371 - Residual Religion

Residual Religion
By Hugh T. Kerr

Everyone knows someone named Mary, or John, or Abe, or Ruth, or Dave, or Christine. We've all heard of St. Paul, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Bethlehem, Salem, and Providence. There's a Methodist hospital in Philadelphia, a Presbyterian hospital in New York, a Baptist hospital in Louisville, a Cedars of Lebanon-Mount Sinai hospital in Los Angeles, a St. Joseph's hospital in Atlanta, a Beth Israel hospital in Boston, a Resurrection hospital in Chicago, a Bethesda hospital in Denver, and scattered all over there are hospitals called Mercy and St. Mary's.

Congress begins its sessions with prayer; every year the President issues a religiously-worded Thanksgiving Proclamation; the Pledge of Allegiance invokes the name of God; for most of the population Saturdays and Sundays, as well as other times during the year, are holidays, if not holy days; "damn," "hell," "God," and "Jesus Christ" make up the swearing and everyday vocabulary of many.

We could go on and on, and on, for what we are hinting at is the residual evidence of the biblical and Judeo-Christian tradition. We live in a secular, technological, humanist, post-Christian age, but it would be impossible to eradicate every reminder of our religious heritage. We are surrounded, whether we know it or not, by the pervasive influence of the Bible and the Christian tradition.

I

"Whether we know it or not" - and that is one of the curious aspects of residual religion. We tend to think of the Gospel message as associated with the church, proclaimed by preachers from pulpits, set to music and response in worship and liturgy, interpreted by teachers and theologians in lectures, articles, and books. But residual religion remains apart from all conventional ecclesiastical structures.

If we go to church, we expect to be made aware of the biblical and Christian story. But that could be the farthest thing from our minds when we call "Mary" in from play for her supper, or tell "Johnny" to do his homework. We don't usually think of ecclesiastical history when we drive down "Church" Street. We're not planning to adopt a simple life-style, enter a monastery, or become an eremite when we book a flight into "San Antonio," Texas.

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I know a devout Jewish family who named their two sons, John and Paul (the father's middle name was Mark). And I know a very conservative Christian who named his son Elisha, much to the boy's everlasting annoyance. Methodist Hospital, mentioned above, is in south Philadelphia with scarcely a Wesleyan for miles around-patients and staff are mostly Italian Catholics; Presbyterian Hospital in New York must have more from the Tribes of Israel than from the Highlands of Scotland.

The media coverage of the tragic death of Princess Grace of Monaco, including the televised funeral service in the cathedral, provides a poignant illustration. The glamour and glitter of the former film celebrity, whose secret Alfred Hitchcock described as "sexual elegance," the associations everyone makes with the gambling casino, the luxury villas, and the languid yachts at anchor in the postcard harbor-all this converges on the abrupt moment of death, grief, and loss.

The TV funeral service, in dulcet French tones, the exquisitely caparisoned sentries at attention by the casket, the almost too intimate glimpses of the Prince's drawn face-it was the kind of high drama TV can do so well, reminiscent of the funerals of John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Winston Churchill.

Many of us could identify with the service, perhaps even recognizing a familiar phrase of the French liturgy here and there, but what of so many others who couldn't care less about the religious implications? Here is someone, for example, who is thinking of Grace Kelly, the movie star, and all those little kisses for Jimmy Stewart in Hitchcock's "Rear Window."

But even so "whether we know it or not" -the religious dimension is disclosed, and something of the classic Christian faith manifested. The Scriptures are read, the ancient liturgy repeated, the redemptive drama presented, God and Jesus Christ called upon in reverence rather than blasphemy.

Many no doubt stood far away from the Christian service and from what was happening in the cathedral of that tiny principality; It all seemed so radically solemn for such a usually glamorous pleasuredome. Yet the presence and appropriateness of what we have called residual religion cannot be denied. Similar, if less glittering, examples of the same thing occur every day in hospitals, nursing homes, funeral parlors, cemeteries, and wherever the grim reality of death is experienced.

Watching the distraught and strained figure of Prince Ranier of Monaco, standing quietly and faithfully beside Princess Grace's casket, listening or not to the words of biblical faith, one must surely say of the religious service, if no more than this, that here, after all, is what religion is about. It provides the word of hope when everything else keeps silence. Residual perhaps, but not superfluous.

