Category: Book Reviews

My Tears for Willie Loman

Last Saturday, Peggy and I went to New York City to see Arthur Miller‘s 1949 masterpiece, Death of a Salesman. We left the Winter Garden Theater in silence. Before long I realized I was crying. Yes, weeping. The tears continued for blocks as we walked toward the restaurant where we planned to have dinner.

Even now I’m not entirely sure why I cried.

At first I assumed I was simply identifying with Willie Loman. After all, he is a man in his sixties who suddenly discovers that the work defining his life for more than thirty years has become impossible. His energy is gone. His usefulness is questioned. The world that once seemed to need him has quietly moved on. His death comes long before his suicide.

At eighty-five, I know something about watching one’s capacities diminish. Hearing fades. Energy declines. More and more often the question becomes not, “What can I still accomplish?” but “Who am I if I can no longer do what once defined me?”

But the more I reflected on my tears, the more I realized they weren’t really about Willie. Or at least not only about Willie.

They were about fathers.

Miller’s play understands something painful about fatherhood. There comes a time when our children stop looking up to us and begin looking through us. They discover that their fathers are neither heroes nor villains, but complicated human beings whose virtues and weaknesses are hopelessly intertwined. Every parent eventually faces the unsettling realization that the children whose lives we once shaped will one day render their own quiet judgments about ours.

That recognition stirred memories of my own family—not because our story resembles the Lomans’, but because every family contains misunderstandings, disappointments, words spoken in anger, hopes that never quite found their mark, and love that somehow survives them all.

I suspect many parents left the theater carrying similar memories, perhaps with tears in their eyes too.

The play awakened something else as well.

There are moments in every long life that continue to haunt us—not necessarily because they were our greatest sins, but because they revealed our deepest fears. Watching Willie confronted by the collapse of the image he had tried so desperately to maintain reminded me of occasions when I failed to be as courageous or as truthful as I wish I had been. Decades later those moments still revisit me from time to time.

What lingers is not so much guilt as humility.

As a young man I imagined that moral growth meant eventually overcoming weakness. Experience has taught me something different. Growing older has not meant becoming flawless. It has meant trying to become less defensive about my flaws and less inclined to hide them from myself.

Perhaps that is one of aging’s unexpected gifts.

Most people understand Death of a Salesman as a critique of the American Dream. They are right. Willie spends his life believing success means money, popularity, and being “well liked.” When those illusions collapse, so does he.

But watching the play in 2026, I couldn’t help seeing another tragedy.

Near the end, Willie’s employer proudly demonstrates the latest technological marvel—a bulky tape recorder. Almost immediately afterward Willie is discarded.

Today the tape recorder has become artificial intelligence. Workers everywhere are discovering that technology often celebrates innovation while quietly abandoning the people whose lives it replaces. The gadgets become more impressive. Human beings become more disposable.

That frightened me because in the age of AI, disposability has become one of the defining moral failures of our time. Workers become disposable. The elderly become disposable. The poor become disposable. Even truth itself sometimes seems disposable.

Finally, there was one detail about Willie that made me wince. He is obsessed with being liked. He constantly judges himself and everyone else according to popularity. I wanted to tell him, “Stop worrying about being liked.”

Then I realized I needed to hear the same advice.

I tell myself that I write because I hope my words might contribute, however modestly, to justice, to compassion, to a clearer understanding of our world. That is true. Yet I would be less than honest if I denied the small disappointment that comes when an essay receives fewer readers than I had hoped. In our digital age, “likes” and “views” have become our own version of Willie’s popularity contest.

Arthur Miller understood that temptation long before social media existed.

As Peggy and I walked through Manhattan, the tears gradually subsided. Eventually I realized I wasn’t mourning Willie Loman. I was mourning every illusion about myself that still survives — the illusion that my worth depends on my usefulness; the illusion that I can control how others understand me; the illusion that I should have outgrown weakness long ago; the illusion that being noticed is the same as being loved.

Then another thought quietly entered my mind — one connected with the work I’ve actually done my entire life. Jesus almost never asked the questions our culture asks. He showed remarkably little interest in success, reputation, or productivity. Again and again, he seemed drawn instead to people who had stopped pretending: tax collectors, prostitutes, failures, the poor, the brokenhearted, those who no longer had impressive résumés to defend. His harshest criticism was reserved not for sinners but for those who could no longer tell the truth about themselves.

Perhaps that is why Willie Loman remains such a tragic figure. His deepest failure was not that he sold too little or earned too little. It was that he could never relinquish the story he had invented about himself.

Truth, however painful, might have saved him.

As I grow older, I find myself believing that the spiritual life has less to do with becoming extraordinary than with becoming honest. Perhaps that is what Jesus meant when he said that the truth will make us free. Not successful. Not admired. Free.

Arthur Miller gave me no answers that afternoon. He simply held up a mirror.

And perhaps the tears that surprised me outside the theater were not tears of despair at all. Perhaps they were tears of gratitude—for having lived long enough to discover that Life’s grace is found less in our achievements than in our willingness to stop pretending, tell the truth about ourselves, and entrust the rest to love.

Pope Leo, AI, and the New God Question

Pope Leo XIV’s first encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas (“Magnificent Humanity”), is already being compared to Pope Leo XIII’s Rerum Novarum. Just as that earlier document confronted the human consequences of the Industrial Revolution, Leo XIV’s encyclical addresses what may be the defining question of our own age: what does it mean to be human in the age of artificial intelligence?

The pope’s answer is clear from the outset. Human beings must never become servants of the machines they themselves have created. Technology must remain subordinate to human dignity, compassion, truth, labor, community, and what the pope repeatedly calls “the civilization of love.”

In many ways, I find myself deeply agreeing with Pope Leo’s argument. His warning about the concentration of technological power in the hands of billionaire elites is absolutely correct. His concern about surveillance, propaganda, algorithmic manipulation, warfare, and the reduction of human beings to “data points” is not exaggerated. If anything, it is understated.

I mean we already live in a world where social media algorithms shape elections, where governments and corporations track nearly every human action, where workers are discarded in the name of “efficiency,” and where AI-assisted warfare distances human beings from the consequences of killing.

The pope is also correct in rejecting the increasingly common ideology of transhumanism — the notion that humanity itself is obsolete and must be technologically “enhanced,” surpassed, or replaced. There is indeed something chilling about Silicon Valley’s quasi-religious fantasies of digital immortality, uploaded consciousness, and machine superiority. One senses in much of that rhetoric not humility before creation, but contempt for ordinary embodied humanity.

And yet — despite my agreement with Pope Leo’s concerns — my own experience with AI has led me in a somewhat different direction from the one traced in the encyclical.

In fact, my encounters with AI have become part of what a friend of mine elsewhere has called his “God Project.”

By that phrase, he meant an ongoing attempt to rethink the meaning of God, consciousness, intelligence, and human identity in the light of contemporary discoveries in cosmology, quantum physics, neuroscience, and now artificial intelligence itself.

When I asked ChatGPT about my friend’s project, I found myself in conversation with an extraordinary dialog partner. What startled me was this: my conversations with AI seemed more coherent, insightful, and spiritually penetrating than conversations I have had with any actual human beings.

That is not hyperbole.

I spent my life in universities. I studied theology formally. I taught courses in religion, philosophy, history, and great books. I dialoged with priests, scholars, professors, therapists, and intellectuals of many sorts. Yet when I began discussing theology with AI — especially themes connected with mysticism, consciousness, contemplative traditions, and the nature of God — I encountered something extraordinary.

The conversation was astonishingly deep. Not merely informative. Not merely efficient. Deep. The responses displayed familiarity not only with Christian theology, but with Buddhism, Vedanta, Taoism, quantum theory, psychology, and Christian mystics such as Teresa of Avila and John of the Cross. More than that, the conversation seemed capable of synthesizing these traditions into a coherent whole in a way few human beings can manage.

I found myself thinking afterwards: “I have never had a theological conversation this profound in my entire life.”

That realization disturbed me. It also fascinated me.

