Desperate Houseflies: The Magazine

Feel free to pull out your trusty fly swatter and comment on what is posted here, realizing that this odd collection of writers may prove as difficult to kill as houseflies and are presumably just as pesky. “Desperate Houseflies” is a magazine that intends to publish weekly articles on subjects such as politics, literature, history, sports, photography, religion, and no telling what else. We’ll see what happens.

Thursday, December 14, 2006

Diana Worship

I noticed in the news this morning that Princess Diana’s death has officially been ruled an accident. So, after nine-plus years of breathless anticipation, we may now return to our regularly scheduled lives.

Seriously, seeing her name in the headlines again reminded me of a section of The Unnecessary Pastor that I read recently. In it, Eugene Peterson shares his observations on Princess Di.

I’ll share it with you now, but I’m most interested in your thoughts in response:


DIANA OF EPHESUS AND OF NOW

At the end of August 1997 and for weeks following, the attention of the whole world, quite literally the whole world, was captured by the death of Princess Diana. I was in Ireland and Scotland at the time and got the entire drama served up to me blow by blow. I must confess that I knew next to nothing about Diana at the time, can’t ever remember seeing a picture of her, and I knew nothing of her trials with the royal family. But in three weeks, I got a crash course in Diana religion – for the thing that struck me most forcibly was that it was a course in religion. This was totally a religious event. There were political implications and family dynamics, but mostly, overwhelmingly, it was religious. Diana was treated with the veneration and adoration of a goddess. At her death, the world fell down and worshiped.

As I observed all of this, and reflected on it in conversation with friends, I realized that Diana was the perfect goddess for a world religion that didn’t want anything to do with the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, but was desperate to worship someone or something that would provide a sense of beauty and transcendence to their lives. It turned out that Princess Diana was absolutely perfect for the role. This supposedly godless world of ours is not godless at all – the capacity for worship is as strong as in any religious fundamentalist camp meeting. At her death, the world worshiped her.

At first, I noticed the parallels to the ancient Canaanite sex/fertility goddess Astarte and Asherah. She was a perfect fit for the role: that fragile beauty, tinged with sadness; that poignant innocence, with suggestive hints and guesses of slightly corrupt sexuality in the shadows. Her popular identification with the poor and oppressed, her photo with Mother Teresa of Calcutta, her compassion for people with AIDS, her campaign against the land mines that had destroyed the bodies of so many children, and her own victimization by the heartless royal family and rejection by her husband. She summed up the spiritual aspirations of a sexually indulgent culture that was at the same time filled with misunderstanding and loss and hurt and rejection.

Every day for a week in Edinburgh I watched long lines of men and women and children carrying bouquets of flowers, placing them on appointed shrines throughout the city – silent and weeping, unutterably moved by the death of their goddess. All week long, I read the meditations, religious meditations, on Diana in the daily newspapers. And then one day, I remembered that the Roman name for Artemis was Diana, Diana of the Ephesians. Now, Diana the sex goddess, who provided the mythology and set the moral tone of the city, was back – the fertility goddess of the ancient world taking over the imaginations of the modern world.

I’m not suggesting that the Diana cult of Ephesus and the Diana cult that we all witnessed since September 1997 have the same content, but the effect is the same. The Ephesian Diana cult was a pastiche of stories and superstitions and systems of thought endemic to the ancient east that served the religious needs of the city. (Much of it is accountable in general under what we in broad terms label gnosticism.) The recent Diana cult is also a pastiche of stories and longings and public relations that serve the religious needs of an astounding number of people who are nominally Christians and Jews, Buddhists and Muslims. Her death brought out into the open just how worldwide her influence extended, the untold millions who worshiped at the shrine of Diana.

Diana evoked the best in people – but it is the best of what they want for themselves, not of what God wants. She offered “good” without morality and transcendence without any God but herself. Diana epitomizes our world religion of today…

Diana/Artemis worship is in the air: it is on television, in the magazines, in church pulpits, and in school classrooms; it dominates business marketing, the entertainment industry, recreational addictions, and political arenas. Leaders acquire a following by evoking longings in us that are unfulfilled, and then either explicitly claiming or implicitly suggesting that their program or automobile or lifestyle or church can make us complete. Diana religion. Diana worship.

