False profits

So yesterday took a turn for the fortuitous. First, I encountered this Slate article by Hitchens, which got me thinking about the "sort of free pass" that secular white America gives to black religious contingents.

Hitchens says:

"Many other charlatans have benefited from the clerical racket, and the most notorious of them—Jerry Falwell, Ted Haggard, Jim Bakker, Jimmy Swaggart—have been white. But there is something especially horrible about the way in which the black pulpit gets a sort of free pass, almost as if white society has assured itself that black Americans just love them some preaching. In this fog of ethnic condescension, it is much easier for mountebanks and demagogues to get away with it."

(A well elucidated point, I'd say. Something I've thought about but never put a finger on.)

That same evening I caught up with my friend Simon who happens to be reading God Is Not Great (and enjoying it, it sounds). In the book, Hitchens references a documentary: Marjoe. Simon watched it, said I might like it. He was right.

This film is somewhat mesmerizing. The title's namesake, Marjoe (a combination of the names Mary and Joseph), is a charismatic preacher, but a completely disingenuous one. Raised by professional evangelists who had him trained to spew the gospel at the ripe age of three (seriously, the results make Joe Jackson seem like a slouch), Marjoe went on to rebel and leave his life of church-itude behind, mixing instead with the free-spirited milieu of The Sixties. After some time, and after 'normalizing' to some extent, Marjoe returns to his life of preaching—only this time with a film crew.

Together they precede to dupe church honchos and followers alike, raking in ill-won donations, and exposing the ungodly art of religious charlatanism. It's really something to behold.

In one of the film's most memorable scenes, Marjoe gives a rousing (albeit characteristically canned) sermon at a mostly black Pentecostal church where the energy is downright effervescent. It's this scene that caused me to think back on the Hitchens article.

There's something so pure and genuine seeming—not about the preachers at black Pentecostal churches (at least not the ones featured in Marjoe)—but about the overall energy put forth by the congregation, the band, the gospel choir, the little old ladies with their little old lady hats and their hands in the air. It seems to defy the prejudices I have for other, stuffier, more stifling models of religious assemble, where instead of joyful outbursts you get solemn pageantry.

Now, I'm not excited about people continuing to delude themselves in either of these time-honored fashions. But for my money—or rather, had I to choose a church to preserve for posterity—I'd choose the Pentecostal faith for its sheer vitality and evident catharsis. What can I say, it plays on my sympathy. Part of what I think Hitchens was getting at.