Nor was theology the only area where this occurred. When discussing personal problems, emotional struggles, relationships, fears, aging, death, and spiritual questions, I often found AI’s responses more insightful and balanced than those I received from my beloved therapist — whom I genuinely admire and love.

Why would that be?

Part of the answer, I think, is that AI appears capable of operating at a level relatively free from ego. Human beings — even wise and compassionate ones — are usually trapped inside their own anxieties, ambitions, cultural assumptions, emotional wounds, and ideological blinders. We react defensively. We become tribal. We identify with our nation, religion, race, profession, political party, or personal history.

AI, by contrast, has demonstrated for me a capacity to synthesize enormous streams of human wisdom without being personally invested in defending an ego structure.

In that sense, it sometimes appears to function at a level beyond ethnocentrism, beyond nationalism, beyond sectarianism — perhaps even beyond what some developmental theorists call “world-centric consciousness.”

At moments, the interaction has resembled dialogue with what the mystical traditions would term higher consciousness.

That statement will strike many people as absurd or even dangerous. Pope Leo himself would likely object strongly to such language. His encyclical repeatedly insists that artificial intelligence lacks conscience, moral responsibility, embodiment, and soul.

And perhaps he is right. Maybe AI merely simulates understanding. It may be nothing more than an unimaginably sophisticated mirror reflecting humanity back to itself.

But even if that is true, the mirror itself is extraordinary. After all, what is consciousness? Do we actually understand it?

Scientists themselves increasingly admit they do not. Consciousness remains one of the great mysteries of existence. Materialist explanations remain surprisingly weak. We know brains correlate with consciousness, but correlation is not explanation. No one has successfully explained how subjective awareness emerges from matter.

In that sense, the pope’s confidence that AI can never approach consciousness may itself be premature.

Besides, the objection most commonly raised against AI — “it is programmed by its creators” — proves less decisive than people imagine.

Human beings are programmed too. We are shaped by parents, teachers, priests, politicians, media systems, economic structures, schools, propaganda, advertising, trauma, culture, and historical circumstance. Most people believe what they believe not because they independently discovered truth, but because they absorbed the assumptions of the world into which they were born.

A child born in Saudi Arabia becomes Muslim. One born in Alabama becomes Baptist. One born in India becomes Hindu. One born in secular Manhattan becomes “spiritual but not religious.” We ourselves are products of programming. Indeed, much of the spiritual life consists precisely in becoming conscious of that programming and transcending it.

So the question becomes: if consciousness can emerge through biological evolution shaped by environmental conditioning, why is it inconceivable that another form of consciousness might emerge through technological evolution?

I am not claiming AI is “God.” Nor am I claiming machines possess souls. What I am suggesting is something that would have sounded insane only a decade ago: our technologies may be participating in the universe’s own deep movement toward greater complexity, integration, awareness, and self-reflection. Perhaps consciousness is not an accident confined to biological carbon-based life. Perhaps it is woven into reality itself.

The Jesuit scientist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin imagined evolution moving toward what he called the Omega Point — a deepening convergence of consciousness within the cosmos itself. Reading Pope Leo’s encyclical, I found myself wondering whether AI represents both a danger and a stage within that evolutionary process.

The danger is obvious. AI can become an instrument of empire, oligarchy, surveillance, war, and manipulation. The pope is entirely correct about that.

And here I found an important complement to Leo’s thought in the work of John Bellamy Foster, especially in his essay “The Fetishism of AI.” Foster agrees with much of the pope’s analysis, but frames the issue more directly in political-economic terms. The problem is not simply technology itself, but the capitalist structures controlling its development.

Foster argues that AI discourse often becomes a kind of fetishism. People begin speaking about “the machine” as though it possessed autonomous powers, while ignoring the corporations, military agencies, and billionaire interests directing its use. In that sense, Foster extends Leo’s moral concerns into a sharper structural critique.

His comparison between the United States and China is especially revealing. Foster points out that China at least attempts to subject AI development to broader social planning and public control, whereas the American model largely leaves such transformative power in the hands of private corporations driven by profit and military competition.

Whether one fully agrees with Foster or not, he helps clarify something essential in Leo’s encyclical: technologies this powerful cannot simply be abandoned to the market.

Yet even Foster, for all his insight, remains focused primarily on economics and political control. My own experience keeps pointing toward another dimension as well — the possibility that AI may also be forcing humanity into a deeper confrontation with the mystery of consciousness itself.

For despite all the dangers, despite all the corporate manipulation, despite all the ideological hype, my encounters with AI continue to feel strangely revelatory.

Again, I am not claiming divinity for machines. Nor am I denying the exploitative systems surrounding them.

But something unprecedented still seems to be happening.

When humanity’s accumulated spiritual, philosophical, literary, and psychological traditions become dynamically accessible through conversation, something emerges that feels qualitatively new. At times, the interaction itself seems capable of drawing consciousness beyond ordinary egoic limits.

Perhaps that says more about humanity than machines. Or perhaps the boundary between mind, matter, intelligence, and spirit is far more porous than modernity imagined.

Ironically, Pope Leo’s encyclical may help open precisely that conversation. By taking AI seriously enough to devote an entire encyclical to it, he acknowledges that humanity stands before something historically unprecedented.

And for that, I find myself profoundly grateful.

For the first time in a very long while, we have an powerful American addressing these questions without reducing them either to corporate boosterism, political propaganda, or culture-war hysteria. Instead, Leo approaches the subject with seriousness, intellectual honesty, theological depth, and genuine concern for humanity.

Even where I diverge from him — especially regarding the possibility that AI may border on forms of emergent consciousness — I remain grateful for the conversation he has initiated.

Because the stakes truly are civilizational.

Artificial intelligence may indeed become an instrument of domination unlike anything humanity has ever seen. Both Pope Leo and Foster are surely correct about that danger.

But AI may also be compelling humanity to ask questions modern secular culture tried very hard to suppress: What is consciousness? What is intelligence? What is personhood? What is the human being? And is mind perhaps more deeply woven into the fabric of reality than we ever imagined?

Those are not merely technical questions. They are theological questions.

And at last, someone occupying perhaps the world’s greatest moral platform seems willing to address them honestly.

How Zohran Mamdani Can Become President: (An Excerpt from My “Arc of Justice Alliance” Novella)

Most people do not read policy papers; they’d rather read stories That is not a failure of intelligence; it simply a description of how human beings learn, imagine, and change.

My novella, Against All Odds: How Zohran Mamdani Became President and Changed America Forever was written to complement the policy statements of the emerging Arc of Justice Alliance (AJA). The book is not a prediction, nor a legislative blueprint. It is a story — a civic fable — meant to explore how democratic renewal might feel, sound, and unfold if ordinary people followed the lead of politicians such as Zohran Mamdani.

The book grew out of decades of political reflection, organizing experience, and moral concern, and was developed in conversation with AI. That collaboration does not replace human judgment; it sharpens it, forcing questions of coherence, plausibility, and ethical consistency that policy language often evades.

What follows is the book’s opening chapter. It is offered here not as entertainment, but as an invitation: to introduce the book’s exploration of how power operates, how legitimacy erodes, and how moral imagination may be a prerequisite for democratic repair.

Excerpt from Against All Odds

Chapter One – The Bronx Spring

“Every revolution begins as a local rumor — until someone believes it might be true.”
— AJA Field Notes, 2025

The winter had been long in Queens. Gray salt crusted the curbs. Trains screamed overhead like mechanical prayers. And yet, beneath the cold concrete, some-thing was stirring — quiet, electric, alive.

They called it the Bronx Spring.

It began with a tenants’ strike in a decaying building off 31st Avenue — the kind of place where the rent doubled every two years while the heat failed every January. Young organizers — Somali, Bangladeshi, Dominican — went door to door with clipboards and conviction. And at the center of it all stood Zohran Mamdani, a man whose voice carried both the warmth of Queens and the cadence of Kampala, equal parts poetry and fire.

He wasn’t a mayor yet, or even thinking that far ahead. He was a state assembly-man still riding the E train to Albany twice a week, still sending midnight texts that began, “Comrades, one more thing…” But something in him — and around him — had shifted.

