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We hope you enjoy our newest episode: “Mormons and Changing Ideas about Gender and Sexuality.”

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This excerpt comes from the book’s third chapter, “Politics and the Patriarchal Order.”

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In November 1974, Catholic antifeminist activist Phyllis Schlafly booked a flight to Salt Lake City and secured a meeting with the newly appointed General President of the Relief Society, Barbara Bradshaw Smith (d. 2010). Smith had just been sustained in her new role over the church’s global women’s organization one month before the meeting. Schlafly was looking for new recruits in her battle against the Equal Rights Amendment, a proposed federal amendment that would ensure that men and women were treated equally by the law. At the time, Schlafly’s efforts to oppose the ERA seemed like a long-shot political strategy—it had the support of mainstream Republicans and Democrats and was steamrolling through the states. Mormons at the time also seemed unlikely to get involved—they rarely spoke on political matters and had not attempted to mass-mobilize their membership on specific political issues since Prohibition. Even more speculative was the idea that Mormons and Catholics would work side by side, since neither had a strong ecumenical record. Schlafly, however, was determined to build a broad coalition of conservative voices and to activate religious outsiders who did not think in political terms. In their meeting, Smith expressed some skepticism at first but warmed to the idea of getting the LDS church involved in the fight to oppose the ERA. After all, if the church taught that gender was at risk from changing sexual and cultural norms in secular society, shouldn’t its leaders act to protect it in the public sphere?

The meeting with Schlafly proved consequential. It marked an official beginning of the Mormon affiliation with the rising movement known as the Religious Right—a broad coalition of conservatives who felt alienated from the mainstream Republican Party and sought to make their voices heard through political action. Mormons had flirted around the edges of anti–civil rights activism in the 1950s and 1960s, but their leaders felt called in the 1970s on various fronts in the battle against feminism and homosexuality. In addition to preaching and a therapeutic outreach, Mormon leaders took on a political strategy that protected the church’s members and a broader culture from a sociology of gender fluidity. By focusing on the possibility that gender norms could change and positing that as a source of danger and a cause for fear rather than liberation, LDS political activism in the 1970s framed gender and sexuality as the province of government regulation.

Phyllis Schlafly in 1977 (Photo: Underwood Archives/UIG/Everett Collection)

Mormons did not exit this battle against the ERA in the same way that they entered. The politicization of Mormon teachings about gender left an unexpected mark on church teachings. The history of LDS political activism needs to be told from both the inside out and the outside in—how Mormon teachings influenced Mormons’ political actions and also how this political engagement shaped Mormon teachings. While most approaches to LDS politics discuss how Mormon doctrines inspired LDS activists’ efforts, this chapter also traces how LDS political activism redefined Mormon teachings. Specifically, Mormon antifeminist teachings and activism came to express moderate feminist ideals in the course of LDS activists’ political efforts. Emulating the rhetoric of segregationist political doctrines on race, at least some Mormons began to argue that male-female difference was not hierarchical but rather a “separate but equal” complementary difference. While opposing equal rights, Mormons nevertheless came to accept male-female equality as an ideal, however imperfectly. This tension, between the patriarchal order and soft egalitarianism, shot through this period as Mormon leaders struggled to articulate a doctrine for women in a changing era. This included significant transitions in how church leaders talked about the sexual relationship between husbands and wives and women’s paid labor outside the home.

The Patriarchal Order
Mormons were well positioned to join the politicization of the family in the 1970s. They had been eager participants in the postwar religious revival focused on the patriarchal home, and such values remained central to Mormon identity throughout this period. Many LDS women were attracted to this message and sought to counter feminism with a message of submission. They promised not only greater stability in the home and society but greater happiness for women than “women’s liberation” could offer. As discussed in an earlier chapter, Helen B. Andelin’s Fascinating Womanhood bred imitators and attracted proselytes. In the late 1960s in her local ward building in Arizona, Jacquie Davison had enrolled in a “Fascinating Womanhood” workshop led by Andelin and was inspired to start an organization to bring these ideas into the political sphere. Two years before Phyllis Schlafly’s STOP ERA, Davison founded the Happiness of Womanhood organization. It not only was dedicated to defeating the ERA but also opposed abortion, pornography, and homosexuality. The organization spread in Mormon-dominated areas of Utah, Arizona, and California, gaining ten thousand members in all fifty states by 1973. Davison saw in Andelin’s message a necessary turn to politics to sustain the patriarchal order.

Helen Andelin, author of Fascinating Womanhood, with her family

LDS church leaders continued previous warnings that gender segregation was necessary to prevent dangerous gender fluidity. Motherhood, to the exclusion of paid labor, was a special concern. Harold B. Lee, the conservative reformer of the Priesthood Correlation program, became president of the church from 1970 to 1973. In 1970, Correlation shut down the fifty-year-old Relief Society Magazine, and with it any independent venue for women and women’s leadership to write and publish according to their own editorial priorities. Lee’s stance on gender issues defined the church’s message. In 1972, he published an article in the new church magazine the Ensign titled “Maintain Your Place as a Woman.” Lee taught, “To be what God intended you to be as a woman depends on the way you think, believe, live, dress, and conduct yourselves as true examples of Latter-day Saint womanhood, examples of that for which you were created and made.” Womanhood was vulnerable to dissolution if it was not practiced. Among these practices, encouraged by Lee, were starting families without delay and having as many children as women were able. Lee warned of divine retribution for those who did not comply and blessings for those who did. If a married woman must work outside the home, she “should not neglect the cares and duties in the home.” He reprised the teachings about the patriarchal order of the family, explaining that “the wife is to obey the law of her husband only as he obeys the laws of God. . . . The good wife commandeth her husband in any equal matter by constantly obeying him.” Lee admonished that spousal submission and clear roles maintained boundaries between men and women. He believed that any weakening of these boundaries, even in seemingly trivial matters, might incur greater occurrences of lesbianism. “For a woman to adopt the mode of a man’s dress,” Lee warned, “is to encourage the wave of sexual perversion, when men adopt women’s tendencies and women become mannish in their desires.” Feminism and lesbianism were paired phenomena. Women should “maintain their place” against the cultural tides that undermined hierarchical sexual difference and ensured heterosexual desires.

