Sunday night I went home and took a spin through Job.

Earlier in the evening, I had attended a screening of the remarkable new Coen brothers film, "A Serious Man,'' hosted at Brandeis by the National Center for Jewish Film. The film is being compared to Job because it centers on a seemingly decent man for whom everything suddenly goes wrong, without explanation, and his efforts to seek help from God are as unsuccessful as they are persistent. The film opens in Boston Friday; I thought it was stunning -- mesmerizing, witty, bleak, honest -- but I see that the critics have been all over the map.

The film is attracting a lot of attention, in the Jewish world and the film community, for its portrayal of Judaism, or at least of Jewishness. The film, for a major release, is almost shockingly insider-y, beginning with a short story filmed entirely in Yiddish (don't worry -- it's subtitled), and the body of the film is permeated with Jewish concepts, language, and culture. The depiction of Jewish family and religious life -- in this case, in Minneapolis in the late 1960s -- is often chilling in its nihilism (or is it just emptiness?) -- but many of the scenes clearly struck a chord of recognition among the audience at Brandeis, which laughed often and knowingly at characters such as the mind-numbingly boring, and unaware, Hebrew school teacher, and the string of rabbis whose pastoral counsel often featured a mix of anecdotes that went nowhere and a series of unanswered/unanswerable questions.

The studio production notes include a few observations about the role of Judaism in the film, quoting Ethan Coen saying, "Occasionally people would ask, 'You’re not making fun of the Jews, are you?' We are not, but some will take anything that isn’t flattering as an indication that we think the whole community or ethnicity is flawed." And Joel Coen is quoted saying, "People can get a little uptight when you’re being specific with a subject matter. From our point of view, 'A Serious Man' is a very affectionate look at the community and is a movie that will show aspects of Judaism which are not usually seen."

Looking for a bit of context, I called my friend Cathleen Falsani, who, happily, has just written a book called, "The Dude Abides: The Gospel According to the Coen Brothers.'' Here's an edited transcript of our conversation:

Q: What are the Coen brothers trying to say about Judaism?
A: I don't know if they're trying to say anything about Judaism, in particular. Having looked at all 14 of their films, I see the same themes in a lot of their other films -- this one just happens to be set in an academic, Jewish, milieu. I would hesitate to take it as a commentary on Judaism. I don't think it is a reflection of their faith. And I see a lot of tenderness, frankly, in the way that they are treating a lot of their characters. The rabbis are very faulty people, like we all are, but it's not snarky.

Q: What role does faith play generally in the Coen brothers' films?
A: What I see, almost to a film, is this question of 'Why do bad things happen?' The theodicy question is almost ever present. In 'The Big Lebowski' you have this one wholly innocent man who dies in the parking lot of a bowling alley. In 'No Country for Old Men,' certainly that was a question dealt with there. But they raise more theological, metaphysical, existential questions in their films than they ever answer, which I think is brave. What does it mean to be good? If there is a God, why is there evil? They cover everything from karma and grace to sin and responsibility and community. In 'O Brother, Where Art Thou?,' they are looking at, who is my neighbor, who is my brother? There is divine intervention in some films. And, in the darkest films, we don't learn anything and a lot of people wind up dead.

Q: Do they deal with Jewish themes in other films?
A: There are Jewish characters in other films, but I don’t know that I would say there are explicitly Jewish themes, and I don't know that they're dealing with a Jewish theme in 'A Serious Man,' even though it's set in a Jewish community. The themes are more universal. There's definitely some Biblical themes in some of their films, but I don't think they're trying to say anything in particular about the validity, or not, of Judaism. They're more explorers of the spiritual landscape.

Q: What do you know about their own faith lives?
A: Only what they've said, which is very little. They were raised Jewish, but left that behind after their bar mitzvahs. Their sister is quite religious and moved to Israel. Joel Coen is married to Frances McDormand, whose father and sister are Disciples of Christ ministers. But the Coens don't really reveal much about themselves, or try to interpret their work or explain their work in interviews.

Q: The depiction of the Jewish community in the film seems pretty tough, especially the portrayal of the rabbis.
A: Larry (the main character) is asking a question that there is no good answer to. Whatever religious tradition you're in, when you're suffering and asking why, there is no adequate answer. The answers the rabbis give are as ineffectual, and as good, as anybody is going to give you. I'm a Christian, and I have yet to hear anybody give anyone else a good answer from a Christian perspective. There is no good answer -- whether you're Buddhist or Muslim or Hindu, the answers don't satisfy the yearning that question comes from. So yes, it's a rough depiction, but it's reflective of what they live. I don't see it as meanspirited. It's fairly tender. And frankly the clergy come off better than the overtly religious characters in their other films, like the Bible salesman in 'O Brother, Where Art Thou?' In 'A Serious Man,' the clergy are more nuanced, more human.

Q: How does their depiction differ from that of Woody Allen?
A: I think Woody Allen is far more caustic. Maybe the Coens believe religion or faith is utterly foolish, but it doesn't come across that way. In Woody Allen's films, it is the height of stupidity to believe in something other than what's in the here and now. And he's much more obsessed with death than the Coens. And I don't think any religious character comes across particularly well, except for maybe in 'Crimes and Misdemeanors,' where the rabbi came across well, but then he made him blind.

Q: What do you think of the parallels to Job?
A: There are always the obvious themes in the Coen films, but it's usually what's happening beyond the obvious that's powerful. Sure, he (Larry Gopnick, the main character) is Job, and he's a shlemiel. He doesn't curse God, but he questions why this is happening, and is therefore a lot more like most of us than Job is. But it's a fair parallel to make, and the way the film ends is far more Jobian than the rest.

Q: Do you think the film will be accessible to non-Jewish audiences?
A: I think it's extremely accessible because of the universal themes. This is a really spiritually important film, because of that question of what's the meaning of suffering. That's not Jewish -- that's everything, that's universal. It would be really shortsighted to call it a Jewish film and leave it at that -- it certainly is that, but it's more than that.

(Photo, by Wilson Webb/Focus Features, shows Aaron Wolff (center) as Danny Gopnik in Joel & Ethan Coen's "A Serious Man.")

All this rain got you down? Here's an invitation -- tomorrow (Sunday, Oct. 4), I'll be leading a pre-matinee discussion about "The Savannah Disputation" at the Boston Center for the Arts with the play's director, Paul Daigneault, and one of its actors, Timothy Crowe, a onetime seminarian who plays a priest in the production. (Crowe talked with me about his journey from seminarian to actor-playing-a-priest in this interview; we'll talk more about it Sunday.)

The play, which is being produced by the SpeakEasy Stage Company, is a comedy about two Catholic sisters in Georgia whose lives are shaken when a perky young evangelical missionary comes knocking on their door. The production stars two of Boston's best-known actresses, Nancy Carroll and Paula Plum.

The pre-show discussion, which begins at 1:30 p.m., is open to Globe subscribers -- you just go to www.bgextras.com to sign up.

(Photo, by Eric Levenson/SpeakEasy Stage, shows Carolyn Charpie and Timothy Crowe in a scene from "The Savannah Disputation.")

There's quite a conversation going on in the religion blogosphere about the contrast between the case of Roman Polanksi (famed filmmaker, accused of raping 13-year-old girl decades ago, on the lam, and now, after finally being arrested in Switzerland, winning public support from fellow entertainers and European public officials) and that of multiple priests (not famous, accused of abusing minors decades ago, etc.).

The Rev. Thomas J. Reese, a senior fellow at Woodstock Theological Center at Georgetown University, was first out of the box, posting an item headlined, "Father Polanski Would Go to Jail,'' at On Faith. An excerpt:

Polanski's defenders, including a 2008 HBO documentary, argue that he should not be punished. They say that the girl was willing and sexually experienced and she has forgiven him (after receiving a settlement). They even cite his tragic childhood and life as an excuse. And besides, it is ancient history.

Such arguments from pedophile priests would be laughed out of court and lambasted by everyone, and rightly so. It makes no difference that the girl is willing and sexually experienced, it is a crime. It is the role of the court, not the victim, to decide who goes to jail and for how long.