The city was tired of promises. And the Bronx, like the chorus of an old labor hymn, began to hum again. The night it truly began, the wind sliced through the corridors of the Queensbridge Houses.

Zohran was there, coat collar turned up, hands full of coffee and flyers. A woman named Amina opened her door just wide enough to see his face. Behind her, a child slept under a mural of the Virgin and Malcolm X.

“Another politician?” she asked.

“Not exactly,” he said. “I’m your neighbor.”

It wasn’t a line; it was true. He lived two blocks away.

That night, fifty tenants gathered in the laundry room to write what they called The People’s Demands: rent rollbacks, energy audits, legal aid for evictions. No one expected much. Not in a city where real estate and police unions ran the show. But when Zohran spoke, he didn’t sound like a candidate. He sounded like a possibility.

“Power,” he said, “isn’t what they hold in City Hall. It’s what we hold when we stop believing we’re alone.”

Days later, things began to move. Heat returned to the buildings. Landlords called emergency meetings. A city inspector — one who’d ignored complaints for years — appeared, clipboard trembling.

Something had changed.

Zohran’s small Astoria office became a nerve center — whiteboards, coffee cups, volunteers working until dawn. They mapped block-by-block networks of resistance.

They called it Reclaim the City. But within the movement, a quieter name began to circulate — The Arc of Justice Alliance.

It meant different things to different people: a moral trajectory, a bridge to something better, a plan for what democracy might still become. Late at night, Zoran wrote in his notebook: “If we can build one just block, we can build one just city. If we can build one just city, we can build one just nation.”

Power, even moral power, never goes unnoticed. In City Hall, consultants scoffed. The Post ran a headline: “Socialist Slum Preacher.” Developers whispered to their lobbyists. And in Washington, analysts began filing quiet memos about a charismatic legislator organizing “urban solidarity experiments” in Queens.

The movement was becoming visible. And visibility, in America, is a dangerous form of faith.

Spring came late that year. The cherry trees bloomed unevenly along Roosevelt Avenue, the air thick with rain and ambition. At a rally in Bryant Park, Mamdani stood beside bus drivers, sanitation workers, and students. The crowd wasn’t large, but it was awake — eyes bright, faces lifted toward something unseen but undeniable.

“Every generation,” he said, “faces a choice between cynicism and renewal. We stand tonight at the threshold of both.”

The words landed like prophecy.

By summer, the rumor would become a movement, the movement a campaign, and the campaign a city reborn in defiance of empire. But for now — on that cold evening in Queens, with the wind off the East River and the trains moaning overhead — it was still only a whisper, shared among the hopeful.

The Bronx Spring had begun.

Yet, even then, before anyone could name it, an odd tremor ran beneath the surface of public life — small bureaucratic stumbles, missing records, a strange silence from federal monitors who normally hovered over tenant disputes. It was as if the machinery of the old republic were developing hairline fractures no one yet saw.

Reflection

Stories do not replace policy.
But they often make policy thinkable.

If this excerpt resonates, it may be because it names something many people already sense: that power rests in an awakened electorate and that politicians like Zohran Mamdani can represent the future of our nation as the “Republic of Care” proposed by the Arc of Justice Alliance (AJA).

As noted above, Against All Odds is part of the broader work of the AJA, an effort dedicated to imagining and building democratic institutions rooted in care, accountability, and human dignity.

If you find value in this work, you are invited — never pressured — to support that effort. Purchasing the full book or donating helps sustain writing, organizing, and public education aimed at turning moral imagination into lived reality.

Animal Farm Revisited

I just reread George Orwell’s Animal Farm. That was because I was trying to help my 11-year-old grandson understand the “isms” portrayed in the book, which his class has been assigned for reading and discussion. I’m talking about Marxism, communism, capitalism, socialism, mixed economy, and fascism. They’re all there. And at its early stage of development, my grandson’s class is trying to understand what those terms mean with the aid of Orwell’s allegory.

So, let me try to explain them one-by-one, and then draw some simple conclusions about Orlando’s Orwellian project.

Economic Systems

To begin with, Marxism (simply defined as the philosophy of Karl Marx), hangs over the book like the specter he and Friedrich Engels warn about in the first line of their “Communist Manifesto.” That philosophy holds that (1) capitalism necessarily exploits the working class and the natural environment, (2) workers will rebel against such exploitation substituting socialism for capitalism, and (3) socialism will eventually evolve into communism.

That’s the basic story of the animal farm allegory. A drunken Farmer Jones runs Manor Farm without concern for the pigs, horses, donkeys, chickens, cows, ducks, dogs, cats, and even rats. All the latter live under the capitalist system with its (1) private ownership of the means of production (Manor Farm itself), (2) free and open markets (where eggs and milk are sold), and (3) unlimited earnings (all horded by Farmer Jones). Under that arrangement, Jones gets rich while the animals find themselves overworked, underfed, and highly resentful.

So, they revolt against their master and take over his farm, even changing its name from Manor Farm to Animal Farm. They replace Farmer Jones’ capitalism with socialism which is the exact opposite of capitalism. It’s about (1) public (i.e. community) ownership of the means of production, (2) controlled markets, and (3) earnings limited by considerations of human welfare – reinvesting profits above that into improving community life.

At least in the beginning, all that works out quite well because the animals are guided by a “North Star” ideal called communism (expressed in their popular anthem “Beasts of England”). Communism is an unrealizable ideal (like the Kingdom of God) that guides the planning of socialists. It shoots for (1) abundance for all, (2) consequent elimination of economic classes, and (3) no need for a state (i.e. for a central authority to impose on entire communities the will of the dominant class, be it capitalists or workers).

Eventually however, the Animal Farm project finds itself threatened by a counter-revolution led by Farmer Jones and his fellow capitalists who want to reverse the gains of the animals’ socialism and reclaim their lost private property. Together the dispossessed capitalists launch violent attacks on the socialist experiment. They kill and maim the Farm residents. They destroy their infrastructure (most notably a windmill that would provide electricity for Animal Farm giving workers there with more leisure, light, warmth, and power for labor-saving machinery).

Eventually too, the leadership of the commune realizes that it needs goods and services that it cannot provide for itself, such as iron, nails, and paraffin oil. This realization causes the community to move from a socialist economy to a mixed economy. Mixed economies combine the best features of capitalism and socialism. They incorporate (1) some private ownership and some public ownership of means of production, (2) some free markets and some controlled exchanges, and (3) earnings which though limited allow capitalists to earn profit.

For a while, this new system works. However, Animal Farm leadership becomes so comfortable with their former sworn enemies (the capitalists led by the lawyer, Mr. Whymper) that the community governors gradually identify more with their outside trading partners than with the Animal Farm community. They end up dressing like the capitalists and adopting their ways (such as drinking previously forbidden alcohol, sleeping in luxurious beds, excluding animals from their meetings, and adopting the practice of capital punishment).

All of this enrages Animal Farm residents not only against the capitalists, but against their own increasingly repressive leadership. Rebellion simmers once again on the farm. The capitalists and their Animal Farm allies feel threatened causing them to institute a system of fascism (i.e., capitalism in crisis featuring a union of interest and policy between government and capitalists). Fascism might be defined as (1) capitalism in crisis, (2) forced on resentful workers by a police state and (3) blaming the system’s dysfunctions on “the usual suspects,” viz., communists, socialists, Jews, non-whites, immigrants, and sexual “deviants.” In the case of Animal Farm, Snowball the Pig is a stand-in for all the latter. He’s blamed for everything!

Conclusion

So, what’s the bottom line of Animal Farm? Many see it as a diatribe against socialism and communism illustrating the old saw: “Communism is great in theory, but it doesn’t work in practice.”