A statue representing womanhood, and women’s role in raising children, with the LDS Temple in the background in Salt Lake City, Utah

Other church leaders in this period published similar antifeminist articles that defined women as essentially mothers. Like Lee, they warned especially against working women as a site of gender instability. Apostle Thomas S. Monson (d. 2018) complained in an article titled “The Women’s Liberation Movement: Liberation or Deception?” that some women were demanding “free abortion, free childcare, and equal employment.” Monson believed that these women were abandoning their divinely ordered responsibilities. He emphasized that “every woman is endowed by God with distinctive characteristics, gifts, and talents, in order that she may fulfill a specific mission in the eternal plan,” namely, motherhood. Another senior church leader warned, “One of the greatest tragedies of our day is the confusion of minds of some which would cause mothers to go to work in the marketplace.” Another apostle explained that women’s liberation and the sexual revolution are “Satan’s way of destroying women, the home, and the family.” Working women not only were unfaithful and disobedient and at risk of lesbianism but also advanced satanic purposes.

Taylor Petrey is an Associate Professor of Religion at Kalamazoo College and Editor of Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought.

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Interested in more on this topic? Check out episode 11 of the Revealer podcast: “Mormons and Changing Ideas about Gender and Sexuality” with Taylor Petrey.

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A scene from the documentary film, Making Sweat Tea

When I first watched Trembling Before God, the powerful 2001 documentary about gay and lesbian Orthodox Jews, I did not understand why people worked so hard to stay in a community that rejected them. In a way, that’s the premise of the film, and the space between the question and the answer is kind of the point. But for me, it left an unresolved ache, a confusion, and, as an observant Jew, a sense of shame: how could I live with this community that was, for so many, unlivable?

Making Sweet Tea, the stunning 2019 documentary about Southern gay Black men directed by University of Pennsylvania’s Dean of the Annenberg School for Communication John L. Jackson, leaves no such lingering doubts or confusion about why some queer people stay in communities that do not embrace them. The simple answer, the reason they stay, is that for the men of Making Sweet Tea who generously invite viewers into their lives, the South is home.

The film draws its inspiration from E. Patrick Johnson’s 2008 book Sweet Tea, which he later turned into a one-man show. Johnson, himself gay and Black, serves as the documentary’s host, interviewer, and as the conduit for the film’s prime subject. While Making Sweet Tea takes an in-depth look at several gay Black men in the South, it is centrally about Johnson’s own journey: telling the stories of others, but being one of the stories as well. It examines what it means to tell those stories, and how telling them not only bears witness but validates: I see you, and you have a right to be. I hear you, and you have a right to tell. It is also the story of Johnson’s mother, the (late) Mama Sarah, whom we visit in Hickory, North Carolina, on the Black (south) side of the tracks in the one-bedroom home he shared with her and six siblings. It is the story of his partner Stephen, who is also an editor on this project. It is the story of E. Patrick’s losses and loves: his friend Reggie who died of AIDS; his pain when his mother would not, at first, acknowledge Stephen as his partner; his own journey from a heteronormative life of Black respectability politics to embracing and celebrating his identity.

The documentary follows Johnson in his encounters with many of the subjects from Sweet Tea, using scenes from his stage show as well as interviews to follow up on their stories. But there was one story Johnson hadn’t examined in the book: his own. The film explores Johnson’s recognition that to stand witness to the lives of others, he must stand witness to his own. And to do that, Johnson must go home.

The film opens with a shot of trees. Highway signs. A moving car. Johnson’s hand, with a ring on it (a wedding ring?), on the steering wheel. Johnson is going back to where he came from, to Hickory, North Carolina. (It’s not subtle: strains of “I’m Going Home” provide the background music.) Johnson looks resolute. A little nervous. He’s been telling the stories of gay Black men for years. But now his life, his birth home, and his family are part of the story. We see the house he grew up in. We meet his mother, the magisterial Mama Sarah. They make tea. It’s a whole ritual: the boiling of the water, the selection of the bags, the ice cubes, the sugar, the pitcher, and glasses. Maybe some lemon.

And then, once the tea is made, we will hear the stories. The tea, we learn, is the story. The gossip. The narrative. The tea is shared — or, salaciously, spilled — over tea. It’s an important Southern ritual and one the men featured in the film, who are so often excluded from other rituals of Southern life, embrace and share. Johnson and his mother stand in the family kitchen and carefully make the tea so the audience can share in the experience with them.

But then we don’t. Instead, the film cuts to three of the men who will be key characters in the documentary: Charles, Duncan, and Shean. They explain that the tea is not just a beverage but a narrative, priming us to hear their stories. And then the film cuts to Johnson, walking on the railroad tracks that divide Hickory. He, like other Black residents of the town, comes from the wrong side. But he made good. The first African-American man from Hickory to earn a Ph.D. (and have a day named for him!), Johnson has always been keenly aware of what he means to his community. He also always knew he was gay, but, as he says in the film, that was wrong in the eyes of his community. So he “overcompensated.” He sent money home. He was a model son. He never did drugs. He tried to inspire others so that, when he did come out to his family, he wouldn’t be a disappointment. As he says it, we see Johnson reflecting on the man he once was, deeply engaged in Black respectability politics, and the man he is now, telling the stories of other Black queer men who — like him — are proud of who they have become, and are proud of the histories and places that have brought them here.

Johnson came out many years ago, and his mother walked him down the aisle when he married his partner, as we see in the documentary footage. But, in many ways, this film is his coming out. Because for Johnson coming out is also a way of coming home. This film illuminates how Johnson and the men he interviews found ways to make the South home.

