget Methodist) preacher from Britain who I know because of his fervent preaching in the United States, mobilizing people religiously and stirring up enthousiasm amongst the slack believers. Fire and brimstone in one hand, glory and personal experience in the other. Very theatrical man, I would give to see him spit fire from his lips. Unfortunately I'm a bit too late for that, but no fear, there are these great busts that remind me of him. Even one where he's doing his thing at the pulpit! Some of the busts where they put rouge on his cheeks and where he's sporting eyebrows the size even Tammy Faye Bakker would be jealous of do make me wonder if Mr. Wesley had a side job as a drag queen. He was already in show business, he might as well have!
Recently I read the bookConsuming Religion by Vincent J. Miller, in which he argues that in relation to religion, “we witness a great hollowing out. Exchange demands interchangeability, equivalence. Anything that stands in the way of exchange becomes a problem. Rough edges must be smoothed. Objects must now function outside of their original contexts.” (p. 77). I may have my doubts about this idea (what does original context matter anyway?), but I can't deny that a prime example of it seems to be the snow globe.
Can't go wrong with the nativity scene!
What better way to communicate the essence of the passion than by means of a snow globe? Shake it one more time for Jesus!
Hey there pope!
I don't know if this qualifies as a snow globe or if it's more of an... aquaglobe? Anyway, underwater Jesus in a sphere action!
Santa Claus praying to baby Jesus in a snow globe. Priceless.
Judaism seems to keep it simple. Nice blingifications.
Calendars. Nice to see some old friends like Thomas Blackshear making a guest appearance here, on the cover of the Master Peace Collection calendar. Oh what a pun, ey folks?! I also love to see Jesus, master of aqua yoga, fishing lost souls from the sea again! Noticeable are the Catholic themes on the one hand side, like the lady Madonna, Our Lady of Guadeloupe and the Pope and Protestant figures like Billy Graham on the other side. No, I'm not insinuating anything by juxtaposing Graham to the Pope. I do wonder what the hell Obama is doing on the cover of one of the calendars though! I'd say that is a little touch of nationalism again. I found all this loveliness on the website calendars.com. The fact that this seemingly secular company sells Christian calendars because apparently that is profitable is something of note by the way.
First of all, I must confess that this post is a bit far fetched. Initially I wanted to show some pictures of Quaker families. I looked for Quaker families and I found them. Didn’t make me laugh. So they wear some strange clothes. Big deal! Don’t we all? Coming from the Netherlands myself, home of Volendamse klederdrachtand currently a colony of Hennes & Mauritz, I don’t feel like I have a right to act as fashion police anyway. We’ve sort of lost our credibility in this respect a long time ago, if we actually ever had any to begin with. So what can I say about the Religious Society of Friends, more popularly known as the Quakers? Prominent figure of the Quaker religion, George Fox, seemed to have been... an extravagant figure to say the least. In the words of William James, “from the point of view of his nervous constitution, Fox was a psychopath or detraquee of the deepest dye.” (James, p. 15). Nice one, Bill! I love the story too that, in James’ book, is being recounted, where Fox takes his shoes off in the dead of winter, leaves them with some shepherds, goes into the city of Lichfield, runs about the market there crying “Wo to the bloody city of Lichfield!”, returns to the shepherds to pick up his shoes again, but doesn’t put them on because “the fire of the Lord was so on my feet.” (ibid). Prophet or “a mere lonely madman?” (James, p. 249). Who is to say? One thing the Quakers are probably most known for is the brand of breakfast cereals it is associated with. Now, the fact that a cereal brand is associated with a religious movement might be less arbitrary than it seems. Kellogg’s corn flakes for example were invented by John Harvey Kellogg, who was a partner in Ellen White’s venture to build “a sanatorium/hospital that was the first of the many Adventist medical facilities that now operate in the United States and around the world.” (Moore, p. 142). In fact, “Kellogg invented granola and also a flaked wheat cereal that he patented and offered to White as a way to finance the church.” (ibid). Is there a similar story in the case of Quaker Oats? Actually no. There is a tie with religion, but it runs the other way around. It seems the brand adapted the image of the Quaker because "Quaker Mill partner Henry Seymour found an encyclopedia article on Quakers and decided that the qualities described — integrity, honesty, purity — provided an appropriate identity for his company's oat product”, according to wikipedia. So why am I saying all this then? Just to downplay the fact that the images in this post really have jack all to do with religion. But by Job and Jehovah are the Quaker Oats ads ever fantastic!
Some of these images I got from another website that is absolutely great, http://www.jonwilliamson.com/, that has a vast collection of vintage advertising.
Sources: - William James. The Varieties of Religious Experience. A Study in Human Nature. Arc Manor. Rockville, Maryland, 2008. (First published: 1902). - R. Laurence Moore. Selling God. American Religion in the Marketplace of Culture. Oxford University Press. New York, 1994.