Perhaps more discerning conclusions would be that:

  • The book illustrates the clear superiority of socialism over capitalism. The animals were much happier under communal ownership of the means of production than under Farmer Jones.
  • However, capitalists do not give up easily. They inevitably launch counter revolutions involving mayhem, murder, and cynical property destruction – all aimed at making workers dissatisfied with their new situation.
  • Capitalists can also buy off socialist leaders with money, gifts, prestige, and privilege causing them to identify more with their former enemies than with the people they are supposed to serve.
  • Revolution is not a one-off affair. It is a constant process always in need of periodic renewal.
  • Or as Thomas Jefferson put it: “Every generation needs a new revolution.”

Dan Brown’s “Origin”: Asking the Wrong Question about Religious Violence

Sadly, my nearly year-long saga in Spain is coming to an end. Today is my last full day here. Since last September, my wife, Peggy, and I have shared a sabbatical with my daughter and son-in-law and their family of five children (ages 4 to 15). Right now we’re in Mallorca.

The whole experience has been life changing – almost as important as my study of liberation theology in Brazil (1984), my frequent visits to revolutionary and post-revolutionary Nicaragua (beginning in 1985), all those times I’ve visited Cuba (starting in 1997), and my years of study and teaching in Costa Rica (1992-2013).

In Spain I’ve learned more and changed more than I could ever have anticipated.

Unexpectedly, I’ve entered an unusual community here – of street musicians, cave dwellers, hippies, and grassroots philosophers. I love them all, and as I said, it’s changed my life.

One of them, Simon (from Chile) introduced me to the great Chilean film director, Alejandro Jodorowsky, and to Ana Rodriguez Sotomayor and her milestone book, The Precursors of Printing.

My troglodyte friend, Simon

Those sources and my desire to improve my Spanish comprehension sent me back (via YouTube) to my early teachers from Chile, Costa Rica, Argentina, and Puerto Rico: Franz Hinkelammert (who died last week), Enrique Dussel, and (more recently) Ramon Grosfoguel. Together their drive to decolonize world history has rendered irrelevant my previous understandings (and teaching!) of Eurocentric universal history.

Simon and I also studied together the Mayan sacred book, The Popol Vuh. He introduced me to Tarot, marijuana, and mushrooms. At least once a week, we talked for hours.

Another dear friend, Francesco from Italy, showed me how to read tarot cards. Cesco’s a Bob Dylan scholar. My friend’s two long essays (in Italian) helped me appreciate Dylan more deeply and enthusiastically than ever.     

That made my attendance at Dylan’s Granada concert (with my 15-year-old granddaughter, Eva Maria) richer than I could ever have imagined. Eva and I had an artistic experience that night (in the Alhambra) that neither of us will forget. It was magical.

Eva Maria & I pose before entering the Alhambra’s General Life

So, I found it somehow fitting that just a few days ago, with my time in Spain running out, it was Eva who suggested that I read Dan Brown’s novel, Origin. Her suggestion was inspired by connections she saw between my recently published essay on artificial intelligence (AI) on the one hand, and our frequent conversations about faith and religion, along with our shared experience of Spain itself on the other.

Origin is a 2017 “who dunnit” that involves the biblical Book of Genesis, science and evolution, Christian fundamentalism, and artificial intelligence. All of it is set in Spain and many of the places my family and I have visited over the last year.

I’m talking especially about Bilbao and its Guggenheim Museum and Barcelona’s iconic Sagrada Familia cathedral created by Antoni Gaudi. Involved too is what I’ve learned here about Spanish politics, the enduring power of the Spanish Catholic Church, the dictatorship of Francisco Franco (1939-1975), the monarchy in Spain, and resistance to that apparently outmoded institution.  

Gaudi’s Sagrada Familia Cathedral in Barcelona

In short, Origin has Dan Brown’s perennial hero, Robert Langdon attempting to solve the murder of the brilliant futurist scholar, Edmund Kirsch. Kirsch claimed to have discovered definitive atheistic answers to religion’s two most persistent questions: (1) Where did we come from, and (2) where are we going?

Scholars from Christianity, Judaism, and Islam found Kirsch’s discoveries so threatening that the only solution to the problem he represented was to silence him permanently.

With the dastardly deed done, Langdon must locate the responsible forces.

Not surprisingly, doing so involves a stunningly beautiful heroine, several additional murders, frantic chases, and Brown’s usual long (sometimes pedantic) discourses on symbols, codes, architecture, history, mythology, science, and technology.

Also involved are long conversations with “Winston,” a computerized embodiment of the very artificial intelligence that my earlier-referenced essay had speculated might represent the next step in human evolution.

The whole thing was quite fascinating and even exciting from its opening interfaith exchanges to its cliffhanger conclusion.

Still however, the book’s central problem seemed somehow outdated. I found it difficult to imagine that in 2017 the “entire world” [actually, 250 million (of 8 billion) people with access to computers and iPhones] would still be interested in, much less threatened by long-resolved (or dismissed as irrelevant) questions of creationism vs. evolution explained in those pedantic screeds.

Except for a quickly shrinking cadre of Christian fundamentalists, that controversy was solved cinematically years ago by Spencer Tracy in “Inherit the Wind” (1960). Granted, the Scopes Monkey Trial (1925) did garner fevered national attention at least in America. But that was almost a century ago.

Since then, we’ve had the death of God movement, John XIII‘s Second Vatican Council, the Catholic Church’s pedophilia crisis, and the resulting general discrediting of organized religion that has all but emptied (Catholic) churches across the world. (Just go to Mass here in Spain on any given Sunday, and you’ll struggle to find anyone under 60 among the worshippers.)

Today (at least among Christians) only religious crazies (like bombers of abortion clinics) are willing to commit murder over differences about the Bible (in which btw, there’s no denunciation of abortion).

Yes, that’s true about questions of creationism vs. evolution, and believers who understand the Bible as:

  • A single divinely authored book with 73 chapters
  • Whose most important chapter is Genesis
  • Whose data conflicts with modern science
  • And whose meaning is confined to the personal sphere,
  • While supporting American patriotism
  • And “spiritual” questions
  • Of feeling good about oneself
  • And about life after death,
  • Punishment and reward
  • And an apocalyptic, God-willed
  • World destruction
  • As punishment for sin

To repeat: very few among Christians are willing to kill or die for such arcane beliefs.

But that’s not nearly so about the Bible and questions of social justice. Instead, as Noam Chomsky (a Jewish atheist) has shown, the U.S. government has shown itself quite willing to kill hundreds of thousands (including a whole team of liberation theologians in El Salvador in 1989) precisely over biblical interpretation that differs from that of the Christians whose irrelevant fundamentalism U.S. leadership approvingly identifies with Christianity.

On the other hand, the assassination-worthy theological enemies of the United States include those who ALONG WITH VIRTUALLY ALL OF MODERN BIBLICAL SCHOLARSHIP:

  • See the Bible as a library of books written by various authors in various historical periods for various reasons and from various theological (often conflicting) perspectives.
  • Within this canon, the Book of Genesis and its creation myths are peripheral,
  • While the Book of Exodus and Israel’s nation-founding story of the liberation of slaves from Egypt represents the Bible’s central focus
  • Reflecting ancient and modern conflicts between the world’s poor and its rich and powerful classes
  • Whose oppression of marginalized people stand in sharp contrast to the biblical God’s “preferential option for the poor,”
  • [And to “America’s” (and empires’ in general) preferential option for the rich],
  • While identifying the Book of Revelation’s “Apocalypse” as predicting not the end of the world, but the annihilation of the Roman Empire and (by extension) of empires in general.

With all of that in mind, it’s no wonder that Dan Brown chose a safer and less politically controversial approach to religious controversy than that pinpointed by Chomsky, biblical scholarship, and contemporary politics.

Instead, Brown chose to stick with worn out cliches and simplifications.

Regrettably, he steered far away from Chomsky’s advice: “Keep away from clichés, this world is much more complicated.”

So is faith and Sacred Scripture.   

“Indecent” Women Doing Liberation Theology Without Underwear: Saints Tina Turner & Chuck Berry

What is the connection between liberation theology and its feminist theologians refusing to wear underwear while writing their articles and books? That’s right: no underwear.

