The Religious and Fraternal Underpinnings of Sci-Fi Fandom

By John Crow

The semester is over at Florida State and next week begins the summer semester. I have already begun my summer reading which continues my interest in fraternalism, religion, gender, and the body. In that vein I have begun with Mark Carnes’ Secret Ritual and Manhood in Victorian America (Yale UP 1989). In the beginning of the volume, he notes the significant changes that occurred to fraternalism after the antimasonic movement of the 1830s. Between the 1840s and 1860s, there was a move to upgrade fraternalism, to make it more palatable for the middle-classes, and to re-center the fraternal orders on ritual performance. While social interaction remained important, to some degree, it was the performance and belonging that mattered. Thus antebellum orders such as Freemasonry and the Odd Fellows swelled to significant numbers with the Odd Fellows having over 800,000 members in 1896 and the Freemasons not far behind with 750,000. For many of them, it was the performance in the rituals that cemented their involvement. They were able to reconnect with an imagined past and so-called ancient wisdom that was universally available.

Not surprisingly, these fraternal orders took the place of organized religion and church for many men. The rituals offered a universal morality couched in allegory that they performed. Members assumed costumes, imaginatively entering Solomon’s Temple in the Royal Arch Degree, discovering the lost word and Ark of the Covenant, or sitting around faux camp fires, connecting to an imagined primitive American past in the Order of the Red Men. In the Knight of Pythias, degrees were placed in Ancient Greece and the Medieval Europe. In many cases the degrees where anachronistic, combining historical figures and time periods in ways that were impossible. In response to non-historical claims, noted Masonic scholar, Albert Mackey, stated that the setting may be “true or false,” but the “lesson is still there, and the symbolism teaches it exclusive of the history.” All these movement promised connections to a world separate from the one the men knew, although it was imbued with symbols and allegories that pointed to a familiar Protestant morality. During these rituals, wearing masks and costumes, these men took on new identities imbued with deep and mystical meaning, though never straying too far from standard social conventions. As I read these lines, I wondered if today’s sci-fi fandom operates in a similar way for many in our modern culture.

Being from Atlanta, I thought of the largest fandom convention that takes place every Labor Day, DragonCon, and its cadre of costume wearing participants, reenacting sci-fi scenes from comic books, movies and television shows. These sci-fi conventions, or “cons” as they are called, occur somewhere in America every weekend. During these cons, fans step into their imaginative worlds similar to the masons and Odd Fellows. Instead of playing Hiram Abif, one may play to role of Obi-Wan Kenobi, similarly struck down by the forces of evil, only to be resurrected, not by the lost word, but by a universal “force,” which stresses a morality similar to that professed by masons. In fact, for many Jediism takes the place of more established religion. Some Jedi practitioners claim ancient pedigrees, not unlike many fraternal orders. Of course I could have picked Star Trek, with its secular humanism based Prime Directive, or some other vampire or anime series. In all these cases, the fans step into another world, assuming new identities. Carnes suggests that these new identities assist the performers in addressing anxieties. They certainly allow the creation of worlds that the members regulate and control. Ritual is a big part of that, as is social control. Just as masons can “black ball” and prohibit the membership of others, fandom groups police their boundaries in a variety of ways. Whether one must know the lines of a movie, the histories or genealogies of characters, or the proper conduct for the mythos or game, the boundaries can be stark and the participants unforgiving of violators.

Looking specifically at gender and the body, these imaginative worlds allow participants to explore and recast their bodies and gender in a variety of ways. While Victorian fraternal orders may have allowed men to adapt and re-inscribe gender roles in society, responding to the much discussed feminization of Victorian America, sci-fi fandom allows modern participants the ability to explore issues of gender and the body in complex ways. Cross dressing is common, as is the assumption of costumes that obscure gender altogether. Participants can have wings, become cyborgs, add additional limbs, or don non-gendered, non-human costumes, or even non-biological roles such as those of robots. Similarly, bodily extensions and modifications are common. In the opposite direction, participants may take on exaggerated gender features such is common in Japanese anime costume play, or “cosplay” as it is called. Another vibrant scene is the anachronistic steampunk movement, which attempts to fuse modern or futuristic technology with eighteenth century aesthetics.