E. Patrick Johnson in his hometown of Hickory, North Carolina

Being Black in the South has its own history of hardness, of danger, of violence, of sadness and loss. As one interviewee, Freddie, puts it, “This is still the South. People don’t like Black people period. But then to be a gay man?” We know how that sentence finishes. But this film is not an 80-minute chronicle of danger, sadness, and loss. All of these are present: it’s a fact of life, of these lives. But this is instead a film about community, and connections, and love. These stories matter because they haven’t been told before Johnson collected them. But they also matter because, as the film demonstrates, storytelling itself is part of Southern culture. These men, in telling their stories to Johnson, and to us, are asserting their identities, insisting on their Southernness, their Blackness, and their gayness. And insisting on the dignity that comes by telling their own stories. While we hear about racism and homophobia, we also bear witness to the lives the men have built. Good lives. Lives like Harold’s, who is celebrating 50 years with his partner. They do the crossword together every morning. They were finally able to wed in 2015, and when I saw their wedding picture, I cried.

This film puts Johnson back in direct conversation with some of his subjects to archive and embody their stories. Director John L. Jackson Jr. is playful with the concept of media itself, using the camera to capture Johnson rehearsing the one-man show. We have the uncanny privilege of seeing Johnson perform his subject Charles in clips of play practice, and then later meeting Charles himself. And we even, in one of the film’s most magical moments, get to witness Charles see himself through Johnson’s eyes as he watches the performance for the first time. Charles is shook. He cries. Because E. Patrick Johnson is good — his cadences, the way he inhabits his body as their bodies, his expressions and gestures. His singing! And Johnson is generous; his interpretations of these men are a way to honor them. It’s a way to appreciate these lives, in their richness and complication and depth.

And to do that, we have to travel. Because we can’t understand who they are without visiting where they are. The South, yes, but also the church, and the high school, and the beauty salon. It’s Charles’ beauty salon, and it is there that Johnson provides one of the most searing interviews of the film. Like his interviewer, Charles is from Hickory. In a twist, however, Charles had been Johnson’s role model. When Johnson first interviewed Charles for the book, Charles was totally out to Hickory; Johnson was not. Johnson, as he shares, was — then — too tied to the church, to notions of respectability, and to avoiding the condemnation that would be directed at him, to come out to the town that raised him. Unlike so many other gay men (including Johnson) who moved away from Hickory, Charles is still there. “I live here in spite of the odds,” he tells us. But Charles is celibate. He has abstained from sex for the past fifteen years in an attempt to make peace with his church, a place with heaven and hell and a God who has made clear that he abhors homosexual acts.

Charles, we learn, once performed as the drag queen Chastity, a part of himself he has left in the past. But Chastity comes back in Johnson’s show, and in the film. And Charles gets to see her one more time. He welcomes her back like an old friend, and we hear Charles insisting, in that moment, that “there is nothing wrong with Charles Kenneth Danner, Jr.” And though he doesn’t say it, it feels like an acknowledgement that there is also nothing wrong with Chastity — as performed by Johnson, and, maybe, as embodied by Charles as well.

Johnson performing as Chastity

Charles lost Chastity, but he kept his church. Johnson, it seems, has not. But we don’t fully know, because Johnson keeps his own relationship with religion obscure even as he explores its importance for others. That’s a clear line for him: he mentions the church as an entity, but then stops at specificity: no denominations are named. The church is such a central and powerful part of Black Southern identity and activism and experience and daily life. It is a central part of the lives of so many of the people we meet. But aside from the scenes with Charles and Duncan, we only view it from a distance and around the corners. We catch glimpses of it in Johnson’s church-trained singing voice, which betrays just a hint of sadness in those precious moments when we get to hear it. The choir, Johnson notes, was the one place he felt safe. But, he says, “the same religion that supports you is the same religion that damns you to hell.” Finding a home in that can be difficult. It can also be a reason to leave. But Johnson came back. To the South, to Hickory, and to the church. We are never told why: perhaps that will be the next film?

Another prominent figure in the film, Duncan, does talk about his religious background. He says, “Church didn’t play in my upbringing, it was my upbringing. When your father is the pastor, and the church is less than 200 people, that’s your extended family.” He found in the church all the love and admiration that was in other spaces denied to young Black men, and he found in the church gay men, the “flaming queens who ran the choir,” and “the bright, articulate young men” who made the institutions within the Black southern church possible. For Duncan, the church was a place where masculine expectations were quietly different, and he could be himself. While he does not say so explicitly, we understand that there were places in the church where Duncan felt comfortable, and people in the church — those queens and bright young men — whose queerness spoke to his own. We don’t know how Duncan’s journey affected his birth family or his church family, but we do know that his faith sustained. He is now an openly gay Unitarian Universalist minister who continues to foster his relationship with God and helps others do the same. It’s not the same church as that of his youth, but it is, for Duncan, the same God.

There’s wistfulness in these reflections, a sense of sadness and loss, and also strength: the church helped make these men, but it does not define them. In that way, perhaps, the church is different than the South, and different than being Black, and different than being gay. And different than telling stories, all of which proudly define the people in the film.

Including Johnson himself. He’s lived with these men and their stories for a long, long time: it took the process of making the film for him to turn his interviewer’s lens on to himself. And, generously, to invite us to listen. It is an act of breathtaking courage, to make oneself vulnerable, to consider one’s own life alongside the lives of those who have entrusted him so powerfully.

The story of gay Black men in the South is rich, and vibrant, and alive, and ongoing, and that’s the point. Johnson bears witness, and so do we, sharing in the Southern ritual of pouring tea and telling stories. But it is just the beginning: there is much left to explore, so many lives still to honor. So many losses to mourn, and so many others — including the church — that may yet be resolved. As Johnson reminds us, it all starts with acknowledging. With being present. In his own words: “People ask me all the time how did you get these men to open up to you, be honest about such personal stories, and I say . . . I asked.”

Sharrona Pearl is Associate Professor of Medical Ethics at Drexel University. You can find clips of her freelance writing at www.sharronapearl.com.

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The Good Place (NBC marketing photograph)

“Heaven got another angel.”