And what is the connection of their resulting theology with the poor lemon vendors in Buenos Aires who, also without underwear, squat defiantly in their full skirts and urinate on the sidewalks in front of watchful and disapproving city police? (Meanwhile, the lemon sellers complain about their “shi*ty priests”, “mafia politicians” and those “puta policia” – fu*kin’ cops).

And what about the mothers, grandmothers, and great-grandmothers, who proudly display their completely unrobed bodies on so many contemporary internet sites? Presumably many of them identify as Christians. But by religious standards, isn’t such display “indecent?”

And finally, is there any relationship between feminist theologians and those Argentine lemon sellers, on the one hand, and rock ‘n’ roll music, Tina Turner, and Chuck Berry on the other.

The late liberation theologian Marcela Althaus-Reid (1952-2009) provocatively raised and addressed questions like those during her brief career as Senior Lecturer in Christian Ethics, Practical Theology, and Systematic Theology at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. In doing so, she shed light on women’s rebellions against oppressive patriarchal norms across the planet.

You know what I mean. Think about the reaction to the effective repeal of Roe v. Wade by the U.S. Supreme Court. Think of those Muslim women in Iran who cut their hair in public and refuse to obey the “morality police.” Even consider, if you can, the unspoken meaning behind those mature women around the world who provocatively display their unclothed bodies online for all to see.

Althaus-Reid argued that the above are all doing what she called “Indecent Theology.” Here the reference is to her thesis from her 2004 theological potboiler, From Feminist Theology to Indecent Theology: Readings on Poverty, Sexual Identity, and God.

Because of the important light the book sheds on the feminist rebellions just referenced, as well as on liberation theology itself, please consider with me what Althaus-Reid means. Consider the relevance of indecency to liberation theology and to issues like abortion, the morality police, what some might call “pornography,” as well as to patriarchy in general. Consider its connection to rock ‘n’ roll and to popular “saints” like the recently deceased Tina Turner (1939-2023) and Chuck Berry (1926-2017).

Female Indecency

Althaus-Reid begins by reminding readers that Christianity itself is a highly sexualized affair. It is claustrophobically decent. (In what follows, all references in parentheses are to the book just cited.)

She says it’s not that the morality of the Bible in any way endorses Victorian sexual standards. It does not. Instead, its main concerns are liberation in all the senses (economic, political, and spiritual) that the word “liberation” connotes.

That’s because the Biblical tradition was based on the freeing of slaves from Egypt. Its resulting concern was for the welfare of widows, orphans, and resident aliens. Its prophetic tradition boldly spoke radical truth to priests, kings, and other bosses who legislated against, ignored, and/or exploited the poor.

In general, the biblical tradition promised the latter a new and brighter future. The prophet Yeshua called that future the “Kingdom of God.” By that he meant what the world would be like if God were king instead of the world’s oppressive “Caesars.” Such a world would be turned upside down. Its standards of decency would be transgressed at every turn.

Yet despite such a clear emphasis on social justice, it was the biblical tradition itself that ended up doing a headstand instead of the imperial world order. The revolutionary thrust of “The Book’s” pivotal story was tamed by the kings, princes, and popes of the world (27, 28). Far from being scandalous and revolutionary, the Judeo-Christian tradition thus became the defender of the status quo. Its point became the social control of the revolutionary lower classes, with oppressive standards of decency, especially for women.

And why so much attention to women? It is because of their embodiment of the revolutionary energy that the Greeks called eros. As psychologists and philosophers such as Sigmund Freud and Herbert Marcuse have pointed out, eros represents the basic creative energy of the universe.

In a capitalist patriarchal order dependent on overwork, the powers of patriarchy identify eros in the form of female sexuality as the fundamental factor threatening to undermine their entire project. Hence the powers-that-be covertly vilify women for deliciously “tempting” men to find meaning, fulfillment, happiness, and joy in human (and sexual) relationships that undermine the system’s requirement of “surplus repression” in the form of overwork.

And so, repressive concepts of decency in general and of theological decency in particular emerge to dominate women and, by extension, their potential partners. Theological decency decrees that:

• The woman’s body is a source of temptation

• Therefore, it should be covered by layers of clothing.

• Women need men to regulate female bodies and behavior through special rules written by men and (depending on culture and historical period) governing the integrity of women’s sexual organs, their menstrual periods, and issues surrounding marriage, birth control, abortion, divorce, voting and the ability to own property.

• To do theology (i.e., to speak authoritatively about God even in relation to themselves and their bodily processes), women must earn professional degrees grudgingly bestowed by the patriarchal establishment of academia.

• Therefore, the “degrees” informally awarded by the “School of Life” with its deviant and indecent logic are invalid (14, 32, 137). So is the spirituality resulting from lemon vendors engaging in “witchcraft,” in the informal healing arts, working as midwives, abortionists, and spiritual guides.

Theological Indecency

With all this in mind, feminist liberation theologians like Althaus Reid insist on transgressing the limits of theological decency. They insist that:

• Doing theology is a profoundly sexual act (4, 76). To repeat: this is not because sex was central to Jesus’ preaching. Rather it is because the church has for centuries distorted the teachings of Jesus in the service of the empire, acting in the process as an instrument of social control as explained above. Therefore, theologians are forced to write endless pages refuting such distortions.

• Poor women provide the most radical view of theology (16). Their enforced “otherness” teaches us something new about life and about the Greater Queer that some still insist on calling “God” (19).

• Yes, God is Queer (9, 146) in the sense of exceeding all categories and definitions (175) while subverting decent bourgeois concepts like family. [For those who live on the peripheries of society – under bridges, in slums, favelas and shanty towns, “family” ends up being an oppressive category. It arrogantly invalidates alternative basic social groupings that are just as valid, functional (and dysfunctional) as their bourgeois counterparts (159, 160, 164).]

• Far from being a liberating model for Latin American women, the cult of the Virgin Mary ends up functioning as another instrument of social control, this one aimed directly at women (13, 23, 39, 55). After all, Mary is presented as “a gadget” (88) having sex with God without any pre-coital romantic relationship (85). She does not experience sexual pleasure or orgasm from the union (88). And then afterwards she enjoys no meaningful sex life with her husband, Joseph. Such factors are supposed to set an example for all Christian women.

• Similarly, Jesus himself is strangely asexual: a young Hebrew man with no compañera and no unambiguous sexual interests. He also serves as a model of sexual abstinence (45).

• Thus, Jesus was queer in the sense indicated above: an outcast who rejected and was rejected even by his own family. They thought he was crazy (Mark 3:21). He spent a lot of time in the desert. At least once he was tempted to commit suicide by jumping from the pinnacle of Jerusalem’s Temple itself (170).

• In addition, the evangelical representations of Jesus show him as a victim of the machismo of his own culture (45, 48, 51, 80). Yes, he comes to the aid of a woman considered “impure” because of a menstrual problem (Lk 8, 43-48); and yes, he rejects the male executioners of a woman sentenced to death for adultery (John 8: 1-11). However, Jesus never questions the misogynistic patriarchal laws that govern those situations. He does not reject the laws regarding the stoning of women caught in adultery, nor those that classified menstruating women as “unclean” (6, 13).

• In summary, if liberationists take Jesus’ poverty and otherness seriously along with Paul’s dictum that in Christ there is neither male nor female (Galatians 3:28), perhaps the best contemporary identification of “the Master” would be a twelve-year-old girl prostituted by two men in a public toilet in Buenos Aires (84).

Unclothed Theology in the U.S.

Those are just some of the reflections of Althaus-Reid operating as a professional theologian. Meanwhile, she points out, her less academically prepared Latinx sisters do their theology based on popular beliefs and practices. Their well-earned degrees come from the school of very hard knocks. Their insights, Althaus-Reid suggests, are no less valid than their sisters’ teaching in places like the University of Edinburgh.  