It is not as if Polanski is the only Hollywood celebrity to be accused of child abuse. Woody Allen and Michael Jackson come to mind. I am sure that with a little research the media could come up with quite a list. The Catholic Church has rightly been put under a microscope when 4 percent of its priests were involved in abuse, but what about the film industry?

The world has truly changed. Entertainment is the new religion with sex, violence and money the new Trinity. The directors and stars are worshiped and quickly forgiven for any infraction as long as the PR agent is a skilled as a saintly confessor. Entertainment, not religion, is the new opiate of the people and we don't want our supply disturbed.

Is there a double standard here? You bet.

Next up was the Rev. James Martin, associate editor of America magazine, writing, "If he were in a collar there would be no boo-hooing about his recent plight. There would be zero pity for him." An excerpt from his post, which was titled, "If Polanski Were Wearing a Collar ":

Can you imagine a petition being circulated among actors, directors and producers in the United States to have a Catholic priest reinstated in his parish after he had abused a 13-year-old child? If you believe this about Polanski--that his good deeds offset his guilt and that enough time has passed--do you believe the same about pedophile priests?

Multiple others are chiming in as well. David Gibson, writing for Politics Daily, also asks, "Comparisons are by their nature invidious. But what if Roman Polanksi were wearing a Roman collar? Would "Monsignor Polanksi" receive the same considerations?" Peter Smith, a religion writer for the Louisville Courier-Journal, wonders, "Let's say Roman Polanski was a priest who, say, fled the country and for decades avoid serving a sentence for statutory rape. Well, the question is a bit obvious. Would anyone sympathize with the end of his longtime fugitive status for his statutory rape conviction? Wouldn't people be indignant if a Catholic organization honored him in exile?" Many other religion writers are asking the same, from USA Today's Cathy Lynn Grossman, to Reuters's Tom Heneghan. And Rod Dreher, blogging as BeliefNet's Crunchy Con, takes the argument even further, writing:

In our culture, when it comes to sex, celebrities are beyond good and evil. At least Polanski isn't a orthodox Catholic or committed Evangelical of any sort. In his cultural milieu, that would be the unforgivable sin.

(Photo, by Sebastien Bozon/AFP, shows the "Free Polanski" sign on a man's shirt at the Zurich film festival on September 28, 2009.)

Last night I saw an unusual production of "Waiting for Godot" at the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston. I'd seen the play before, but this production, by the Classical Theatre of Harlem, has a Katrina overlay -- in 2007 it was staged outdoors in the devastated Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans, and now, as it tours, it features sets evocative of that place, and a cast that is predominantly African-American. At the ICA, the set included not only hints of the country road/tree/evening prescribed by playwright Samuel Beckett, but also a bunch of debris and the shell of a house spray-painted with the now-iconic search and rescue marking that indicates, among other things, whether anyone was found dead inside. There was a certain surreal aspect to the ICA staging, because, through the windows of the museum, we could see the booze cruises motoring by in the harbor, offering a strange contrast to the bleak and forgotten landscape re-created onstage.

Barrels of ink have been spilled on the religious themes of "Waiting for Godot,'' so I'm not going to travel too far in that direction, except to admit that I had forgotten how much explicitly religious language is in the play. At one point, Vladimir analyzes the different descriptions in the four Gospels of what happens to the two thieves crucified with Jesus, and later, he muses, "To every man his little cross. Till he dies. And is forgotten." Estragon imagines his previous, but forgotten, interaction with Godot as "a kind of prayer" and "a vague supplication,'' and at another point poignantly asks, "Do you think God sees me?" And then there are the allusions.

This particular production, though, actually invites the audience to step outside the religious realm, because the post-Katrina New Orleans setting suggests that men wait for something more tangible than the divine. The hunger and pain and isolation and abandonment of Vladimir and Estragon, and the madness of the world in which they live, is not in some abstract, far away place, but here, in our own time, in our own country, and it seems possible that what they wait for is us.

(Photo, by Paul Chan, shows J Kyle Manzay as Estragon in the New York production of The Classical Theatre of Harlem's staging of "Waiting for Godot.")

Dan Brown is back. Not that he was ever really gone, between the novels and the movies, but now a new book, "The Lost Symbol,'' is topping the bestseller lists, and, once again, Brown's conspiratorial take on religion and more (this time, the Masons) is on full display.

Brown talked with Parade magazine about his own faith in an interview published last Sunday. The key section:

Are you religious?

I was raised Episcopalian, and I was very religious as a kid. Then, in eighth or ninth grade, I studied astronomy, cosmology, and the origins of the universe. I remember saying to a minister, "I don't get it. I read a book that said there was an explosion known as the Big Bang, but here it says God created heaven and Earth and the animals in seven days. Which is right?" Unfortunately, the response I got was, "Nice boys don't ask that question." A light went off, and I said, "The Bible doesn't make sense. Science makes much more sense to me." And I just gravitated away from religion.

Where are you now?

The irony is that I've really come full circle. The more science I studied, the more I saw that physics becomes metaphysics and numbers become imaginary numbers. The farther you go into science, the mushier the ground gets. You start to say, "Oh, there is an order and a spiritual aspect to science."

There's been lots of bloggery about Brown's latest, but the one must-see post is Slate's interactive Dan Brown sequel generator -- you choose a city and a religion or organization you find suspicious, and it gives you a Brownian plot outline.

(Photo, by Andrew Medichini/AP, shows Dan Brown in Rome on May 3, 2009.)

Boston's SpeakEasy Stage Company tonight opened the local premiere of a comedy called "The Savannah Disputation,'' about a pair of sixtysomething Catholic sisters who are unsettled by visits from a perky young Protestant missionary, and decide to try to trap her into a debate with their local parish priest.

This production is noteworthy because Timothy Crowe, the actor playing the priest, was himself a seminarian many years ago.

I have a preview of the play, focusing on Crowe's role, in the Arts section of today's Globe. The lede:

The weary priest, seated on a deep couch with a drink at hand, pauses for several minutes before responding to the question about how it felt to embrace a life of celibacy. When he answers, he begins with an anecdote, about the period of time just before he took his vows.

“One day, the fact of celibacy just - hit me in the face,’’ says Father Patrick Murphy, one of the central characters in a new play, “The Savannah Disputation,’’ which opens today at the Boston Center for the Arts.

“For the first time, I seemed to really - understand,’’ the priest says, “and I felt extremely free, like I had sidestepped a trap.’’

The character offers the comment as a straightforward confession of a long-buried emotion. But for the actor, Timothy Crowe, the line is rich with irony.

Crowe, 64, faced that same moment of understanding decades ago as a young seminarian in Missouri. But for Crowe, unlike for Father Murphy, sidestepping the trap meant not entering the priesthood.

“It was a very difficult decision,’’ Crowe said in an interview last week. “But I felt incomplete.’’

(Photo, by Eric Levenson/SpeakEasy Stage Company, shows Timothy Crowe, with Carolyn Charpie, in a scene from "The Savannah Disputation,'' running through Oct. 17 at the Calderwood Pavilion at the Boston Center for the Arts.)

I finally got a chance to see "Inglourious Basterds" last night, and am now catching up on some of the discussion that's taking place among Jewish bloggers, in particular, about what to make of this blood-soaked Quentin Tarantino fantasia in which a group of Jewish American soldiers, led by Brad Pitt (whose character is not Jewish), make their way across a German-occupied World War II France giddily and gruesomely scalping and branding Nazis. The film seems to represent a few trends in depictions of the Holocaust in popular culture -- both the increasing interest in real or fictional Jews who fought back, and an increasing willingness to at least flirt with the comic in films that deal with one of history's great tragedies. Any deviation from documentary-style depictions of the Holocaust sparks debate among those worried about trivialization, and "Inglourious Basterds," which is only loosely related to reality, is no exception. A few analyses that have caught my eye as I try to sort through my own reactions this morning:

In The Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg, who calls himself "a veteran REM-state Mengele-killer,'' profiles Tarantino, and comes away skeptical of his film's message:

I have a high tolerance for violence in Tarantino’s compelling fantasy demimonde. But Inglourious Basterds is the first Tarantino movie to reference real historical events. Which might be why I find his anti-Nazi excesses—there’s a concept—disconcerting. Or it might be because I don’t actually have revenge dreams anymore. They stopped sometime after I left the army, if I remember correctly. Given the chance, of course, I would still shoot Mengele in the face. That would be a moral necessity. But I wouldn’t carve a swastika into his forehead. That just doesn’t sound like the Jewish thing to do.