The reasons men participate in fraternal orders now, as well as in the past, are complex and changing. Yet I think they give us some clues into modern worlds like sci-fi fandom, worlds in which religion and fraternalism manifest in very predictable ways. Capturing the religiosity of these participants can be difficult. They often fall into the ambiguous spiritual-but-no-religious segment of American society. Yet if we look for older models, such as Victorian fraternalism, we may be able to glean certain similarities which open possibilities for study. Though, on the surface, a mason dressed as Moses, participating in an initiation seems completely unrelated to a woman dressed as a Sith lord, wielding a light-saber, the underlying motivations may not be that different. Fraternal orders during the Victorian era addressed anxieties while simultaneously stressed conventional morality and middle-class virtues. While the sci-fi fandom world may seem completely unrelated, it too may be performing the same functions.

Tuesday Merry-Go-Round: From Oprah to Rob Bell to Chick-Fil-A to R. J. Rushdoony's Righter-Than-Thou Economics (And Why They all Matter)

Paul Harvey

If you're like me and pushing your red pen up a Sisyphean pile of papers, you may not have time to get to any of these good reads right away, but I'll put some good stuff to read later for you up here so you can get to it when you can get to it. Yes, it's miscellaneous but good links day here.

First, we've noted here the great set of dialogues going over at Immanent Frame (with 12 substantive and engaging responses now) on Kathryn Lofton's Oprah: Gospel of an Icon. The latest entrant in the conversation is our friend Tracy Fessenden's O Tedious Selfhood, a wonderful and very funny take. A brief taste:

How has the trajectory of American religious history brought us to this place, this Oprah?

A thumbnail history might go like this: The Protestant sanctification of the commonplace, the discovery of divine light in the mundane array of objects and acts taken up by a priesthood of believers, proves a boon to American merchants and clerics alike. As Protestantism finds itself more and more at home in the New World, its religious dispositions and their modes of production become less separable from everyday life—indeed, they come to make up the fabric of everyday life. This means your life. The erstwhile Puritan discipline of self-scrutiny brings the things of the world increasingly into its purview, reading them for the shimmering glint of spiritual favor. Advertising, the most aspiring of evangelical preaching’s bastard offspring, offers the promise of entry into a more charismatic life in exchange for the dissipation of spiritual and economic capital: buy, believe, buy and believe more. Consumer choice and religious option open along the same paths, obscuring relational possibilities and imperatives that might bind you to a particular past, a more circumscribed future, to anything that might constrain the unfolding of your own best life. Women gain ground in the commercial revolution faster and more easily than they wrest standing from church authorities, leaving the latter to play catch-up with the consumer culture they helped to foster. Buy and believe. Find what works for you. Purveyors of spirituals and temporals alike ratchet up the “imperatives of comfort nestling modern women in a language of self-service.” “Self-service,” here, is pitch-perfect: Because you’re worth it. And by the way, you’re on your own. We’re now in Oprah’s world—“a world in which we find alluring the templates to which we are fitted,” as Jason Bivins gorgeously puts it, “a melancholy whose song of empowerment sells us resignation as the hope we know will be dashed.”

Next up, for you American Historical Association members, is Darren Dochuk's piece in the latest Perspectives, the monthly newsletter of the AHA: "Searching Out the Sacred in U.S. Political History." You'll have to be a member to get it online, or track it down in your library, and it's well worth the short read. Accompanying this, by the way, is the new anthology edited by Darren and Michelle Nickerson, Sunbelt Rising: The Politics of Place, Space, and Region, another fine volume from the University of Pennsylvania Press' "Politics and Culture in Modern America" series. The volume includes Darren Grem's great piece (which we blogged about here before) "The Marketplace Missions of S. Truett Cathy, Chick-fil-A, and the Sunbelt South," and it also includes a statistical political science-y analysis of "Religion and Political Behavior in the Sunbelt."

And what would a week here at the blog be without a little discussion of hell. We noted before Lauren Winner's take on the Rob Bell Love Wins controversy; I neglected then to note Krista Tippett's take on the same, also in the Washington Post.

Finally, those of you who follow Religion Dispatches will know of Julie Ingersoll's fascinating work there tracing down the significant, if somewhat hidden, influence of Christian Reconstructionism on various aspects of the contemporary right, (she is currently, I believe, writing a book on said subject). See, for example, "Huckabee Channels Rushdoony," and "Reconstructionists Celebrate 'Ruling Over the Earth' Day."

Mark Oppenheimer discusses this further in his piece "Christian Economics Meets the Antiunion Movement," from the New York Times a couple of days ago. Aside from discussing the topic of Gary North's economic views, the article also gives a brief (and funny) history of the dysfunctional family history of "Christian Reconstructionism" from its intellectual godfather R. J. Rushdoony to its contemporary exponent North. If you have no idea what any of this is, here's a very brief summary, from the piece:

Mr. North, who is Mr. Rushdoony’s son-in-law but was not on speaking terms with him from 1981 until Mr. Rushdoony’s death, focuses on how that biblical libertarianism applies to economics. He concluded that the Bible forbids any welfare programs, is opposed to all inflation, and requires a gold-coin standard for money.