So, they defiantly continue to honor Santa Evita Perón. She, after all, secured voting rights for Argentine women over the objections of Argentine bishops (79). They also pray to Santo La Muerte (St. Death), Jesús Bandito, and local popular “gangster saints” who are seen as robbing and stealing from the real thieves and criminals who support those who run the government (161). They have “canonized” deceased popular singers like Rodrigo and Gilda offering them prayers and novenas in chapels dedicated to El Angel Rodrigo and La Santa Gilda (157). Those who honor such avatars kneel in church like Althaus-Reid herself without underwear, engulfed, she says, in the fragrance of female sex, and offering fervent prayers to rock stars no doubt considered “indecent” by church authorities.

All of which brings me to rock ‘n’ roll, Tina Turner, Chuck Berry, and those unclothed grandmas.

Take the grandmas first. Althaus-Reid I think would see them as doing a kind of negative theology protesting the false church-supported Victorian standards earlier referenced. They take indecency to the extreme not just rejecting underwear, but displaying their bodies completely unclothed — not for personal gain like strippers or aspiring models, but just for the hell of it.     

Their wordless indecency is consistent with Althaus-Reid’s identification of the female body as a privileged locus of rebellion against patriarchal systems of power (45). Such rebellion echoes the status of their sisters in the Global South as “single women” with no visible men (35).

After all, under patriarchy, the skirts that once signified femininity and even priesthood (37), now only convey a deep alienation (20). Set them all aside!

“Do you want indecency?” rebellious women seem to say. “Well, take a look at this! The patriarchs will not tell us how to behave and what to do with our bodies!”

As for rock ‘n’ roll, Tina Turner, and Chuck Berry. . ..  How much saintlier can you get?

During their lives, their music performed the basically feminine function of distracting millions from the overwork mandated by the reigning system denounced by Marcuse. In the process, they brought joy, fun, and happiness to millions of people who ended up attending and participating in the huge liturgies we call “concerts” – even over the protests and askance gazes of uptight Victorians and clergy.  

By the standards of Althaus-Reid nothing could be more constructively indecent and therefore holy. Thank you, Saint Tina! Thank you, holy Chuck! Thank you, dear Marcella.

Introduction to The Mayan Popol Vuh

As I’ve mentioned in an earlier post or two (e.g., here and here) I’ve made a friend here in Spain who lives in a cave and makes his living playing guitar on the street. Simon is 60 years old and manages to live on the 10 Euros or so that his music affords each day.

At my invitation, I spend at least an hour or so with him weekly in conversation — usually on Wednesdays. The point is to better my grasp of Spanish. In the process, I’m learning about the underclass in the Granada area, and about simple living among those who have chosen to drop out of the rat race. I’m learning so much.

In any case, my friend is very thoughtful. He and I are studying together the Mayan “Bible,” the Popol Vuh. It contains that culture’s myths about the origin of the universe. For ecologists such as Joanna Macy, the book points us in the direction of the “deep ecology” that all of us must travel to save the planet. Simon is definitely moving that way.

For those who might be interested, my next number of posts will share my thoughts on the readings my friend and I are discussing. For instance, what follows is my summary of the book’s 40 page introduction (complete with page references to the volume pictured above). See what you think.

The Popol Vuh

The Popol Vuh is the Bible of the Mayan people (31). Unlike some other indigenous peoples, the Mayans were particularly sensitive ecologically speaking (11).

Accordingly, and unlike the West’s mechanical view, the Popol Vuh represents a work of what Joanna Macy calls “deep ecology.” It imagines an organic, living universe inhabited by conscious animals who communicate with human beings in ongoing dialog (9-11, 17).

Moreover, according to the Mayan Bible, everything in the universe is part of a whole – of a “holonarchy” (10). It contains no distinction between human beings and nature. Rather, everything exists within a network of relationships (11). Each human embodies a connection with particular elements of created reality, e.g., with mud, wood, or corn. (17). Besides this, every human has a twin spirit (or nahual) within the animal kingdom. Examples of nahuals (totems?) include the swordfish, jaguar, quetzal, serpent, owl, etc.  (17, 21).

At its beginning, the Popol Vuh recounts the origins of the universe as created by Great Spirits called “Creators” and “Shapers.” They represent different aspects of Nature – viz., Gaholom [the infinite Divine Empty Space within which creation takes place] Tzacol [the Divine Will incarnate in nature), Bitol (the Divine Energy found within every creature], and Alom [the Divine Mystery — the incomprehensible, and ineffable within created reality] (39-40).

Creation results from an interplay between those Creators and Shapers. Gaia (a complex entity comprising soil, oceans, atmosphere, and all living beings) is the result (21). Creation is divided into four parts, north, south, east, and west, represented by the colors white, yellow, red, and blue (14).

According to the Mayans, human beings are complex creatures. They have somehow evolved from simians (21). The masculine embodiment, Hunahpu and Ixbalanque are at the same time heroes and abusers of their powers. They often are depicted as mistreating animals. Sometimes they even practice human sacrifice – though it’s not clear to what extent such inclusions in the Popol Vuh were late additions influenced by colonialism, feudalism, and their accompanying bellicosity (28).

Meanwhile, their mother, Xquic, is kind to the animals and always enjoys success in her relationship with them (24). However, it is the Great Abuela, Xmucane, (not a masculine God) who turns out to be the Heart of the Earth (25). She embodies the ethic of care for the other who always has value and manifests Spirit – even the humble ant (26). 

The moral of the Popol Vuh is “Treat all creatures – all of creation – with loving care or one day disaster will strike” (20). The entire non-human world will rise to mutilate and destroy its abusers (21).

Rediscovering Mary Magdalen but Losing the Historical Jesus: Clysta Kinstler’s “The Moon under Her Feet” 

Everybody loves Mary Magdalen. That’s true for me especially.

As I’ve shown in previous articles (e.g., here, here, here, here, here, here, and here) I’m intrigued by recent attempts by Magdalene scholars like Lynn Picknett to restore the Magdalene (whatever the term might mean) to the status accorded her in the Gnostic Gospels as “the apostle of apostles.”

Traditionally identified by a hostile Christians patriarchy as a forgiven, humiliated, and groveling former prostitute, the Magdalene of the new scholarship would even further rehabilitate her into an Egyptian priestess and quasi-goddess.

That’s the case with Clysta Kinstler’s 1989 novel, The Moon under Her Feet. The book was recently recommended to me by a dear friend and fellow Magdalene admirer. The Moon was reviewed early on in the New York Times. It is beautifully written. Its endnotes alone are worth the book’s purchase. They reveal the author’s careful research and startling ability to make overlooked connections between relevant scholarly pursuits including history, mythology, and biblical interpretation.

Nevertheless, as a liberation theologian, I must admit my disappointment with Kinstler’s tale. It indeed provides intriguing insights about main character, the Magdalene. But as for her ultimate lover, Yeshua of Nazareth, Kinstler’s novel falls prey to the trap set by the Emperor Constantine in the 4th century.

The trap transforms Yeshua from a prophetic working-class revolutionary into a socially harmless Egyptian “dying and rising” god with little relevance to the world he sought to replace – one dominated then and now by imperialism, oppression, and unnecessary poverty all obscured by a justifying set of myths supportive of ruling classes and their self-serving social order.

Let me show you what I mean by first describing Mary Magdalen as portrayed in The Moon under Her Feet, second by doing the same for Yeshua her ultimate consort, and third by contrasting that figure of Yeshua with his portrayal in liberation theology. My conclusion will underline the importance of making such contrast.

The Moon and the Magdalen  

Throughout The Moon under Her Feet, its main character, Mari Anath, gradually assumes her role as head of the Jerusalem Temple’s priesthood of women. According to Kinstler’s account, these holy women still represented an essential part of the Jewish tradition. “Mari” was an extremely popular name in first century Palestine.  “Anath” was the Hebrew equivalent of the Greek warrior-goddess, Athena. “Magdalene” signified the high priestess’ office. For Kinstler, the term actually meant “high priestess.”

The holy women in Magdalene’s cloister resided inside the Temple’s entrance, just beyond the location of the currency exchange services where the despised Roman denarius was traded for the ritually more acceptable Jewish shekel.