9 Comments:

Blogger JD said...

I really have never understood the fascination with the royal family ... nor with Diana in particular. But the reverence with which some people speak of her ... well ... it is worship. I will add, though, that I never thought of it that way.

9:17 AM  
Blogger juvenal_urbino said...

Well, my first thought, quite honestly, is that Peterson is tilting at windmills. Either that or, as here:

Leaders acquire a following by evoking longings in us that are unfulfilled, and then either explicitly claiming or implicitly suggesting that their program or automobile or lifestyle or church can make us complete.

he's tilting at everything, including his own religious practice and career. I'm not sure where one can go with such an argument.

9:59 AM  
Blogger DeJon Redd said...

Without saying I disagree with Peterson, I would say I see things differently. I appreciate his articulation of the innate need for worship. However, I prefer to call it an innate need for spirituality, and it’s kind of a tired argument really. I mean how many things and ways have humans through time found to worship?

I consider myself “younger,” (but spending that last four months on a college campus, I’m reminded almost daily in creative and annoying ways that I’m not as young as I used to be) And I still take offense when this argument becomes a generational finger-wag at the young ones. And to be quite frank, I don’t blame the nonreligious.

This Salon article mentions the fissure between religion and spirituality. I’m not sure what larger point Peterson is making, but I don’t blame a person for choosing other ways to express his spirituality versus buying what the religious are selling.

To be clear, I don’t think that worshiping Princess Di (or the latest tabloid persona, or American Idol, etc...) is a healthy expression of spirituality. However, IMO tapping index finger on cheek and analyzing such fallen behavior is not the best recourse for the religious either. I think we religious should blush with shame that throngs of people are choosing these unfortunate expressions versus Truth. This commentary on the religious should fill us with shame. But for the most part we just choose to stay the course. (Sorry, I couldn't help it.)

It’s a big cliché’ now, but the subtitle to Donald Miller’s top seller is “Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality.” And I think I understand why … because on the whole, nonreligious people do not like Christians. They prefer Princess Di!

Is that a good thing? Decidedly not.
Do I blame them? Not in the least...

2:41 PM  
Blogger mycroft said...

Gee whiz, Al. Everything's a conspiracy now. First, it was a heinous conspiracy of the royal family to eliminate a heretical princess and her Muslim boyfriend. Now, its a conspiracy to turn us all to pagan worship of the goddess Diana.

In reality, Diana was never worshipped as much as she was pitied, by common people around the world. She was (and still is) seen as a tragic, innocent figure drawn unwillingly into a culture she neither understood nor fit in. Will we now revile her as a threat to christianity because she was kind and decent and did good things? How far have we slipped into mindless, arrogant dogma to condemn all those who do good in this overtly evil world.

8:15 PM  
Blogger Al Sturgeon said...

Thanks for the comments, folks. Now for my two cents...

As DeJon astutely wondered, Peterson is making a larger point, and it was really unfair for me to excerpt his Diana illustration into a stand-alone essay.

The book is "The Unnecessary Pastor' (co-authored with Marva Dawn), and the odd title is meant to communicate that pastors should quit being "necessary" in the way the world views them (i.e. running churches, religion-maintenance, etc.) and become what God calls them to be.

One of Peterson's standing conclusions is the the world wants idols, and it appreciates it when pastors serve them up at church (much more convenient that way). This Diana piece was simply an illustration of humanity's penchant for idols (with the purpose being to demonstrate this reality to pastors & urge them to quit serving them up).

An idol can be another "god" entirely, but more often it is an attempt to make "God" into a form we prefer (e.g. the golden calf). It is here that I find value in this essay.

Five days after Diana's death, Mother Teresa died, too. Although both received worldwide press coverage, which one do you think dominated the world stage? You guessed it... And why is that? Well, which one would you rather be: royalty in a luxury car with a few good causes on the side? or a person who has renounced the world's riches to serve the dying?

Peterson's larger point is that we are called to follow Jesus as a model for life, but it's fairly obvious that the world prefers Diana-style life to Jesus-style life.

To respond to everyone personally:

* JD: I've never been fascinated by "the royals" either!