I have heard people use this well-intentioned cliché to rationalize some of the most painful and pointless deaths. I’ve heard it used to comfort people after witnessing a long struggle with illness. After freak accidents. After yet another person from my hometown mysteriously “passed away” in their mid-thirties. And even in the midst of a global pandemic.

My unease with this adage is not rooted merely in skepticism. While I do not believe in an afterlife, I of course cannot rule it out. Instead, I object to the laziness of it. The assumption that, at a certain point, a button gets pressed, and all our problems are solved, all regrets erased. Life after death already seems implausible. But a perfectly happy life that lasts forever? That sounds nonsensical. And on top of that, it’s hard to ignore how people’s conception of the next life can often dictate how they live this one. Perhaps that’s often for the best, but when it goes wrong, it really goes wrong, becoming an unfalsifiable rationalization for wingnuttery, science denial, and death cults.

Thanks in part to years of withering criticism and theological splintering, the threat of hell appears to be losing its ability to scare us. Fewer Americans believe in hell than heaven, and in recent years many Christian leaders have tried to downplay the concept of eternal damnation. I can recall, for example, the principal of my high school, a Catholic priest, assuring us that a classmate who had died of suicide would not go to hell, despite Church doctrine. The priest simply did not believe in a God that would do such a thing. But while hell continues to shrink in our collective imagination, the promise of heaven remains baked into our culture, seemingly impervious to scrutiny, and even the most skeptical among us have been trained to reach for this impossible carrot.

But recently, the mockery of heaven has begun to catch up with the ridicule and revulsion directed toward hell within popular culture. Leading the way is a handful of high-concept sitcoms that have dared to take on this golden calf. Of course, The Good Place springs to mind first in this group, but the short-lived Forever, as well as the more recent Upload, have also depicted heaven — or something like it — in a way that not only pokes fun, but challenges and deconstructs this most cherished idea in mainstream American Christianity. Together, they represent a steady normalization of skepticism toward heaven, a development that Christian leaders have noticed, some with amusement, some with alarm.

Please be advised, the remainder of this article contains spoilers.

Amazon’s Forever may be the most subtle of this group, focusing entirely on the frayed relationship of June (Maya Rudolph) and Oscar (Fred Armisen). Upon their untimely deaths, the husband and wife find themselves in an empty suburban home, which they discover is tastefully decorated and permanently stocked with everything they need. Not exactly heaven, but safe, comfortable, and no doubt better than these presumably irreligious protagonists expected. June arrives after her husband has been there for some time, and quickly accepts that this place has no god, and no discernible purpose. “What’s the point of all this?” she wonders. “Well, what was the point of the thing before this?” Oscar replies.

Before long, boredom begins to catch up with June. In an episode that almost feels like a horror flick, she and Oscar are driven to paranoia when the arrival of a new neighbor disrupts their endless routine. The neighbor, a woman named Case (Catherine Keener), encourages June to explore the area outside of their cul-de-sac, leading her on an adventure that eventually tears her away from Oscar.

A persistent theme dogs the characters: that “together forever” may be a laughably absurd ideal. And because of that — or because heaven may not be real at all — the show emphasizes the need to be honest and compassionate in this world. In the finale, the couple reunite in the hopes of going on a new journey together. “We just had our first honest conversation ever,” June observes. “Too bad it wasn’t when we were alive,” Oscar notes. The message is clear: even heaven may not give you a second chance.

In contrast to the subtlety and slower pace of Forever, Upload (Amazon) is a bleak satire that crams in a murder mystery alongside the comedy. Once again, we meet doomed lovers (Nathan and Ingrid) who are growing sick of one another. But before they can have the big talk about their future, Nathan (Robbie Amell) is mortally injured in a car crash. When Ingrid (Allegra Edwards) pressures him to upload his consciousness into a corporate-controlled simulation of the afterlife, where she will eventually join him forever, an alarmed Nathan says what we’re all thinking: “Forever is a long time.” But he goes along with it, and emerges in the posh but dull Lakeview Hotel, where his virtual existence depends on Ingrid financing his data plan. Nathan’s only human connection is with Nora (Andy Allo), his “angel” who acts as both customer service rep and therapist, nudging him toward a path that could redeem his wasted life.

Written by Greg Daniels of The Office, Upload has some of the darkest comedy of the last decade. Fatal car accidents, body horror, and corporate dystopia are played for laughs. But the bleakest part is the pure crassness of this new heaven, something many Christian reviewers criticized as “revisionist” and utterly “false.” Either intentionally or not, the writers struck a nerve by digging into a deep philosophical problem with the traditional view of the afterlife. Much like Lakeview, heaven is, at its core, a gated community, shielding the chosen ones from the undesirables. Forever.

Of course, the show that drew the most attention — as well as the strongest reactions from fans and haters alike — was NBC’s The Good Place, which arguably started this trend. For four seasons, viewers followed a group of flawed people trying to get to paradise, all within a cartoonish satire of Western suburbia and corporate culture. Thus, from the beginning, even the grumpiest atheists in the audience looked forward to the finale, when our heroes would find their reward. Heaven would get a few more angels, and everything would be fine. But no, in the last two episodes, the writers aimed their satirical sights on heaven itself, a decision that many viewers found unnecessary at best, confusing and insulting at worst.

A brief recap. Following her embarrassing death, Eleanor Shelstrop (Kristen Bell) finds herself in the titular Good Place. The only problem: she doesn’t belong. Though the heavenly records state that she is a philanthropist, she is in fact a selfish drunk who has landed there by accident. By the end of season one, Eleanor figures out that she and her friends are actually in the Bad Place, as part of a Sartre-esque torture method devised by a demon named Michael (Ted Danson).

In this universe, people get to the Good Place through a point system that measures their moral actions. Yet the modern world has become so complex that even outwardly nice behavior can have harmful consequences. As a result, not a single person has made it to the Good Place in centuries. To fix this, Eleanor and her friends — now with the help of Michael, who has switched sides — come up with a new process in which the recently deceased will have a chance to develop and grow in the afterlife. Along the way, our heroes undergo their own purification, becoming empathetic, caring people, willing to risk their eternal souls to save humanity.