Oppenheimer's piece addresses the always difficult historical question of tracing influences. He writes:

Professor Ingersoll concedes it is difficult to prove direct connections between Mr. North’s writings and Wisconsin antiunion conservatism. On the other hand, Mr. North might like to think he has influenced the Wisconsin debate, and he has written in vociferous support of Gov. Scott Walker.

And, as Professor Ingersoll cautions, influence does not always announce itself:

“I like to say, ‘How many Christians know who is Augustine is, and how he influenced them?’ ”

Barack Obama and Óscar Romero

By Christopher Jones

Just over a week ago, I returned from a restful and relaxing vacation in El Salvador, where I enjoyed the beach, fantastic food, stress-free post-comps reading (in a hammock, no less), and spending time with family. I also spent a day in Santiago de María, a relatively small town located in the mountains of Usulután where my mother-in-law grew up (and where some of her family still lives). Among my favorite things in Santiago de María is driving down Ave. Monseñor Óscar Arnulfo Romero, named after the martyred Catholic archbishop whose assassination at the hands of U.S.-backed death squads in 1980 helped trigger the outbreak of the Salvadoran Civil War (Romero's brief stint at Bishop of the Diocese of Santiago de María immediately preceded his advancement to Archbishop of El Salvador). I noticed this time that the mural of Romero downtown had been touched up since my last visit there, with a note indicating that it had been done as part of last year's commemoration of the 30th anniversary of Romero's death.

My visit to El Salvador came almost exactly one month after President Barack Obama's visit to Central America's smallest country--a trip that included a much-heralded stop at the tomb of the deceased Archbishop. In large part because of the events in Lybia and elsewhere turned Americans' attention elsewhere, Obama's trip to El Salvador and Romero's tomb received little attention from pundits and commentators--an unfortunate oversight for those interested in the intersections of religion and politics on the international stage. I've been able to track down two insightful pieces reflecting on the significance of the event. The first, authored by Greg Grandin and published at The Nation, uses the opportunity to decry the immorality of the Central American Free Trade Agreement, concluding by offering his hope that

Obama finds inspiration in Oscar Romero’s life: Romero, after all, started his public career as a cautious moderate who believed he could quietly work with El Salvador’s ruling class to coax needed reform. The reality of Salvadoran society forced his conversion into an outspoken, confrontational leader who directly attacked those who perpetuated what he called “structural sin:” “When the church hears the cry of the oppressed,” Romero wrote before his murder, “it cannot but denounce the social structures that give rise to and perpetuate the misery from which the cry arises.” If Romero was alive today, he would recognize CAFTA’s Chapter 10, along with the broader, disastrous policies Washington is pursuing in the Mexico-Central America-Colombia security corridor, as prime examples of “structural sin.”

The second article, posted at Religion Dispatches by Michelle Gonzalez Maldonado, who speculates on the potential affect Obama's visit might have on Romero's candidacy for beatification, but who ultimately sees "Obama’s visit as symbolic of a shift in US attitudes toward Central America":

Gone I hope is the era of intervention and manipulation. The Central America of today is different from the one that saw Romero’s blood shed while saying mass. Some would argue that the crisis of gangs and drugs that is engulfing this region is leading to a crisis that will eclipse the civil wars of the 1980s and 1990s. And yet in spite of the growing violence, figures like Romero give us hope.

As Romero prophetically stated, “I should tell you that, as a Christian, I don’t believe in death without resurrection. If they kill me, I will be resurrected in the Salvadoran people.” The Salvadoran people today, the Catholic Church as a whole, and all who stand as defenders of human rights and denounce injustice should take after Obama and spend a moment remembering this modern-day martyr who did not die in vain but whose dangerous memory continues to empower and inspire us today.

While both of these scholars know much more about Latin American politics and religion than I, their reflections only scratch the surface of this all, and questions regarding the significance of Obama's visit to Romero's tomb remain. (Among the least-significant but most-perplexing is how on earth right-wing pundits did not jump on this opportunity to smear Obama by linking him anew to liberation theology). We're left to wonder with Maldonado if Obama's visit may in fact play any part in Romero's potential beatification (and the contested politics of memory and memorialization more broadly). And what, if anything, does Obama's visit reveal about his own Christianity? Perhaps most significantly, what does all of this mean to the Salvadoran people (including the million-plus Salvadoran immigrants in the U.S.)--those to whom Romero devoted his own ministry?