In Tablet magazine, Liel Leibovitz is particularly critical, comparing Tarantino's film to the Nazi propaganda it mocks, calling both, "empty cinematic spools of sound and fury, signifying nothing":

Tarantino’s film is a bit of shallow propaganda, promoting not some totalitarian ideology but a worldview in which cool trumps consequence, nothing is real, and everything is permitted. If there’s any justice in the world, it’s a vision viewers everywhere will vehemently reject.

Charlie Bertsch, writing at Jewcy, has a lengthy essay about the film, which starts with a survey of the criticism, observing, "In taking on World War II and, implicitly, the Holocaust, Inglourious Basterds invites a degree of moral scrutiny that Tarantino’s choice of genres previously helped him avoid. The fact that he continues to project the image of an insouciant amateur movie fan rather than a disciplined director, even when handling such historically delicate material, compounds the trouble." An excerpt:

Inglourious Basterds has still provoked the same misgivings as Tarantino’s previous directorial efforts. Some worry that its depiction of violence is excessive, others that the humor that leavens that violence might deaden viewers’ moral sensitivity. But because this is a story in which Jews take revenge on their oppressors, other concerns have come to the fore. The most heated objections to the film have come from those who worry that it makes viewers identify with characters in troubling ways. Interestingly, this charge has been levied from opposing ideological camps. Whether supporters of Israel or the sort of progressive intellectuals who relentlessly point out its failings, critics have argued that the film makes revenge too sweet.

There is nothing in the narrative to imply that the Germans in the film, most of them high-ranking Nazis, deserve sympathy for their plight. Nevertheless, the unorthodox practices of the primarily American commando unit known as the “Inglourious Basterds” – scalping their kills and carving a swastika on the foreheads of any survivors – have troubled those who believe that the distinction between “us” and “them” must encompass methodology as well as ideology.

Meanwhile, at Politics Daily, David Gibson puts the film in the context of other manifestations of Jewish toughness, both real and imagined. He notes the role of Jewish sports heroes in countering images of nebbishiness, but also notes that Jewish toughness, particularly in the form of Israel's treatment of Palestinians, has also become a source of criticism:

The modern renaissance in Jewish grit can be traced to the birth of Israel in 1948, which was founded in hostile territory by a people that had been nearly exterminated a few years earlier. The legend grew with the success Jews had in creating a land of milk and honey out of the desert, and it was sealed in the popular imagination by the astonishing military victory of the Six-Day War in 1967 and the Yom Kippur War of 1973, as well as the 1976 Entebbe raid that rescued hostages off an Air France plane hijacked by Palestinian terrorists. That era was celebrated in the 2005 Steven Spielberg movie "Munich," a well-regarded film about the Mossad's patient campaign to assassinate the terrorists who murdered 11 Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics.

Some would also note that Jews earned their stripes in the tough arena of sports -- witness baseball greats Hank Greenberg and Sandy Koufax -- as well as crime. Journalist Rich Cohen titled his history of past Jewish organized crime figures "Tough Jews," pointing out that guys like Bugsy Siegel (played by Warren Beatty in the movie) and Meyer Lansky were regarded by many Jews as providing a rare and enviable tough-guy image. (A site called J-Grit.com has lists of what it says are legendary tough Jews from modern times, including rogues as well as heroes.)

In some respects, however, Jewish -- or at least Israeli -- prowess has taken a hit since the resurgent Palestinian intifada of 2002. That was followed by episodes like the 2006 battle in Lebanon against Hezbollah that was widely viewed as a failure for Israel, and the 2007 invasion of Gaza that left the Israeli army looking like the oppressor in the eyes of many. Recent books have even openly critiqued the "Jewish lobby" in America.

Finally, out of curiosity, I took a look at how the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops' film office is viewing the film. They have recommended it only for a "limited adult audience" because of "problematic content many adults would find troubling." The reviewer, acknowledging that the film raises "complex moral issues,'' then wades into a complex issue himself, suggesting that perhaps killing rank-and-file Nazis is not justifiable:

"Inglourious Basterds" (Weinstein/Universal) is a provocative World War II fantasy requiring careful moral assessment from viewers well-educated in Catholic teaching and able to withstand its occasional episodes of graphic bloodletting. In between those incidents, writer-director Quentin Tarantino weaves a suspenseful, though somewhat lurid, alternate history of a tragic epoch....

As the direct perpetrators of an inhuman tyranny, Goebbels and his ilk would have made fair targets, since they bore personal guilt for the regime's bloody crimes, and their lives were obstacles to the restoration of the common good.

But the American band's systematic brutality toward low-ranking enemy soldiers, especially prisoners, is far less easily justified, and can only be accepted within a genre far removed from reality and on the supposition that all Teutonic combatants were, to some degree at least, Holocaust enablers.

(Photo, by Francois Duhamel/TWC via Bloomberg, shows actors Eli Roth and Brad Pitt in the film "Inglourious Basterds.")

In the Ideas section of today's Globe, I have a piece about religion and Harry Potter. The lede:

The world of religion was not, at first, particularly enthusiastic about the arrival of the Potter boy.

For several years, J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series topped the American Library Association’s lists of the most-challenged books (reasons cited in 2001: “anti-family, occult/Satanism, religious viewpoint, and violence”). Evangelical Protestants were skeptical: would the positive depiction of wizardry mislead children? And some Catholics were worried too, ranging from Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI), who warned that “subtle seductions” in the text could “corrupt the Christian faith,” to the Rev. Ronald A. Barker, a Wakefield priest who yanked the books from his parish school library.

But over the last several years, religion writers and thinkers have warmed to Harry - both Christianity Today, the evangelical magazine, and L’Osservatore Romano, the Vatican newspaper, have praised the latest film. The Christian Broadcasting Network, home of Pat Robertson, now features on its website a special section on “The Harry Potter Controversy,” with the acknowledgment, “Leading Christian thinkers have disparate views on the Harry Potter products, and how Christians should respond to them.”

At the same time, scholars of religion have begun developing a more nuanced take on the Potter phenomenon, with some arguing that the wildly popular series of books and films contains positive ethical messages and a narrative arc that is worthy of serious scholarly examination and even theological reflection. The scholars are primarily interested in what the books have to say about the two big issues that always preoccupy people of faith - morality and mortality - but some are also interested in what the series has to say about tolerance (Harry and friends are notably open to people and creatures who differ from them) and bullying, the nature and presence of evil in society, and the existence of the supernatural.

Scholarly interest in the Harry Potter books began long before the series was finished, and shows no signs of slowing. There have been several academic books, with titles such as “The Ivory Tower and Harry Potter: Perspectives on a Literary Phenomenon” and “Harry Potter’s World: Multidisciplinary Critical Perspectives.” The American Academy of Religion last fall offered a panel at its annual convention titled “The Potterian Way of Death: J. K. Rowling’s Conception of Mortality.” And there is a raft of articles in religion journals with titles including “Looking for God in Harry Potter” and “Engaging with the spirituality of Harry Potter,” as well as the more complex, “Harry Potter and the baptism of the imagination,” “Harry Potter and the problem of evil,” and the crowd-pleasing “Harry Potter and theological libraries.”

“There is a whole burgeoning field of religion and popular culture, not just looking at what exact parallels there are, does it jibe with religious beliefs or is it counter to religious beliefs, but looking at these stories as a reflection of the spiritual or religious sensibilities of the culture,” says Russell W. Dalton, an assistant professor of Christian education at Brite Divinity School in Texas and the author of “Faith Journey through Fantasy Lands: A Christian Dialogue with Harry Potter, Star Wars, and The Lord of the Rings.”

