5/1/1996 Blithe Spirit revisited: Churchgoing, the handshake of peace, the Christian myth, Mary Lefkowitz taking on the Afrocentrists in advance of critical race theorizing . . .

A passel of stuff. Chew before swallowing.

Church day musings . . .

Spouting expert notions the other day on a panel at U.S. Catholic Book Store, in the Loop, I noted something I like about going to church, namely watching young families interact with each other, parents with kids and kids with each other. My comment followed that of author Tim Unsworth, who had said he enjoys watching the pretty women at his largely yuppie parish. I seconded that and added my own twist.

I might have added that I also go to church to shake hands with black people and others who aren't like me in skin color, age, and the rest. I did say the handclasp of peace, about 3/4 through the mass, is the most important liturgical reform to come out of Vatican Council II, which among us liberal Catholics (progressive, deep-thinking, wise, loving -- whatever else we can think of to describe ourselves) stands as a watershed.

Specifically to greet and meet fellow citizens of other skin colors (there are shades of all of us, after all -- color me ruddy, or turkey [red] neck) — is a boon. Ours is a multiracial parish, as Oak Park is multiracial. So at church on Sunday, we get to shake hands with each other while bathed in the Christian myth. As one who argues and disagrees a lot, often enough with blacks, I find it an important part of my week.

Christian myth? . . .

Years ago as a Scripture student, I was introduced to the notion of myth as motive or motif which forms people's lives and loves, true or not. What's true can be mythical in this sense: it goes beyond truth (or falsehood), takes on the cosmic, you might say.

So too the Christian myth, life-directing and (maybe) true. Creation stories have abounded. The Bible's version and overall expansion have special if not unique ability to lead people down a virtuous (vs. primrose) path. Other stories too: take them all the way, biblically speaking, to the resurrection of Jesus, much discussed these days by scholars and journalists.

One of the latter, Newsweek's Ken Woodward (St. Ignatius High, Cleveland, and U. of Notre Dame) recently alluded to a nay-sayer's position about the resurrection. It gave the Christian church a leg up on competing world views with its promise of life after death, said this 19th-century scholar whose name escapes me if it didn't escape Woodward.

(Actually, the Stoics seem to have taken this for granted too; but when did a closely reasoned philosophy ever stand a chance in the mass-market place of life-directing allegiances?)

The 19th-century nay-sayer was being cynical about it: the Christian achievement was to package appeal so its offer couldn't be refused. No other church could make that statement. That sort of thing.

A myth is as good as a smile in this case . . . wait for applause to die down for that one. Let the gentiles laugh, dead believers have the last one. The 17th-century Pascal put it in terms of a famous bet: put your chips on eternal life, if only for what it does for you here and now.

Without putting this argument (or any other) to rest, I say the whole Christian-myth package is responsible for a lot of different-colored Oak Parkers handshaking weekly in a very friendly climate. This gives them a sort of fresh start for the week to come, I say, and if you disagree, shut up.

Some myths are better missed, however . . .

But keep in mind some dangerous myths, like ethnic superiority of Serb Christians over Bosnian Muslims or how Nazis claimed to know what made someone really German.

That leads to a coming discussion here of Not Out of Africa: How Afrocentrism Became an Excuse to Teach Myth as History, by Mary Lefkowitz, Basic Books, 1996. Dole (public) Library here in Oak Park got it for me from La Grange, which was nice, but why doesn't Oak Park's library have it?

Lefkowitz, who teaches at Wellesley College -- than which there is no whicher, as my father used to say -- has entered the culture wars on the side of traditional scholarship. Specifically, she has taken on black promoters of history as myth who claim the ancient Greeks "stole" their philosophy from Egypt, Socrates was black, etc., in short that white historians have conspired to ignore Egyptian, that is African, contributions. More later on this fascinating stuff . . .