In the final episodes, when they finally arrive at the real Good Place, Eleanor and company discover that its inhabitants have become so bored that they have lost the will to live (eternally). Even the council that runs the Good Place is sick of it. When Michael arrives, they immediately place him in charge and run away.

To cure what ails the perpetually happy, Eleanor’s team proposes a way out: a doorway that leads to annihilation, which people can walk through when they are ready. This new limit on paradise restores meaning to life by forcing people to value their experiences because they may never come again, just like they did (or should have done) on Earth.

Such a simple solution is not without its critics. Philosophy professor Pamela Hieronymi, an advisor to the show, has said that removing the time limit on life would not “suddenly deprive it of meaning.” But this meaninglessness does not arrive suddenly. Instead, it develops over an immeasurable period of time, as the protagonists achieve all they wish to achieve. They right past wrongs, heal old wounds, and help others. And only then, with a sense of peace rather than despair, do they walk through the door.

Though The Good Place is not overtly political, this dismantling of the “angels in heaven” model certainly feels political. As the past year has shown, too many people are willing to justify some terrible things by citing the concerns of the world to come. In showing that eternal bliss is simply not a good reward, The Good Place challenges the moral rationalizations a person can make in order to secure prime real estate in the afterlife. Your crazy aunt on Facebook might tell you otherwise. And you can ask her, “what happens if I do things your way, only to get bored in heaven?” At the very least, it might get her to post harmless kitten memes instead.

It follows that the critical response to The Good Place tends to be divided politically, with more progressive-leaning reviewers taking delight in the show’s cheekiness, and more conservative outlets taking offense — which I suppose is a marker of effective satire. Much of the pushback against the finale has focused on the doorway to annihilation. A review in Christianity Today described it as an “atheistic cosmic euthanasia.” Another rejected the idea of death as a reward, calling it a “damning meditation on what it means to be human.” And indeed, there are moments in the episode where a person’s decision to leave the Good Place affects those around them in ways that are similar to suicide. In the show’s most emotional scene, Eleanor tearfully begs her partner Chidi (William Jackson Harper) to stay. Chidi, however, calmly explains that he is returning to the state he was in before he was born, like a wave returning to the ocean.

To be fair, there are plenty of self-identified Christian reviewers who had no problem with this aspect of the show. One Catholic site likened the journey to purgatory, while a progressive Christian blog praised the writers for sparking discussion between Western and Eastern religious traditions. For me, the annihilation depicted in the show represents another step into the unknown, similar to the mysterious “Great Beyond” depicted in Disney’s recent animated feature Soul. The script carefully avoids saying that someone “dies” (whatever that would mean in the afterlife) when they go through the door. Instead, their fate is in keeping with the theme of self-improvement that animates the series. The characters are absorbed into the universe, and their goodness permeates the world. This may not make sense to some viewers, which makes it similar to every other prediction of what’s waiting for us on the other side.

Many critics focused on the question of whether paradise could get boring. Their answer: It won’t. Okay? It just won’t. “Biblical imagery suggests a dynamic, productive and creative existence,” one reviewer insists. Maybe, but eternity might do more than just make things tedious. It might also sap the world of meaning. Why make up with your abusive father now when you can do it in, say, a million years? And a billion years after that, will you even recall that million-year gap? How would any of that matter in an endless void of time? In such a universe, you could fight and make up in an infinite loop.

To their credit, this same reviewer concedes that endless happiness is unimaginable from our mortal point of view, which is why people should trust the indescribable power of the Creator. While I can’t argue with such a vague promise, I also can’t help but think of the brainstorming session that the Good Place council leaves behind when they abandon their posts and run away. Among their hastily scribbled ideas to keep things interesting: more hoverboards, and “music you can eat.” I have to wonder if the trust we would need to make this all work could also have an expiration date, at which point even the hoverboards will fail to pass the time.

But the most consistent criticism of the show, going back to its debut, is the sheer godlessness of this world. Many reviewers have argued that the Good Place is broken precisely because it takes God out of the equation, a problem that the writers either fail to see, or refuse to address. As one writer for a church site explains, true salvation is given through grace, not earned through a point system.

Perhaps what really troubles some viewers is the possibility that The Good Place is a harbinger of the changing American religious landscape, one that promises to be more fragmented and secularized. Much like the main characters from Upload and Forever, Eleanor and her friends are never associated with any religious tradition, nor are they identified as atheists, agnostics, or even as “nones.” Rather than having an antagonistic relationship with religion, they are completely apathetic toward the supernatural. God is as irrelevant to their concerns as witchcraft or alchemy. And, as one reviewer noted, none of the characters seem eager to have a so-called traditional family, that marker of good Christian adulthood. Their lives, their goals, their entire worldview has been scrubbed clean of the divine, a kind of secular absolution.

While some will read that and despair, I would remind them that Eleanor and her friends fill the “god-shaped holes” in their lives not with hedonism and pettiness, but with a quest to improve themselves, and to help those around them. Instead of being handed meaning from above, they create their own, then test it, use it, and make the world a better place with it. In the coming years, as the religious landscape continues to change, there will be more stories pointing in this direction, showing how people can be good in this life, precisely because they know it’s the only one they’ll get. After all, Earth could use a few more angels.

Robert Repino is an editor of religious studies and history for Oxford University Press, and occasionally teaches for the Gotham Writers Workshop. He is the author of several works of fiction, including the science fiction novel Mort(e) from Soho Press and the middle grade novel Spark and the League of Ursus from Quirk Books.

The post Good Places, Uploads, and Reimagining the Afterlife in Popular Culture appeared first on The Revealer.

Photograph from Sogorea Te’ Land Trust. (Main article illustration on homepage by Inés Ixierda.)