II

Let us look at another example, this time from the world of art. For the past several months, "El Greco of Toledo: An International Exhibition" has graced a few selected museums and delighted large crowds wherever it has appeared. Beginning at the Prado in Madrid, the more than sixty El Greco drawings and paintings have been shown at the National Gallery in Washington, the Toledo Ohio Museum, and the Dallas Museum of Fine Arts.

373 - Residual Religion

Purification of the Temple, c. 1570-1575
The Minneapolis Institute of Arts
The William Hood Dunwoody Fund

Agony in the Garden. cl 590-1595
The Toldeo Museum of Art
Gift of Edward Drummond Libbey

St. Martin and the Beggar. c.1597-1599
National Gallery of Art
Widener Collection

Annunication. 1596-1600
Museo Balaguer, Villanueva y Geltru
On loan from the Museo del Prado, Madrid

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The sister cities of Toledo, in Ohio and Spain, initiated the project, had many of the paintings expertly cleaned, and arranged for the sequence, lighting, and identification of the whole presentation. Having visited the National Gallery showing, I can attest to the shimmering beauty and fascinating display of this largest El Greco collection ever assembled together.

We all know an El Greco painting when we see one. The elongated human figures, the swirling clothing, the phosphorescent hues, and the lowering, apocalyptic skies all immediately identify his work. Born in Crete, Domenikos Theotokopoulos (1541-1614), began to paint in the Byzantine icon style, moved to Venice and Rome where he was influenced by Michelangelo, Tintoretto, and Bassano and then on to Toledo, Spain, the former capital city and the center of the Catholic Counter-Reformation.

In Toledo, "The Greek" soon established himself in a twenty-four room apartment, with a private orchestra to play at dinner, and associated with the local artistic and cultural elite. In his studios, with apprentice assistants, he turned out an astonishing quantity of small and grandiose paintings, all bearing his special trademarks.

But instead of talking about El Greco and his art, let us make something of the sponsors of this exhibit. It is a perfect example of what we have been calling, for lack of a better phrase, "residual religion." The El Greco tour was made possible not only by the public museums involved but by generous grants from the American Express Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the National Endowment for the Arts (both Federal agencies). In other words, all the museums involved and all the sponsors are under secular, artistic, humanistic auspices. There isn't a religious, church, or seminary connection anywhere in sight. Extensive critical reviews of the El Greco exhibit have appeared in Time, Newsweek, The New York Times, and in many local papers-but nothing, so far as I can tell-in any religious or theological journal.

If we know anything about church history, we know that El Greco's time, 1541-1614, marked one of the most tumultuous periods of ecclesiastical and theological disruption. Probably not the mystic or visionary that Catholic piety reserved for him, El Greco nonetheless combined in his paintings an intriguing insight into spiritual truth with a kind of existential perception of reality. Carter Brown of the National Gallery, in describing the El Greco exhibit, said: "To him, painters were philosophers who shaped ideas and communicated knowledge through their art." El Greco's paintings are also theological statements.

The point here is not to decry the current absence of artistic interest among the churches or seminaries, but to rejoice at every significant

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testimony that residual religion offers-and this El Greco exhibit is surely one. Thousands upon thousands who never enter a church or read the Bible have viewed these paintings with fascination, attention, and respect. "Whether we know it or not," the Gospel is proclaimed.

III

Why not? If truth is one, if God is the Creator of all that is, if Jesus Christ is the word incarnate, if the Apostle Paul can be "debtor both to the Greeks and to the Barbarians," why shouldn't we rejoice and be glad wherever faith, hope, and love find some authentic expression?

Isn't residual religion what Jung and Eliade have been saying? Jung would insist that our inner dreams and symbols, as Eliade would include our outer myths and stories, pick up and perpetuate the perennial truths and mysteries of which the religions, and certainly the Christian faith, speak. If the churches, the biblical scholars, the theologians, and the seminaries don't repeat and communicate the truth handed on to them, then secular humanism in art, film, and literature will tell the story.

Many today take pride in being able to define and locate true biblical and theological doctrines for faith and life. Let them in their assurance not neglect the witness of residual religion wherever it can be found-in the names of our friends and families, in the cities and on the streets where we live, in the holidays and healing hospices which we so often take for granted, and in those solemn moments of life when the transcendent becomes the really real.

It may not pass exegetical scrutiny, but when the conservative religious leaders relied upon their doctrinal pedigree, going back to Abraham, John the Baptist responded: "God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham" (Matt. 3:8).