“When stories become as popular as the Harry Potter stories, they no longer simply reflect the religious views of the author, but become artifacts of the culture, and they say something about the culture that has embraced them,” Dalton says. “And that is certainly the case with Harry Potter.”

(Illustration by Tim Bower.)

Amanda Hellman, 25, was an art history grad student and an intern at the Williams College Museum of Art when she got an interesting assignment: find art from the museum's permanent collection that says something about the world's religions that could hang in the museum and would be interesting to the academic community. The result was an exhibit called, "The Matter of Theology: A Conversation with the Collection,'' hanging indefinitely at the museum. I stumbled across the theology exhibit while visiting the museum to see a Prendergast show; the theology exhibit, of course, caught my attention as a religion writer.

Hellman has pulled together a variety of ritual objects, works of art and architectural elements and grouped them with a series of questions written on the walls meant to provoke thought -- sort of like those suggested topics for reading groups you find in the back of some popular novels. Among the questions are things like "What makes a place sacred?" and "How do objects serve as intermediaries between the human and the divine?"

I contacted Hellman in Tanzania, where she was spending the summer researching Swahili Coast architecture and museum development, to ask her a bit about the project. Here are some excerpts from our exchange:

Q: How did this exhibit come about?

A: I began 'The Matter of Theology' in summer 2007. I was the intern to WCMA Director Lisa Corrin during the 2006-2007 academic year and she asked me to stay at the museum to reinstall one of the galleries using the museum's permanent collection to address issues regarding different religions of the world. I spent the summer and the following two semester's meeting with the college chaplains, Rick Spalding and Bob Scherr; the custodian of the Chapin Library, Bob Volz; and professors in the Art History and Religion Departments to find out what the professors needed from the museum and what would bring them into the galleries, but also what the college as a whole needed to address to create a community in which a dialogue about religion and larger questions that aren't always addressed in the classroom can be created.

Q: Did you start with questions and start looking for objects, or start with interesting objects, or how did you pull it together?

A: I began with neither questions nor objects. I started by reading everything I could get my hands on. And, not just texts on theory, but I also wanted to think more deeply about how religion is considered in more popular culture (albeit a high pop culture). I read a lot of novels like John Steinbeck's 'The Pearl' and 'To a God Unknown.' In the end, this exhibition was inspired by three sources.The first is Kurt Vonnegut's 'Cat's Cradle.' The second source that heavily influenced this exhibition was 'Satyagraha,' an opera by Philip Glass. The final inspiration was a negative one. I read Sam Harris's 'The End of Faith,' and the response, 'Letter to a Christian Nation.' While I didn't necessarily disagree with everything he had written, I felt affronted by his tone. He was yelling at me throughout the entire diatribe and shut down any possibility for dialogue. I love the dialogue of art history, and have no interest in sitting alone in my office hoarding my ideas and I wanted to create a space in which people could meditate on each object and idea AND talk about how it makes them think differently about something or reinforces something they already believed. 

The questions came out slowly and there were many drafts of them. In some cases I found a pairing of objects in storage that I felt was really interesting, such as the Sango Dance Wand and the statue of Saint Barbara. In other cases, the art history department wanted to display an object that they use often to teach with, such as the alabaster John the Evangelist. In other cases, I started with a question I felt was really important, such as how we use text to communicate with the divine (which leads to how does the divine use text to communicate with us) and I searched through the Chapin rare book library to find texts that addressed this question. I also wanted the objects to both be able to stand alone and together. As a curator, my job is to give the topic of conversation and arrange the objects so that they can freely discuss and argue. The viewer walks into the conversation that is already taking place, she/he can participate or just observe.  In this exhibition, the questions really are another object.

Q: Did you discover anything that surprised you?

A: This project was an incredible learning experience for me. Although it was the 5th project I had done for WCMA, it was the first time I had to present to the exhibitions committee made up of museum staff, curators, the director and deputy director, the education department and the registrar. I really had to learn how to shape the exhibition to meet the needs of the museum, but also the college and a range of visitors from school children to students to the summer Berkshire tourist, while maintaining the thrust and integrity of my ideas. What surprised me was how sensitive people were about these questions and even the words theology and religion. As someone who studied theology in an academic setting, I was surprised that the word god was off limits; in my experience nothing is taboo because we have to say what we mean in order to effectively argue our point. I wanted this exhibition to be about the phenomenology of religion and art. Indeed, this was quite difficult to convey in a standard presentation.  In the end though it was the energy of the art that surprised me the most. I have always been aware of the power art has over me, but when these objects were juxtaposed with questions, I found that the gallery actually vibrated.

Q: What do you want people to take away from this display of objects and questions?

A: I hope people feel the vibrations and the energy that is emitted from these objects. These objects don't represent an entire religion nor can they explain it; rather, they are one artist's version of an answer to a larger question or idea. I want people to consider how they themselves have addressed these questions and objects in other ways and think about how we, as humans, have visually dealt with these bigger questions. It is an opportunity for people to stop and meditate on these objects and questions for just a few moments. The gallery is designed so that you have to walk around the room, you can't skip certain objects and go straight for the one you want to see (a tendency I have as a viewer). The tone of the gallery is different from all the others in the museum and hope the pace of their walk and the way they see the objects change when they walk across the threshold (or just before it if they notice the mezuzah outside the gallery).

(Photos courtesy of Williams College Museum of Art. Image at top shows, from left, an early 20th Century wooden Bundu Helmet mask from Sierra Leone, a 2d or 3d Century gray schist Head of Buddha from Pakistan, a 10th or 11th Century sandstone Head of a Devotee from India, and a parian marble Head of Zeus from Greece that is dated around 50 B.C. Image at middle shows a 20th Century wood and mixed media Standing Power Figure from Congo and a 15th Century Franco-Flemish alabaster St. John the Evangelist. Image at bottom shows a pair of 15th Century oil and gilt panels, depicting Sts. Fabian and Sebastian, from Spain.)

The Museum of Modern Art in New York currently has an installation that caught the attention of my inner anthropologist -- a Chinese conceptual artist, Song Dong of Beijing, has collected all the objects from the house where his late mother lived for 50 years, and arranged them in piles in a 3,000 square foot atrium in the museum. I had a chance to visit the exhibit on a trip to New York earlier this month, and was interested to see the kinds of materials that this woman, living by the mantra "Waste Not,'' had amassed over a lifetime of saving. But the experience also left me musing about the difference between saving and hoarding, since I suspect that in the U.S. anyone who kept as many shopping bags and scraps of cloth and bottles and packages and toothpaste tubes as Zhao Xiang Yuan did would be suspected of having some kind of problem.

But for the purposes of this blog, what struck me was that, among several thousand objects, I did not see anything that was recognizably religious. I started wondering how many American houses would be completely devoid of any religious objects -- I suspect it's a minority, given how most Americans describe their religious beliefs and practices to pollsters -- and how that might differ from houses in China, so I e-mailed a few China experts to ask their thoughts.

Nara Dillon, a lecturer on Chinese politics and economics at Harvard, told me:

"It's quite typical for a woman of that generation to have no religious objects in her house, since religion was persecuted during the Cultural Revolution. The PRC is still officially an atheist country, like all other communist regimes. In surveys, the vast majority of Chinese report having no religion. But there are many arguments about what these polls really mean because many people participate in native Chinese religious practices without thinking of them as a "belief" in the same way that they view Islam or Christianity. There has been a huge religious revival in the post-Mao period as the government has loosened its restrictions on some religions."

I also reached out to Rob Weller, chairman of the anthropology department at BU and another China expert, who offered a similar assessment:

"In urban areas, it is still quite typical that there would be nothing religious in a home, although ancestral altars are beginning to come back. On the other hand, a religious knick-knack or two would not be unusual, perhaps as a souvenir. In rural areas, it is common again to see ancestral altars and perhaps some images of gods in homes. But of course during the Cultural Revolution all public religion (including displays in a house) ended almost everywhere."