As frightening as it has been to live through the COVID-19 outbreak, some communities have already experienced the end of their world and survived. Indigenous journalist Julian Brave NoiseCat (Secwepemc/St’at’imc) uses the term “postapocalyptic Indigenous people” to describe Indigenous peoples as survivors of genocide. We can extend this framework to survivors of other catastrophes, like the transatlantic slave trade and the Holocaust, making Black and Jewish peoples postapocalyptic, too. NoiseCat suggests “that those who know what it means to lose our world and live might have something to lend to a broader humanity that now faces its own existential crises in the form of disease and climate change.”

As a scholar of religion, I am not surprised that many people have drawn on religion to navigate this challenging time, just as others did in earlier crises. Queer Afro-Caribbean feminist M. Jacqui Alexander argues that religious practices were essential for Africans to survive the horrors of the Middle Passage. When enslaved Africans arrived in new lands, their religions allowed them to make sense of their worlds. This radical transformation also generated new religious forms like Lucumí (Santería) in Cuba and Candomblé in Brazil. Embedded in these practices were traditional teachings and veneration of ancestral spirits, which have remained important for many in the African diaspora.

Today, COVID-19 has radically transformed cultural and religious practices. Some religious groups have opposed coronavirus restrictions. Others have found new ways to engage the community, including streaming Durga Puja, cyber Neo-Pagan Solstice rituals, and social distance powwows. New religious forms have also emerged as the virus disproportionally impacts Native American, Black, and Latinx communities.

I noticed many of these patterns as part of a research team for the COVID-19 Relief and Restoration Work sponsored by the Center for the Study of Religion and the City at Morgan State University with support from the Henry Luce Foundation’s COVID-19 emergency grants. In addition to distributing funds to community organizations, we interviewed community leaders to understand how the coronavirus impacts their communities. I was particularly struck by the central role traditional teachings played in responses to the pandemic by some “postapocalyptic” communities. As survivors of previous crises, they offer all of us important models on how to navigate this challenging time.

Humunya Tribal Foundation of the Amah Mutsun Tribal Band
The Amah Mutsun Tribal Band is a tribal government comprised of Indigenous peoples whose ancestors were taken to Mission San Juan Bautista and Mission Santa Cruz in California. They are part of a larger group of tribes often called Ohlone whose homelands are near the San Francisco and Monterey Bays. The approximately 800 tribal members are survivors of three waves of apocalypse, including Spanish Catholic missions, Mexican settlement, and American colonization of their territory. The tribe does not have federal recognition, which means it is ineligible for tribal relief funds from the U.S. government.

Despite not having federal status, the tribe has engaged in various forms of cultural and political revitalization. “We’ve done everything from our language restoration, to bringing back our dance, our songs. All of that takes a tremendous amount of work, a lot, a lot of hours,” said a representative from the Humunya Tribal Foundation. Surviving colonialism has taught the Amah Mutsun the importance maintaining cultural traditions for their tribe to survive into the future. As an outreach organization for the tribe, the Humunya Tribal Foundation has organized educational workshops, tribal wellness meetings, ceremonies, and social gatherings for Amah Mutsun members.

COVID-19 changed much of this. As the organization’s representative put it, “When COVID hit, we knew that this was going to be really detrimental to our people, and we knew that with unemployment and that, we were going to have to do something . . . We’ve been in charge of the committee and it’s been very eye-opening, just how great our need is.” The organization set up a GoFundMe page for tribal members to help with the cost of food, rent assistance, medical care, and other needs in the wake of the pandemic. Funds have been distributed on a rolling basis, though some members have been granted emergency funds when households have become infected. The organization has also made use of Instacart for contactless groceries, set up a Facebook group with social services resources, and worked with members directly to apply for unemployment.

Because the tribe does not have federal recognition, all relief efforts are grassroots. They report on their GoFundMe page: “Because we are not a federally recognized tribe, we receive no medical, educational, social services or elder care assistance from the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Many of our approximately 800 tribal members live paycheck to paycheck and do not have health insurance.” The Muwekma Ohlone Tribe, a neighboring tribe, has also set up a GoFundMe page for their own tribal members.

Photo by Protect Juristac of Amah Mutsun Youth Walk for Juristac.

Amah Mutsun has relied on Zoom to stay connected for their tribal council and monthly wellness meetings. Ceremonies have been a different situation. “That’s really tough because so much a part of ceremony is dance, and the fire, and music through our instruments. I mean, there’s no way to hold a roundhouse Zoom, or anything like that,” said a Humunya Tribal Foundation representative. Other Native communities have decided to halt religious gatherings, aware of the ways that earlier pandemics have devastated Native peoples. But the tribe is still finding ways to care for their traditional lands, a value they share with other Indigenous peoples. This includes socially distant forms of land management through the Amah Mutsun Land Trust, an organization that helps tribal members relearn Indigenous ecological knowledge. Amah Mutsun also organized a socially-distant youth walk to Juristac, a sacred site for the tribe. This walk was part of a larger effort by tribal members to halt a mining project on the site. Through these efforts, the tribe has been able to maintain cultural values, even during this moment of crisis.

Sogorea Te’ Land Trust
Named after the 2011 spiritual occupation of the Sogorea Te’ burial ground, the Sogorea Te’ Land Trust is an urban Indigenous woman-led organization committed to land restoration. Their website explains that the work of Sogorea Te’, “calls on native and non-native peoples to heal and transform the legacies of colonization, genocide, and patriarchy and to do the work our ancestors and future generations are calling us to do.” Co-founded by Corrina Gould (Lisjan Ohlone) and Johnella LaRose (Shoshone Bannock/Carrizo) in 2015, the San Francisco Bay Area organization is an important cultural hub for the local urban Indian community. It is the site for various forms of Indigenous cultural revitalization and Ohlone and intertribal gatherings. Sogorea Te’ also oversees the formal reclamation of ancestral Ohlone lands. Cultural and land reclamation, what the organization refers to as “rematriation,” is funded through a voluntary land tax called “Shuumi,” a Chochenyo Ohlone word for “gift.”