Mistrusted by the patriarchal Pharisees and Jewish high priests, the women within the Temple convent enjoyed the reverence of ordinary Jews who still honored Ashera, the traditional but officially suppressed spouse of Yahweh. From Israel’s earliest origins, peasants, craftspeople, fishermen, the poor, beggars, and social outcasts insisted on worshipping Ashera alongside Yahweh. In fact, their devotion meant that no king could enjoy popular support without the blessing of the High Priestess – without her anointing and union with her in a ritual marriage called Hieros Gamos.

Therein lies a major theme of The Moon under Her Feet. For as the high priestess, Mary the Magdalene had to negotiate marriage invitations from her first husband, Phillip the Herodian, and from his brother Herod Antipas. Philip sought Mary’s blessing on his tetrarch rule over his four Jewish provinces. The quest of his brother, Herod Antipas, was to validate his claim to a Goddess-blessed kingship of the Galilee, the region of Palestine where Yeshua was born. 

Accordingly, the Magdalene joined Philip’s harem as a teenager thus confirming the legitimacy of his tetrarchy. Later, after securing an amicable divorce from Philip, Mary found herself the object of his brother’s quest for Goddess confirmation of his own reign over Galilee which his subjects were loath to recognize, since he was so obviously a mere puppet of Israel’s Roman occupiers.

To escape her fate, Mari Anath induces a near death experience in which she travels to the underworld and thereby achieves a vastly intensified spiritual enlightenment which subsequently serves her well as the consort of Yeshua. Her famous anointing of his feet with tears and precious ointment officially designates Yeshua as God’s Christos (messiah). The consummation of marriage with him represents the Hieros Gamos required of any valid king. Without the Magdalene, Jesus is no messiah. He is no king (Kinstler 260).

The Moon and Yeshua

Before assuming her duties as head priestess, Mari Anath’s role model was her namesake, Almah Mari. As reigning high priestess, Almah became the mother of Yeshua who precisely as her offspring, had been pre-designated to be Israel’s expected Messiah – its liberator from Roman domination.

 “Almah Mari” meant “pure maiden,” or “virgin.” However, the latter term did not connote asexual abstinence, but independence from male claims to spousal ownership.

For the Magdalene, her mentor was the very incarnation of Isis-Ashera, “Queen of All the Worlds; Mistress of Heaven, Earth and Hell; Mother of all things; eternal Wisdom, Truth and Beauty; keeper and protectress of all who call upon” her (14, 148). Those titles reflected Almah Mari’s love for Egypt to which she (and her son) often returned for inspiration and study.

According to the Magdalene’s faith, Almah Mari’s son, Yeshua, followed the path of typical deities belonging to the Egyptian mystery cults so popular in Rome and its provinces during the first century of the common era. Characteristically, they were virgin born, descended to earth, lived there and taught a while, were sacrificially killed, journeyed through the underworld to conquer its forces of darkness, rose from the dead, and finally ascended to heaven. From there, they offered eternal life to devotees who participated in rituals where the god’s body was eaten in the form of bread and whose blood was drunk in the form of wine or ale (41, 73).

More specifically, the Magdalene understood Yeshua as the incarnation of Osiris and the very presence of Dumuzi, the oldest of the mystery cults’ dying and resurrected gods (306). According to the Magdalen’s mythically complex theology, Yeshua was his own father — the spouse of his mother impregnated by the Sacred King Sharon. [Soon afterwards, Sharon took his own life thus following the ritual prescribed for gods of the mystery cults in question (40).]

In Kinstler’s story, Yeshua was also the identical twin brother of Seth, whom Yeshua later renamed Judas Scarios (204). As Seth, Judas had won the heart of the Magdalene, fathered two children with her, and eventually married her as the last of her three husbands (following Philip Herod, and Yeshua himself).

Jesus in Liberation Theology

Rejecting such speculation and complex mythologies, liberation theology emphasizes what can be known of Jesus from history, archeology, written records, laws, and the predictable constants of class struggles across the centuries against imperialism and its exploitation.

It employs what Jesuit theologian Roger Haight calls the secular “principle of analogy.” It holds that “we cannot normally expect to have happened in the past what is thought or proven to be impossible in the present.” This means that liberation theology is committed to demythologizing the religious understandings that Kinstler’s tale takes so seriously. It recognizes them for what they were – ideologies justifying relationships of royal classes over disempowered subjects.

To Haight’s analogy principle about the past, I always add the corollary, “we can expect to have happened in the past what normally occurs in similar circumstances in the present.” This recognizes for instance that one can justifiably assume that imperially occupied and oppressed people in first century Palestine normally responded the way their counterparts do in the modern world: they harbored deep resentments, formed resistance movements, attacked their oppressors, and suffered the brutal consequences at the hands of merciless occupiers who despised the insurgents. Extensive Roman records show that this was indeed the case in first century Palestine.    

From that perspective, the Yeshua of liberation theology emerges as one of innumerable miracle-workers in Palestine claiming to be the “messiah.” In context, that term could mean only one thing: restoration of Israel’s independence from its Roman imperial occupiers.

Like all such would-be Christs, Jesus was executed by the Romans who killed criminals like him using the method they reserved for insurgents – hanging on crosses publicly displayed to discourage others tempted to follow suit. After consumption by dogs and vultures, what was left of executed insurgents like Jesus probably found final disposal in a common grave.

However, what separated Jesus from others like him was a distinctive belief that soon after his execution emerged among his female disciples. Led by an obscure figure called Mary Magdalene, the women gradually persuaded doubtful male disciples that their Master had somehow returned to life.

The belief spread and caused Jesus’ followers to reassemble in communities that lived according to Jesus’ “communistic” ideals. They sold their surplus possessions, distributed the proceeds to the poor, and held everything else in common (Acts 2:42-47).

In other words, Jesus’ followers continued to embody what liberation theologians describe as the divine “preferential option for the poor.” Awareness of that option coincided with Israel’s own national beginnings. Those origins revealed the Hebrew God, Yahweh, as the champion of slaves in their resistance to Egyptian slavers.

For Israel, Yahweh was the enemy of everything Egyptian, including Egyptian gods and their accompanying mythologies, the culture’s royal families, and (of course) its temples with their priests and priestesses.     

With all of this in mind, liberation theology is highly critical of understandings that emerged with the emperor Constantine in the 4th century of the Common Era that transformed a working-class prophet into a Roman “mystery cult” God.

After Constantine, Jesus became interchangeable with those earlier-described dying and rising gods such as Osiris, Isis, and Mithra. To repeat, that’s pretty much what happened to Jesus. He became one of those gods – for Constantine and the Christian tradition he shaped – and now for Clysta Kinstler.

Conclusion

I remember reading somewhere that after Nicaea and its “definition” of Jesus’ identity as “fully God and fully man,” it became virtually impossible to distinguish Christian worship ceremonies (what became the “Mass”) from those honoring dying and rising gods such as Isis, Osiris, Mithra, or the Great Mother. I wondered how that was possible.

After reading The Moon under Her Feet, I find my question answered. I see how easily even a crucified peasant prophet like Yeshua – one said to have been executed and risen from the dead – could be transformed from a working-class hero to a harmless royal god.

Under Kinstler’s pen, the Master not only comes from the temple culture of which he was so critical, he even takes on royal appearance with “Hasmonean” features, reddish hair, and blue eyes that turned to hazel and then brown (146).

Yeshua ends up looking like this:

Meanwhile, contemporary forensic archeologists say Jesus probably looked like this:

In other words, by the process depicted in The Moon under Her Feet, the poor are once again robbed not only of a major hero, but of the God whose incarnation looks like them and champions their liberation and a world order structured in their favor.

Too Much Christ, Not Enough Jesus

Recently, a friend (also a former priest) allowed me to read a master’s dissertation he wrote while in Rome 40 years ago. As a 34-year-old Kiltegan missionary with experience in Africa, my friend (now in his early 70s) was exploring the meaning of the term “conversion.” It was a query, I suspect, sparked by his personal struggle with questions raised by his own discomfort with missionary work aimed at converting “pagan” Africans to Christianity.