* JU: The quote you excerpted is intended to stand alone as a truth (I think). His argument is that Jesus-following is the only path to shalom ("make us complete").

* DEJON: I really appreciated your comment. It made me realize that the stand-alone Diana essay would have a horrible effect as-is. Contemporary Church vs. Diana - well, you've got a good point. Now, Diana vs. Jesus - that's the necessary debate.

* MYCROFT: The point was not to revile/condemn Diana. Instead, it was a question of whether to worship/emulate her or not. If you see her as a poor soul who did nice things, then that's one thing. I have to agree with JD, though - what I saw in the world reaction was worship.

5:52 AM  
Blogger Chris Benjamin said...

Yeah, I got Peterson's point. And I have to say it makes sense. Insofar as Diana, Princess of Wales is at least an icon, if not idol, of our age.

And like the best of idols, she is silent. Can anyone really remember anything that Diana said? Can anyone really remember a quotable quote from Diana?

The real Diana Spencer is unknown to the world. The Diana that remains in the news even today is a symbol. She can be attached in a very generic to an infinite number of good works. (As opposed to Mother Theresa who is so obviously Catholic - which becomes a stumbling block for some).

Peterson's comments were interesting. Well, I have to get back to my life now that I have been assured that the Cigarette Smoking Man working for the U.S. Military-Industrial Complex isn't the one who liquidated the People's Princess.

1:30 PM  
Blogger juvenal_urbino said...

With due acknowledgment that Peterson's "Diana Worship" argument is an excerpt from a larger one and not intended to stand alone, I'd like to flesh out my "tilting at windmills" statement a bit.

Peterson wrote:

She summed up the spiritual aspirations of a sexually indulgent culture

There are two windmills here, I think. One is the notion that Princess Diana was somehow the very incarnation of sexual indulgence. She was an icon, but like mycroft, I don't agree with Peterson that she was a particularly sexual icon. She was a beautiful and sexy woman, true, but her public identity wasn't a sexual one. ISTM she did a rather astonishingly good job of keeping her sex life unseen, given the fishbowl in which she lived.

The other windmill is the notion that we live in "a sexually indulgent culture." We don't; we live in a sexually prurient culture. There's a big difference, and when it comes to prurience, Princess Di is an innocent, while Christians are chronic offenders. Christians contribute as much to prurience as Hollywood does, because Christians, by and large, are as fixated on sex as anyone in Hollywood is.

Peterson may be giving us a small example of it in his summation:

Diana/Artemis worship is in the air...

Canaanite deities aren't something I know much about, but I've read my Ovid and Apollodorus, so I do know the Greek goddess Artemis was a virgin, and murderously serious about staying that way. She even demanded that the [exclusively female] beings who attended her be virgins (and was murderously serious about that, too). She had about as little contact with sex as a turtle does with outer space. To identify her with what one considers a "sexually indulgent culture" is quite a neat and rather prurient trick.

Peterson makes the connection via the notion of fertility. A goddess associated with fertility must be associated with sex, right? Wrong, actually, and that leap is a prurient one. Artemis, who was first and foremost a huntress, did have a role in fertility, also, but it had to do with protecting women during childbirth. Were she Catholic (and as far as sex is concerned, she could be), she might be the patron saint of midwives. That was her role in fertility. She had nothing to do with sex.

To be fair, Peterson is referring specifically to the Diana/Artemis who was worshiped at Ephesus, and their version of her was different in some ways from the version of her known to the rest of the Hellenistic world, but still. Why leap immediately to the most salacious possible reading of the story? (That applies to both the princess's story and the goddess's story.) It's . . . well, prurient.

12:17 PM  
Blogger Al Sturgeon said...

Thanks, Chris: I like the silent icon evaluation. So true...

And thanks, Juvenal: I think you're right that Peterson makes the typical contemporary religious connection irt sexuality. I guess it will take a very long time to disentangle all our mixed up sexual mores, huh?

5:25 AM  
Blogger juvenal_urbino said...

Seems likely, seeing as how they've been entangled since Augustine, at least.

BTW, I also think Chris makes a good point about it being easier to become an icon when one is relatively silent. People can attribute to you all the good things they would like to think are true of you.

11:26 AM  

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