Photo for Sogorea Te’ Land Trust by “@creative_mudafukah”

According to a recent Instagram post, “Since the first shelter in place order, we shifted into gear to make sure our urban Indigenous community would have safe access to nutritional food.” This new initiative is called Horše ‘Amham, “good food” in Chochenyo Ohlone. Through partnerships with local organizations, Sogorea Te’ Land Trust is providing fresh food to Native, Black, and Brown low-income families. Staff are also learning how to make medicines, including herbal tinctures and fire cider, a popular apple cider vinegar tonic. The organization hopes to sell these products and gift some to elders. Like Amah Mutsun, members of Sogorea Te’ Land Trust are learning as they go about how to navigate the growing needs of their communities.

Social distancing provides other changes. Sogorea Te’ Land Team Member Nazshonnii Brown said, “We definitely feel limited in being able to do our ceremonies and gatherings. We’re used to inviting people out and working, bringing on volunteers and working with them at all the different sites. A big challenge is not being able to do those same in-person things that allow us to feel more connected to our community.” Two outdoor, socially distant ceremonial fires were lit for community members who have passed. Ceremony has been a central practice connecting Indigenous peoples to one another, the land, and sacred forces—especially during moments of crisis. As a result of the COVID-19 outbreak, however, the majority of social connections for Sogorea Te’ have been virtual and dependent on an active social media presence.

Zoom has served as an important tool to maintain connections. This includes a series of virtual panels featuring Indigenous leaders discussing topics related to wellness and protecting Indigenous sacred sites. Their “Women Warriors: Indigenous Women Protecting the Sacred” panel featured Indigenous women activists from California and Hawai’i. During their discussion, they described movements to protect religious sites and how allies can provide support. Among these places is the West Berkeley Shellmound, an ancient burial site threatened by urban development. Even in the wake of COVID-19, Indigenous leaders have continued the work of ensuring the survival of cultural practices and the protection of sacred places. They recognize that accessing sacred lands are essential for Indigenous cultures to continue into the future.

While COVID-19 created new challenges, many issues remain the same for urban Indian communities. As Brown put it, “A lot of these needs are the same before COVID, and I’d say the big ones are having educational tools, like access to tutoring, or homework help, and applications for college. That need has been in the community, and access to fresh and affordable food.” While they await the return of in-person gatherings, Brown anticipates that new initiatives, like food distribution and Zoom programing, will continue even after shelter-in-place requirements are lifted. By disturbing resources and providing digital content, Sogorea Te’ is ensuring that local Indigenous and Black communities will outlive the current catastrophe.

Black Church Food Security Network
On the other side of the country, the Black Church Food Security Network (BCFSN) in Baltimore is addressing food inequities during the pandemic. “The mission of the Black Church Food Security Network is to create community-based food systems anchored by Black churches and in partnership with Black farmers. We aim to create community-based food systems that are led by those who are directly impacted and affected by food inequity,” explained Sha’Von Terrell, Deputy Director of the organization. BCFSN was founded in 2015 after the death of Freddie Grey while in police custody and the Baltimore Uprising that led to the closure of restaurants and retail food outlets. This left Black communities without access to food. Rather than rely on outside aid, BCFSN works within their networks to support Black communities.

BCFSN’s work is inspired by Black religious and Civil Rights leaders. As Terrell described, “We stand on the shoulders of Albert Cleage. We stand on the shoulders of Mother and Father Divine. We stand on the shoulders of Vernon Johns, Fannie Lou Hamer.” They look to leaders who have helped Black people survive earlier crises for insights to survive current struggles. One of BCFSN’s programs, called the Soil to Sanctuary Market, transforms multi-use church spaces into farmer’s markets where Black farmers can sell their produce. This program draws on the model of Vernon Johns, Martin Luther King’s predecessor at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, who farmed, preached, and sold produce to the congregation. However, because of the large volume of high-risk community members and the frequency of COVID-19 outbreaks, BCFSN halted in-person farmer’s markets.

Instead, BCFSN launched a new program, “Black Church Supported Agriculture.” The program works like a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA). In this case, BCFSN works with Black farmers in Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina to secure produce. The produce is then sold to churches that distribute it to their congregations. “In the spirit of equity and agency and sovereignty, we want to make sure that Black farmers have a market where we are continuing the cycle of self-sufficiency with securing and distributing our food to black communities,” Terrel noted. This model supports Black farmers and Black communities during the pandemic.

Photo by Black Church Food Security Network

New forms of food distribution have coincided with an increased use of digital technology for BCFSN. This includes a series of videos uploaded to their YouTube channel covering canning, pickling, gardening, and seed saving. Other events have streamed live on their Instagram and Facebook pages. BCFSN also launched their Faith, Food, & Freedom Campaign, which aimed to inspire Black churches to patronize Black farmers, create gardens, and engage in emergency food storage during this pandemic. This campaign included a special series of live-streamed conversations with scholars, activists, and community leaders.

At the end of the Faith, Food, & Freedom campaign, BCFSN streamed a virtual Harvest Party to celebrate the work of farmers who sacrificed tirelessly for the community to survive in these uncertain times. Terrell said the aim was, “to create a safe space for people and to acknowledge all of the pain and the loss in the moment, and to also embrace the fact that we are in community with each other. We are not alone at all in this experience.” As communities that have survived the horrors of enslavement, land dispossession, and other crises, BCFSN responds to the pandemic by drawing on cultural teachings to ensure that Black people also survive this apocalypse.

Jews United for Justice
Jews United for Justice (JUFJ), another Baltimore-based organization, has continued its social justice work during the pandemic. “Jews United for Justice advances economic, racial, and social justice in the Baltimore-Washington region by educating and mobilizing our local Jewish communities to action,” according to the organization’s website. Founded in 1998, JUFJ engages in “issue-based campaigns that make real, immediate, and concrete improvements in people’s lives and build the power of working-class and poor communities of color.” Inspired by the work of socially engaged leaders like Rabbi Abraham Heschel and Jewish values like tikkun olam (“the repair of the world”), JUFJ collaborates with organizations to address police reform, renter’s rights, and racial justice.