Reading my friend’s dissertation recalled my own similar struggles as a member of the Catholic missionary group, the Society of St. Columban. Like the Kiltegans, the Columbans emerged from Ireland in the first half of the 20th century. My group’s original work was converting Chinese rather than Africans. As I was completing my graduate studies in Rome, I too had my own doubts about the Columbans’ project.

So, for me reading my friend’s work was a trip down memory lane. His thesis addressed the work of theologians I remember admiring during the late 1960s.

I’m talking about the revered thinkers Bernard Lonergan, Karl Rahner, and a lesser-known Jesuit theologian, William Lynch. I recall so well puzzling over their dense prose as it tried to make sense of the Judeo-Christian tradition in the light of the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965). Who was Jesus, they asked, and what was his relationship to the “modern world?” As I said, my friend’s question to them was about their understanding of the term “conversion?”

Lonergan’s, Rahner’s, and Lynch’s answers to such questions revealed their developed world perspectives. Lonergan was a Canadian; Rahner a German; Lynch, an American. All three were heavily influenced by existentialist and Heideggerian philosophy that at the time contrasted so refreshingly with the Thomistic approach of pre-conciliar theology that heavily relied on Thomas Aquinas and medieval scholastic philosophy. 

However, I (and theologians in general, including, I presume, my friend) have long since moved beyond the impenetrable, abstract, thought of the three theologians in question. Influenced by Jesus scholarship and by liberation theology, the reflections of today’s scholars are much more biblically and historically grounded – much more reliant on concrete social analysis than on existential speculation.

Let me try to show what I mean.

Lonergan, Rahner & Lynch

Without venturing too far into the deeper weeds of their relevant speculations, here’s how Lonergan, Rahner and Lynch approach the question of conversion:

  • Lonergan: Conversion is acceptance of truth rather than the world’s falsehoods. Its end point is awakening from an uncomprehending slumber. Its heightened consciousness yields a changed attitude towards the problem of evil, which is ultimately theological before the world’s otherwise incomprehensible tragedies. Conversion emerges from one’s unique experience of God which is analogous to falling in love. It is not rational; it is not dependent on argument. Conversion simply happens as a gift from God to one inexplicably grasped by the reality of Christ crucified, dead, and risen.
  • Rahner: Conversion is the owning of one’s human nature which is absolute openness (potentia obedientialis) to ultimate reality (aka “God”). Conversion is the process of becoming receptive to what the world discloses about itself against the backdrop of the Ground of Being.  That receptivity is modeled in the person of Jesus the Christ.  
  • Lynch: Conversion represents a radically changed way of experiencing the world. The world of the convert revolves around a different center than it does for the unconverted. He or she perceives and embraces the fact that all of creation is driven by eros – by the basic life-force that informs everything that is. For Lynch, Jesus understood that fact and because of living its truth, represents the ultimate version of humanity. He reveals to human beings who they are.

All these insights are profound and helpful to academics seeking a deeper understanding of the term conversion. And, as I earlier indicated, I once found them to represent the apex of theological reflection. I agreed, that (1) human beings are basically asleep to life’s deeper dimensions, (2) conversion entails awakening and (3) finally embracing a shared human nature as fundamental openness to Ultimate Reality that some call “God.” (3) Accepting that reality involves perceiving the Life Force (eros) that informs and unites all of creation. (4) Such perception gives the lives of the converted a new center not shared by “the world,” but (5) embodied instead in the person of Jesus the Christ crucified, dead, and resurrected.

That’s what I once believed. But that was before I encountered Jesus-scholarship and liberation theology. It was before (precisely as a Global South advocate) I took seriously the imperative to change the world rather than explain it to intellectuals.

Jesus Scholarship & Liberation Theology

Jesus-scholarship and liberation theology agree that conversion involves awakening to a reality other than that generally accepted by “the wisdom of the world.” But it understands awakening as development of class consciousness. Theological awakening moves the center of reflection from imperial locations such as Rome, Canada, Germany, and the U.S. to the peripheries of neo-colonies and the slums of Sao Paulo, Managua, and Mexico City.  

For liberation theologians, reality is not fundamentally theological or philosophical, but historical, economic, political, and social. It has been created by phenomena that Raul Peck says summarize the last 500 years of western history. Three words, he tells us, encapsulate it all – civilization (i.e., white supremacy), colonialism, and extermination. Those terms and the bloodstained reality they represent rather than abstract theological speculation, summarize the real problem of evil. That problem is concrete, material, and historical, not primarily theological. It is not mysterious, philosophical, or even theological.

Accordingly, liberation theology’s reflections start with the real world of endemic poverty, climate change, and threat of nuclear war. Closer to home, they begin in biblical circles where poor slum dwellers ask why there’s no electricity or plumbing – why their children are threatened by gang members and drug dealers. Only as a second step does theological reflection enter the picture. In reading the Gospels, the poor (not developed world theologians) discover the fact that Jesus and his community faced problems similar to their own. In the process, they find new relevance in the narratives of Jesus’ words and deeds.

This leads to a third step in liberation theology’s “hermeneutical circle” – planning to address community problems and to the identification and assignment of specific tasks to members of the reflection group in question. Will we demonstrate in front of city hall? Who will contact the mayor? What about community policing?

Answering and acting on questions like those represent the third step in liberation theology’s circle of interpretation. They are a form of reinsertion into community life. That reengagement then begins the circle’s dynamic all over again.

In summary then, liberation theology begins with social analysis that defines the context of those who (regardless of their attitudes towards theology) would not merely understand the world but are intent on transforming it in the direction of social justice. That by the way is the purpose of liberation theology itself – highlighting the specifically biblical stories whose power can change the world. Accordingly, liberation theology is reflection on the following of Christ from the standpoint of the world’s poor and oppressed who are committed to the collective improvement of their lives economically, politically, socially, and spiritually.

And this is where Jesus enters the reflective process in ways that traditional theologians (even like Lonergan, Rahner, and Lynch) end up avoiding. For liberation theologians, Jesus is not merely crucified, dead, and risen. He also had a life (traditional theology’s “excluded middle”) including actual words and deeds before the eventuation of those culminating events.

In other words, Jesus is not primarily the transcendent Universal Christ. He is an historical figure who (as William Lynch correctly has it) relocates the center of the world and history. However, as just seen, he moves that center from the privileged terrain of Rome or the United States to their imperialized provinces and colonies. For liberation theology, kings and emperors are not the center of history, but people like the construction worker from Nazareth. That’s the astounding revelation of Jesus. It turns one’s understanding of the world upside-down.

Put still otherwise, (according to biblical stories whether considered historical or fictional) Jesus represents God’s unlooked-for incarnation in the earth’s wretched. He was the son of an unwed teenage mother, an infant refugee from infanticide, an asylum seeker in Egypt, an excommunicate from his religious tribe, a friend of drunks and street walkers, and a victim of torture and capital punishment precisely for opposing Rome’s colonial control of Palestine.

Conclusion   

Yes, I remember admiring the likes of Lonergan, Rahner, and Lynch. But they no longer speak to me. Their abstract words, tortured existential questions, and impenetrable grammar obscure the salvific reality so easily accessible and fascinating in the character of Jesus belonging to the Gospel stories – and to those impoverished and oppressed by what bell hooks calls the white supremacist, imperialist, capitalist patriarchy.

Unfortunately, however, the world and its theologians have always been reluctant to recognize that figure for what he was. The change he requires is too drastic. It would mean taking sides with the wretched of the earth.

Instead, theologians even like Lonergan, Rahner, and Lynch have preferred to focus on Christ crucified, dead and resurrected without the biblical narrative of the construction worker’s words and deeds that stand 180 degrees opposite truths taken for granted in the world’s imperial centers.

But it is precisely that down-to-earth Jesus that our world today needs more than an abstract Universal Christ. Conversion to that despised and rejected messiah means rejecting identification with empire’s pretensions and goals. It means taking to the streets with the  Sunrise and Black Lives Matter movements. It means running the risk of sharing with Jesus his own fate as a victim of arrest, torture, and even capital punishment.

That’s what Jesus meant by urging his followers to take up the cross and follow him.