(Photo at top, by Jason Mandella via MOMA, shows an installation view of Projects 90: Song Dong at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Photo at bottom, by Scott Rudd via MOMA, shows a detail of the installation.)

Last night I went to see the premiere of a new play, "What is the Cause of Thunder,'' at the Williamstown Theatre Festival, and once again was struck by how much religious questions permeate American culture.

The play, by Noah Haidle, is about a longtime soap opera actress who confuses her on-screen and off-screen existences, with serious consequences for her mental health and her relationship with the only other real person in her life, her pregnant daughter. The soap actress, Ada, played by Wendie Malick, prays relentlessly, even obsessively, but isn't sure she's being heard, or whether there is even anyone to hear her. The play opens with a scene in which a nun proclaims that God has died, and then sets off on a comedic journey through Ada's soap scenes, her interactions with her daughter, and her heavenly dreams, through all of which Ada repeatedly questions why life on earth is miserable, and imagines that God might apologize for what God has and has not done.

As always, I'll leave the review to the critics (and I think the Globe will have a review soon), but if you're in the Berkshires over the next week and interested in these questions, you might want to take a look.

(Photo, by T. Charles Erickson/Williamstown Theatre Festival, shows Wendie Malick and Betty Gilpin in "What is the Cause of Thunder?")

Two 17th century beaded wampum belts made by Native Americans in New England for French Jesuit missionaries as expressions of Catholic faith have been shipped from a cathedral in France to a museum in Vermont where they are now on display.

Alexis Berthier, the spokesman for the Consulate General of France in Boston said the belts were given to the missionaries "as a sign of friendship" and that "they also signaled the conversion of some of these Native American people."

Here is some more detail from the Shelburne Museum, where the belts are on display until July 31:

"Wampum Belts from Chartres Cathedral Treasury showcases two rare masterpieces of Native American art on loan from the Bishop of Chartres and the Musee des Beaux-Arts de Chartres and on view in the United States for the first time. The belts will be on exhibit from July 2 through July 31.

'These belts are a symbol of the rich history of our region and demonstrate the historic connection between the French in North America and their relationship with the Abenaki and Huron peoples,' said Shelburne Museum Director Stephan Jost. 'The caliber of craftsmanship is truly extraordinary and reflects the sophistication of the people who created them.'

Wampum belts are traditional to native peoples from the Eastern woodlands and are an art form used to record important events such as engagements, marriage, funerals or treaties. The two belts on view at Shelburne were made in the 17th century. The Huron belt was made in 1678 and the Abenaki belt was made in 1691 or earlier. Noting the conversion to Catholicism by some of the native peoples, the belts were given to the French Jesuit order. The belts were taken to France and placed in the Cathedral Treasury of Chartres in acknowledgment of their importance."

Museum spokeswoman Leslie Wright tells me that the Latin on the belts "dates to the time of the druids, who predated the Jesuits at Chartres." She said the Huron belt, which is made of shell, glass, and natural fiber or animal hide, translates, "From the Hurons to the Virgin about to give birth,'' and the Abenaki belt, made of the same materials, translates, "To the Virgin Mother, Abenaki"

(Images, courtesy of the Shelburne Museum, are of the Huron Wampum Belt on loan from the Bishop of Chartres and the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Chartres.)

The Vatican's newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano, has given a warm review to "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince,'' praising the film for its “clear line of demarcation between good and evil, making clear that good is right, and that in some cases this involves hard work and sacrifices.”

It must be said that much of the past Christian criticism over the Potter series has come from evangelical Protestants, who have focused on its positive representation of sorcery and witchcraft. But the Catholic Church has produced its share of Potter critics, including not only a Wakefield priest who pulled Potter books from his parish school library, but also the current pope, Benedict XVI, who in 2003 (before he was pope) wrote a supportive letter to a critic of the Potter series, declaring, "It is good that you enlighten us on the Harry Potter matter, for these are subtle, barely perceptible seductions, and precisely because of that they have a profound effect and can corrupt the Christian faith in souls even before it (faith) is able to properly grow."

There has also been plenty of support for the Potter series from Christian writers -- Catholic and Protestant -- who have focused, as the current Vatican review does, on the series's depiction of the battle of good versus evil, and on Harry's clear sense of morality. The Vatican paper itself even ran a pair of dueling analyses of Potter last year, although the critique, saying that the Potter books promote "a grave lie,'' got much of the attention.

The current enthusiastic review in the Vatican newspaper of the latest Potter film may represent a change in attitude toward popular culture -- the paper also gave a surprisingly sympathetic review to "Angels and Demons" earlier this year. Or it might simply reflect an overall change in tone, or even significance, of the newspaper, which was long viewed as a semi-official voice of the church, but which has come under increasing criticism from the Catholic right for its warm coverage of President Obama. The Catholic World News says the review is "continuing an editorial trend that has bewildered many readers and roused many critics.''

The Times of London has a field day with the Vatican rave, running a story with the headline, "Not so immoral after all,'' and listing other "religious conversions" beginning with the church's change in position about whether the earth revolves around the sun.

(Photo, courtesy of Warner Brothers, shows ominous clouds over London in a scene from "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.")

Robert Ridgell, the assistant organist at Trinity Wall Street, blends "Beat It" and "ABC" into a tribute to the late Michael Jackson in the postlude for Trinity's June 28 service.

(H/T: The Lead)

Karl Malden, the film actor who died yesterday at 97, is being remembered in religionland for his Academy Award-nominated portrayal of a tough dockside priest, Father Pete Barry, in the 1954 film "On the Waterfront.'' Malden's role is one of the most famous depictions of a Catholic priest on film. The role was inspired by the real life of a Jesuit priest, the Rev. John Corridan, who died 25 years ago today. America magazine, the Jesuit weekly, today re-posts an explanatory piece that first appeared in Company, another Jesuit publication. An excerpt:

"After meeting the street-smart, earthy Corridan at Xavier, [director Elia] Kazan grilled [writer Budd] Schulberg: 'Are you sure he's a priest? Maybe he's working there for the waterfront rebels in disguise.' Schulberg viewed Corridan as 'the antidote to the stereotyped Barry Fitzgerald-Bing Crosby' portrayal of the priesthood 'so dear to Hollywood hearts.' Corridan agreed and exhorted Kazan and Schulberg to 'make a "Going My Way" with substance.'

The project was turned down by every major studio in Hollywood before finally being rescued by independent producer Sam Spiegel. Corridan served as adviser on the film and helped secure clearances from the Port Authority for the use of piers in Hoboken, where the film was shot in late autumn 1953. He also provided the filmmakers with his speeches and writings on waterfront conditions, including the famous 'Christ is on the waterfront' speech he had first presented at a Jersey City chapter of the Knights of Columbus in 1948. In 'On the Waterfront,' Father Pete Barry (Karl Malden) provides a stirring rendition of the speech over the body of a slain longshoreman. Kazan and Schulberg refused repeated demands by the producers to shorten the scene, which is the moral core of the film since it persuades longshoreman Terry Malloy (Marlon Brando) to follow his conscience and testify against waterfront criminals."

And, from the Internet Movie Database, a famous exchange from that scene between Brando's Terry Malloy and Malden's Father Barry:

Terry: If I spill, my life ain't worth a nickel.
Father Barry: And how much is your soul worth if you don't?

Over at dotCommonweal, Mollie Wilson O'Reilly recalls her first viewing of the film, just a few years back:

"I didn’t know going in that it was, at least in part, a story about a heroic priest...In fact, 'On the Waterfront' belongs on parish film-fest rosters alongside chestnuts like 'Boys Town' and 'The Bells of St. Mary’s' (and way ahead of silly epics like 'The Robe'). I would certainly advocate screening it in this 'year of the priest.' And as Philip T. Hartung wrote in Commonweal in 1954, 'Karl Malden’s portrayal of the courageous priest is as outstanding as the author’s characterization of the part.'"