Some of JUFJ’s political actions fall on Jewish holidays. In 2019, the organization engaged in a protest at the Howard County Detention Center on Tisha B’av, a Jewish day of mourning that traditionally recounts the destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem. For members of JUFJ, this holiday is also about mourning modern catastrophes. As a group that includes survivors of the Holocaust, JUFJ members ally themselves with others experiencing disaster. The event included readings from the Book of Lamentations, a Tisha B’av service, and acts of civil disobedience. JUFJ’s 2020 Tisha B’av looked different as a result of the pandemic. Several prayer groups were organized in Baltimore around issues of police violence, police accountability, and family separation at immigrant detention centers. For JUFJ organizer Rianna Lloyd, during Tisha B’av “you’re supposed to be kind of like not interacting with people, and so in some ways it actually embodied…the spirit of the holiday even more.”

In other ways, the work of JUFJ has not changed much since the start of the pandemic. Organizers collaborated with coalition partners across the state through virtual mediums even before the COVID-19 outbreak. But the urgency of the issues has changed. One recent campaign was about “freeing people who were in jails, especially those who were at the end of their sentences, who are high-risk, who were there for low offenses, things like that, because we knew that COVID was spreading rapidly and especially in jails,” said Lloyd.

Photo by Jews United for Justice

During the pandemic, JUFJ has also focused on other issues, like housing and water access. JUFJ joined organizations in the Renter’s United Coalition to expand the Baltimore eviction moratorium. Housing is an especially important issue for JUFJ, given the complicated relationship Jews have had with housing, which includes a history of American Jews being denied housing because of antisemitism. As Lloyd put it, “We also couldn’t buy houses. But then we moved, and then we told people of color they couldn’t live there.” This complicated legacy inspires much of the JUFJ’s racial justice initiatives, including their continued work with the  Baltimore Right to Water Coalition, which makes water more affordable for Baltimore residents. This is especially important given the urgency of hand washing during the COVID-19 outbreak. These forms of political organizing suggest a continuation of socially engaged Jewish values as active in JUFJ’s response to the pandemic. 

Preparing for the Future
Taken together, these stories describe how religion has remained active within “postapocalyptic” community responses to COVID-19. They are also a call to prepare for what may emerge in the future. Sha’Von Terrell put it like this, “I always say that there will be another crisis, because climate change disproportionately affects low-income and Black communities. When there is another crisis, another flood, another tornado, then how can we be prepared to address those needs as they come because other crises will emerge and other crises will happen?” As survivors of genocide, enslavement, and colonialism, these communities draw on traditional teachings to survive yet another time of uncertainty. Following their example may show us how we, too, can survive this moment.

Abel R. Gomez is a Ph.D. candidate in the Religion Department at Syracuse University. His research focuses on sacred sites, ceremony, and decolonization in the context of contemporary Indigenous religions.

The post Postapocalyptic Communities: Tribal and Religious Organizations Respond to COVID-19 appeared first on The Revealer.

Dear Revealer readers,

This month marks one year since the first pandemic stay-at-home orders went into effect throughout the United States. Our once bustling offices, beloved restaurants, and cherished religious institutions shuttered as many of us moved our lives online. With these changes came new rituals and traditions. Countless religious leaders began to broadcast services online, a trend we at the Revealer described as the work of “reluctant televangelists.” Other religious groups took their gatherings outdoors where the risk of viral transmission lowered considerably. My own Upper West Side street turned into an outdoor Orthodox synagogue for the Jewish High Holy Days this past autumn. Meanwhile, others flaunted public health guidelines and sued for the right to pray indoors. And countless Americans searched for ways to grieve the dead when funerals were no longer possible.

Revealer Editor, Brett Krutzsch

To mark the one-year anniversary of the pandemic upending our lives, the Revealer’s March issue opens with Abel Gomez’s “Postapocalyptic Communities: Tribal and Religious Organizations Respond to COVID-19,” where he explores how groups that survived near-genocide, including Indigenous Americans, Black Americans, and Jews, are reacting to COVID-19 and what they can teach us about making it through this crisis. Next, because the pandemic has kept many of us inside binge watching television, we are running two articles about religion in current TV and film. In “Good Places, Uploads, and Reimagining the Afterlife in Popular Culture,” Robert Repino examines how three recent television shows depict heavenly perfection as a less-than-ideal postmortem situation. And in “Just the Right Amount of Sugar,” Sharrona Pearl reviews Making Sweet Tea, a documentary about Black gay men in the South and their complicated, and often surprising, relationships with religion.

Another show that premiered during the pandemic that prominently featured religion, especially the gendered pressures Mormon women face, was the Real Housewives of Salt Lake City. To explore Mormon ideas about gender in more depth, we are running an excerpt from Taylor Petrey’s newest book Tabernacles of Clay: Sexuality and Gender in Modern Mormonism, where he shares how longtime anti-feminist Phyllis Schlafly partnered with Mormon leaders to oppose the Equal Rights Amendment and promote patriarchal nuclear families.

Our March issue also includes the newest episode of the Revealer podcast: “Mormons and Changing Ideas about Gender and Sexuality.” Taylor Petrey joins us to discuss the current place of LGBTQ Mormons in the Church of Jesus Christ and Later Day Saints, tensions among Mormons about gender, and how Mormon leaders tried to teach parents to raise gender normative, heterosexual children. You can listen to this fascinating episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Stitcher.

As we enter the second year of the pandemic, let us  acknowledge the more than half a million Americans who died from COVID-19 in the past twelve months. Far too many lost their lives not simply from a virus that wreaked havoc on their bodies, but from the negligence of government officials who eschewed science and who lied about the novel coronavirus’s dangers. Let us hope the months ahead bring less death, greater government competence, and with more Americans striving to keep one another safe so that we may live with greater peace of mind in a world where COVID-19 continues to exist.

Yours,
Brett Krutzsch, Ph.D.

The post Editor’s Letter: One Year of the Pandemic appeared first on The Revealer.