(Photo, from the Globe archives, shows Karl Malden (third from left, in Roman collar) in a scene from the 1954 film "On the Waterfront.")

I was wondering how long I could hold out before blogging about Michael Jackson, and now I know the answer: six days.

In those days since the King of Pop died, I've now seen so many items about his faith that my head is starting to spin. He was a Jehovah's Witness. A Muslim. He accepted Jesus before he died. The Vatican loved him, but was that right? There's even a Jewish angle of sorts. Not to mention the unending discussion of what it means to call him an icon, or an idol. Some folks have suggested that his funeral will shed some light on his final faith practices, but I'm not holding out much hope for that.

Here is a brief Michael Jackson religion roundup. Make of it what you will:

• Jackson was raised a Jehovah's Witness, and there have been a variety of unconfirmed reports that at some point he was disfellowshipped by the Witnesses. Back in 2000, Jackson penned an essay for Beliefnet about his relationship to the Sabbath, and in it he discussed doorbelling to preach for the Witnesses:
  

  "Sundays were my day for 'Pioneering,' the term used for the missionary work that Jehovah's Witnesses do. We would spend the day in the suburbs of Southern California, going door to door or making the rounds of a shopping mall, distributing our Watchtower magazine. I continued my pioneering work for years and years after my career had been launched."

  
  
• Jackson's brother Jermaine is a Muslim, and there were some reports during Michael's life that he, too, converted to Islam. The Times of London rounds up the evidence in an item headlined, "Was Michael Jackson Muslim?"; there was also a roundup on Global Voices. Imam Zaid Shakir blogged about Jackson's conversion to Islam, and then retracted his blog item, concluding, "There have been many reports throughout the media concerning Michael becoming Muslim. Allah knows best as to their veracity.'' Perhaps my favorite development on the role of Islam in the Michael Jackson story, though, was this correction that ran Saturday in The New York Times, revising a comment that Jermaine Jackson made at the hospital where Michael Jackson died:
  

  "The article...misstated part of a comment that Mr. Jackson’s brother Jermaine offered for Mr. Jackson after speaking with reporters. He said, “May Allah be with you always,” not “May our love be with you always.”

• Not to be outdone, Christianity Today tackles the question, "Was Michael Jackson a Christian?" The evangelical magazine explores, and then essentially debunks, suggestions that Jackson accepted Jesus just before his death. "Initial rumors that the King of Pop had accepted Christ may have been false,'' the magazine concludes.

• The Jewish Telegraphic Agency, meanwhile, offers a story on Michael Jackson's "Jewish Ties,'' which turn out to be quite complex -- he said some offensive things, he was friends with a rabbi, he flirted with kabbalah (who didn't?) and it's possible that at least two of his children are technically Jewish because Jackson's ex-wife Debbie Rowe, who has been thought to be the biological mother of the children, is Jewish. Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, a onetime friend of Jackson, wrote a generous appraisal for Beliefnet; Rabbi Eric Yoffie, the head of the Reform movement, offers a far more critical assessment, asking,
  

  "Is it really necessary, however, now that he is dead, for those who speak in the name of the Jewish community to be joining in the adulation and offering excuses for his actions?"

  
  
• Some in the Catholic community are similarly conflicted. L’Osservatore Romano, the Vatican newspaper, published a generous appreciation of Jackson's legacy, prompting Tom Heneghan of Reuters to observe: "It’s not every day that the Vatican newspaper suggests that a man accused of pedophilia and said to have converted to Islam might be immortal. But that’s what L’Osservatore Romano did today." Over at American Papist, Thomas Peters is not amused, calling the Vatican paper's assessment "fawning'' and suggesting that it could never have appeared in a parish newsletter:
  

  "Jackson, it should be noted, from all outside accounts, lived a tortured existence and the circumstances of his death should prompt an outpouring of fervent prayers for his soul, not these gushing, Hollywood-esque bon mots about how his "myth" will survive "serious and shameful" accusations. All the artistic success in the world, we must realize, is a basket of straw if your personal life was a spiritual, human wreck. I really dig Michael Jackson's music, but as a Catholic, I don't have to buy into the myth that great art makes a great man. Michael Jackson's best chance to "never die" is the mercy of Christ, not his best-selling record."

  
  

I suppose it's not all that surprising that an entertainer who often seemed confused, or confusing, about race, gender and sexuality, would also leave us wondering about his religious beliefs. Here's Juan Cole, blogging about how religion fits into the Michael Jackson identity swirl:

"Jackson was a man of multiple identities, which helped account for his enormous worldwide popularity. It seems clear that he was deeply traumatized by his rough show business childhood, and that things happened to him to arrest his development. Just as a stem cell can grow into any organ, Michael's eternal boyishness made him a chameleon. Increasingly androgynous, he expressed both male and female. A boy and yet a father, he was both child and adult. In part because of his vitiligo, he interrogated his blackness and became, like some other powerful and wealthy African-Americans of his generation, racially ambiguous. Toward the end of his life he bridged his family's Jehovah's Witness brand of Christianity with a profound interest in Islam. He was all things to all people in part precisely because of his Peter Pan syndrome. A child can grow up to become anything, after all."

(Photo, by Hasan Jamali for The New York Times via AP, shows Michael Jackson wearing a black abaya while exiting a shopping mall in Bahrain with one of his children, also veiled, and a security guard, on Jan. 25, 2006.)

Her name is Rebecca Rubin. She is 9 years old and lived on the Lower East Side of Manhattan in 1914. And she's causing a bit of a sensation as the newest American Girl, because she's also Jewish.

The new doll is part of a series of historical dolls manufactured by American Girl, a subsidiary of Mattel, and the first with an explicitly religious affiliation. Her backstory (the dolls all have backstories) was written by a local children's author, Jacqueline Dembar Greene, who lives in Wayland, and the company's local store, at the Natick Collection, is holding an event to promote the doll at 11 a.m. tomorrow (Sunday, May 31). The books tackle some central elements of the early American Jewish experience -- immigration, labor conditions, the celebration of Christmas in public schools -- as well as iconic locales, from Ellis Island to Coney Island, and the Lower East Side.

I asked American Girl spokeswoman Susan Jevens about the decision to have a religious doll, and this is what she said:

"We don't really classify our historical characters via a particular religion...we classify them by the pivotal period in history they represent (i.e. Addy is the Civil War character, Kit is the Great Depression character, Felicity is the American Revolution character and so on). Rebecca is our American Immigration character. In telling these stories, we strive to be as culturally authentic and historically accurate as possible and, if religion played an integral role in the character's life (like Rebecca), then we make sure to include that aspect in the books. However, our focus is always on the bigger theme, which, in Rebecca's case, is the immigrant experience and the significant impact Jewish immigrants made to mainstream American culture. Another example of this would be our character, Josefina, our girl of Colonial New Mexico. She's not really intended to represent the Catholic religion, but Catholicism was a big part of Josefina's daily life and is depicted throughout her stories."

The New York Times took a look at Rebecca last weekend, and JTA has a roundup of reaction.

(Image courtesy of American Girl.)

News you can use: there is a brief clip of Bruce Springsteen dancing the hora while his band plays "Hava Nagila" now making the rounds of the blogosphere.

The video (above, with "Hava Nagila" starting at the two minute mark) shows Springsteen (who was raised Catholic) ripping through a typically burning take on "Little Latin Lupe Lu" and then holding up a large sign with "HAVANAGILA" scrawled on it. The crowd roars as pianist Roy Bittan plays a jazzy open into the familiar lilting riff of the Hebrew folk song and the Boss, holding the sign aloft, dances a tentative hora while his wife, backup vocalist Patti Scialfa, claps in time. The digression ends after about a minute, as Springsteen holds up a new sign and the E Street Band kicks into its classic, "Blinded By the Light."

Jeffrey Goldberg, of the Atlantic, was at the May 18 concert at the Verizon Center, and broke the news the next morning. But that's when the story gets really incredible -- Goldberg then discovers that White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel facilitated the moment. Goldblog has the full story; here's an excerpt:

"Goldblog reader Clifford Mendelson, who made the now-famous 'Hava Nagila' sign, was seated two rows behind Emanuel (and near David Brooks and Andrea Mitchell and other such luminaries in an apparently all-Jewish section of the Verizon Center), courtesy of Bruce himself, who met Mendelson at the Arizona Biltmore hotel a few weeks back (I'm omitting some of the shaggy-dog qualities of Mendelson's story in order to get to the heart of the matter). In any case, Mendelson, a Springsteen fanatic, knew that Bruce would probably play Stump the Band, and, like many other concert-goers, he decided to bring a sign with him. 'Hava Nagila' was chosen in deference to his daughter, a 14-year-old student at the Charles E. Smith Jewish Day School in Rockville, Md.

...He went on with his tale: 'I didn't have the sign up when Bruce came to our side of the stage, but I held it up and Patti (Bruce's wife) sees it, and Roy Bittan sees it - he's Jewish - and he gives me a fist pump. But I've got to get it up to the stage. Bruce then looked our way and saw it and he points at me. Rahm Emanuel turns around and sees it and he loves it and grabs the sign. He hands it to a Secret Service agent who handed it up to Bruce and then they played it.'"

Needless to say, the world of Jewish bloggery is talking. Failed Messiah calls the event "a brief but memorable moment in Rock history." And the National Jewish Democratic Council calls Goldberg's tale "the scoop of the century,'' and NJDC blogger Joshua Rolnick observes, "I’ve been to a dozen or more Springsteen shows, and can safely attest to the fact that normally, people show up with “Rosalita” or “Murder Incorporated” or “Jungleland” signs. This might have been a first."

She's back! A month ago, when I posted the video of Susan Boyle singing "I Dreamed a Dream,'' you had a rollicking discussion on this blog about what the massive response to her performance (now 220 million video views) and her persona said about humanity, faith, and God. Well, tonight Susan Boyle advanced to the next stage on "Britain's Got Talent." Here is the video of Susan Boyle singing "Memory,'' from "Cats":

What do you think this time?

"Angels & Demons" was not a great film (my brother, in California, declared, "it was terrible, but at least it was long and expensive'') but I have to say that the one saving grace for me was the production design -- the lovingly vivid portrayal of Rome, and in particular the Vatican's sumptuous interiors and elaborate vestments. I've been covering religion long enough that I've been to Vatican City multiple times, and I've visited most of the buildings depicted in the film. Some of the events in the movie -- particularly the elaborate funeral for a pope and the crowds gathered in St. Peter's Square to watch for the election of a new one -- I witnessed in real life back in 2005, and the re-creations struck me as spot on. Other moments, such as the destruction of the dead pope's ring and the voting by cardinals gathered in conclave in the Sistine Chapel, I've had to visualize based on written descriptions, and it was fascinating to see the filmmakers' imaginings of those scenes.

The filmmakers were barred by the Vatican from shooting on church property. But they weren't totally banned from Rome -- in particular, they actually filmed at Castel St. Angelo -- once a papal fortress and now a museum, as well as in the famous Piazza del Popolo and Piazza Navona. Watching Tom Hanks et al. scurry across the Ponte Sant'Angelo, the pedestrian bridge that leads from the city center to the fortress, reminded me that that bridge, which is lined with statues of angels, is a favorite site of Cardinal Sean P. O'Malley, who led reporters from Boston on a walking tour of the bridge in 2006, when many of us traveled to Rome to cover O'Malley's elevation to cardinal. (O'Malley has another connection to the film -- his titular church, Santa Maria della Vittoria, is the site of a key scene; I wrote a story about Cardinal O'Malley's take on Angels & Demons and his titular church.)

Many of the other locations depicted in the film were re-created in Los Angeles. Large replicas of St. Peter’s Square and Piazza Navona were constructed in the parking lot of the Hollywood Park racetrack; the studio also re-created the Sistine Chapel, the Pantheon, Castel Sant’Angelo, as well as the artworks of Michelangelo and Bernini featured in the film. Some of the places depicted -- such as the Vatican archives -- I've never seen, and I have no idea how closely the film reflects reality, but I have to say that the depiction of the places I have been, like the apostolic palace, looked pretty good, even if they weren't exact facsimiles.

Several critics have also admired this feature of the film. A.O. Scott, reviewing "Angels & Demons" for the New York Times, writes:

"As an exercise in extreme mass-market tourism 'Angels & Demons' gives pretty good value. Unable to shoot in the Vatican itself, Mr. (Ron) Howard (the director) and his team have deftly blended actual Roman locations with Hollywood stage sets and C.G.I. confections to make a dreamy, ephemeral Eternal City.

The costume and production design — all those red cardinals’ robes swirling dervishlike in the incense-tinted light, those sensuous Bernini sculptures and soundless library stacks — nearly steal the movie from the bland, dogged heroes."

In Variety, Todd McCarthy writes:

"If, as reported, the production shot in Rome for only two weeks, it sure doesn't show; pic is saturated with local atmosphere, evidently achieved through expert location lensing combined with wizardly sleight-of-hand in the visual effects and production design, especially in the climactic section set in St. Peter's Square. Dark exterior scenes accurately reflect the low lighting levels of much of nocturnal Rome."

Did you see the film? What did you think?

(UPDATE: The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has now posted a surprisingly nuanced review of "Angels & Demons,'' declaring the film to be "highly improbable but mindlessly entertaining.'' The bishops' review also notes the visuals, saying, "Ironically - given Howard's location filming restrictions - Vatican City looks quite splendid, with majestic aerial shots while the Hollywood recreations of St. Peter's Square, the Sistine Chapel and other locales are, as noted by L’Osservatore Romano, 'magnificent.'")

(Photo by Zade Rosenthal/Columbia Pictures.)

The weekend before last, I was feeling discouraged about the news business, so I wound up constructing a journalism double feature, of "State of Play" and "The Soloist,'' to bask in the Hollywoodization of my profession for a bit. Both films provided romantic depictions of reporters -- sure, they had failed personal lives and were difficult employees and, in the case of "State of Play,'' had serious ethical problems -- but they were passionate about telling stories that mattered, and the loving footage of presses rolling and newspapers being tossed onto lawns made me nostalgic for an era that actually hasn't ended, but is obviously in serious trouble.

But this is the religion blog, so I'm here to discuss a religion angle in "The Soloist.'' Perhaps it's not shocking to report that Hollywood does not seem to have the same affection for evangelical Protestants as it has for endangered journalists, at least not as depicted in "The Soloist,'' which left me wondering if there is any kind of anti-defamation league for evangelicals in America. I suppose that my work as a religion reporter means I spend so much time with people of all faiths that I find it hard to connect with the knee-jerk hostility some provoke, but I was actually sort of amazed by the gratuitously negative depiction of a Bible-thumping Los Angeles Philharmonic cellist (!) in the film, especially once I learned that, even though the film depicts actual events, the evangelical musician is a fictitious character cooked up in the imagination of the filmmakers. The cellist, named Graham Claydon (played by Tom Hollander) is brought in by the film's hero, LA Times columnist Steve Lopez (Robert Downey Jr.), to help a homeless and mentally ill Juilliard dropout, Nathaniel Ayers (Jamie Foxx), resume playing the cello. The film's press materials say that Claydon's character "was inspired by several real-life musicians,'' but Los Angeles Philharmonic spokeswoman Sophie Jefferies told me, "As far as I understand it the Tom Hollander character is entirely fictional," and Lopez told me, "The character in the movie is fictional. I'm not sure whether it was a creation of the director or the screenwriter."

Hollander talks about his character's faith in the studio's press materials, saying, "He’s one of the people who tries to make Nathaniel better without any success. He’s also a very committed Christian, so he hopes that, through him, God can save Nathaniel and bring transformation into his life." The issue, from my point of view, is that Claydon's Christianity is so preachy and tone-deaf it's almost comical; he is shown in settings and with expressions that seem so silly as to be satire.

I was wondering if I was the only one who was struck by this, so I poked around a bit, and it appears that others have noticed too:

Robert W. Butler, writing in the Kansas City Star, took on the issue directly, devoting a column to the subject and calling Hollander's character an "unfair cliche." An excerpt:

"Susannah Grant’s screenplay presents Claydon as something of a religious fanatic. This fact dawns on us when we see Claydon outside what we assume to be his home, and it has on one wall a huge mural of Jesus done in an airbrushed style usually reserved for motorcycle gas tanks.

Then, backstage before the recital, Claydon insists on praying aloud with Ayers, and that act completely freaks out the mentally ill man. So much so that Ayers cannot face the audience and flees the building.

Here’s what gnaws at me. If Graham Claydon were a real person and the incident occurred as depicted, I’d be OK with it. But Claydon is a fictional character. There’s no such guy at the L.A. Philharmonic.

Moreover, despite his good intentions, Claydon comes off as a heavy. He’s not a true villain, but he is so wrapped up in his own beliefs and convictions that he has no qualms about forcing them on another person, even someone whose fragile mental state might make the effort inappropriate.

I’m guessing that Grant and director Joe Wright needed to invent a plausible reason for Ayers to wig out, thus providing the film with a big dramatic moment.

But why did that reason have to be a pushy Christian? And would a simple shared prayer really be enough to push someone like Ayers over the edge?

In the same way that Hollywood simplifies things for the ignorant among us by providing villains that fall into easily digested categories — Mexican drug lords, Arab terrorists — Tinseltown invariably misunderstands and misrepresents religion.

Yeah, there are plenty of boorish, pushy, objectionable religious fanatics out there.

But “The Soloist” is disingenuous when it suggests that the principal cellist of a major symphony orchestra would be one of them.

Orchestras are filled with highly educated, opinionated people who aren’t about to tolerate religious harangues from their fellow players. Graham Claydon, no matter how intense his faith, would never have achieved this sort of success were he bent on shoving his beliefs down other people’s throats.

So not only does the character feel phony, his appearance is an unfortunate aberration in a film that otherwise gets most things right and works hard to remain true and honest to its characters and situation."

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops' film review is somewhat more generous, declaring, "The script's treatment of religion is somewhat ambivalent. A voice-over of Ayers earnestly reciting the Our Father as he and crowds of fellow street-dwellers bed down on the sidewalk is moving. But the portrayal of the pious musician Lopez contacts to prepare Ayers for a performance at the Walt Disney Concert Hall, home of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, suggests that his poor judgments arise from his evangelical-style Christian faith."

Writing in the LA Times, critic Kenneth Turan says the characterization is of a piece with other problems in the film: "Director Wright seems to relish overdoing whatever he can, not surprising for those who remember how he treated the Bennet family in his "Pride & Prejudice." So a cellist who tries to help Ayers can't be just a good person, he has to be clumsily religious."

This is a relatively minor element of the film -- the Globe's Ty Burr gave "The Soloist" three stars -- but striking to me in an era when all kinds of faith groups are increasingly attentive to how they are portrayed in popular culture. Interestingly, I see no notes of concern in the reviews over at the evangelical Christianity Today or at Crosswalk.com, which headlines a review of the film "a Pitch Perfect Portrayal of Grace." So maybe it's a non-issue, or one that is overshadowed by the fundamental decency, and admirably honest complexity, of the film's primary relationship, between Lopez and Ayers. If you saw the film, let me know what you thought.

(Photo above, courtesy of DreamWorks Pictures, shows Jamie Foxx and Tom Hollander in "The Soloist.")

On Thursday night I had the honor of moderating the Boston Jewish Film Festival's annual "Works in Progress" event -- an evening that gives supporters of the festival a chance to see portions of an unfinished film and talk with the filmmakers about the creative process. The film this year, "Leap of Faith,'' is a documentary centering on an unusual subject -- Christians who convert to Orthodox Judaism. The filmmakers, Stephen Friedman and Tony Benjamin, are both Orthodox Jews, and career admen, who are married to converts, and they spent the last four years interviewing several dozen would-be-converts before deciding to focus their film on the journeys of four individuals who are considering Orthodox Judaism.

Although for many of us, the most familiar conversion stories are associated with marriage, Friedman and Benjamin chose to focus on people whose interest in Judaism was driven by some kind of spiritual quest that was largely independent of a romantic relationship. Some of the folks they talked with were moving from evangelical Protestantism to Orthodox Judaism -- an unusual journey, to be sure. During the Q&A, the filmmakers largely rejected the psychological explanations for conversion -- the suggestion that people who choose orthodox faiths are seeking to fill some kind of need for structure or rules in their life -- and instead said they came away believing that the would-be converts were animated by a sincere search for some kind of truth. As a religion reporter, I found the subject fascinating -- although faith-changing is the story of American religion these days, I'm always intrigued by people who choose to take on high-demand faiths, like evangelicalism or Islam or Mormonism, and conversion to Orthodox Judaism by non-Jews is not a phenomenon I've encountered at all previously.

The 90-minute film is supposed to be completed soon, and then will likely make the round of festivals as the filmmakers seek to find a way to broadcast it more widely. Stay tuned.

(Photos courtesy of Humble Films.)

Cardinal Sean P. O'Malley of Boston this weekend blogs about the upcoming May 15 release of "Angels & Demons," the movie version of the bestselling Dan Brown novel, which features a particularly gruesome killing (above) of a cardinal in a Roman church, Santa Maria della Vittoria, which is now O'Malley's titular church in Rome. (All cardinals are assigned a church in Rome which they are responsible for protecting, financially and spiritually.) I had talked to O'Malley about the connection between his church and the novel back in 2006; here's what he has to say this weekend in his blog:

"I understand that a movie based on Brown’s book Angels and Demons is about to premier. Portions of the plot take place in my titular church in Rome.

I read the book a few years ago and I didn’t find it a great piece of literature. The ending is a kind of a “deus ex machina” and, although it does not present a favorable picture of the Church, in my recollection is not as damaging as The Da Vinci Code, which calls into question the basic tenets of Christianity — Jesus’ divinity and the divine origins of the Church.

I understand that “The Da Vinci Code” was not a successful movie and this one will probably not be very successful either, but Dan Brown’s books were very profitable.

But “The Da Vinci Code” was a particularly virulent attack on the Church filled with many untruths that underscores the need for our Catholics to be more informed about their faith and the history of the Church.

The story line of “Angels and Demons,” I’m sure, will underscore many of the interesting architectural and artistic aspects of the city of Rome, including my own Church, Santa Maria della Vittoria, which has one of the finest statues in Rome: the Bernini statue of “The Ecstasy of Saint Teresa” (at left).

I always joked that I wanted to bring that statue back to Boston, but the Carmelite friars who run my church told me that Napoleon tried to take it to Paris and not even he was able to. They also tell me that they get a lot of tourists coming to the church because it is on the Angels and Demons tour of Rome. But, apparently, the director of the film was refused admission into the Church (although I’m sure they will still do something to replicate it in the film)."

(Photo above, by Zade Rosenthal/Sony Pictures, shows the scene that in the book takes place in O'Malley's titular church, Santa Maria della Vittoria; it's not clear where this scene was staged because the filmmakers were barred from shooting inside the actual church. Photo at left, of the famous Bernini statue in the actual church, was taken by David Ryan of the Globe staff; you can see other photos David Ryan shot of the real-life church here.)

Boston College's Church in the 21st Century Center has pulled together a series of thematic essays reflecting on Catholicism in Boston over the two centuries since the Archdiocese of Boston was established. The essays are collected in a new book, "Two Centuries of Faith: The Influence of Catholicism on Boston, 1808-2008,'' edited by university historian Thomas H. O'Connor. The book is not a comprehensive history of the archdiocese, but rather takes a look at several aspects of the development of the archdiocese, from the French influences on its beginnings, to the role of women and minorities in its ranks, to the role of Catholicism in Boston politics, social services, education and literature.

BC held an event Tuesday to present a copy of the book to Cardinal Sean P. O'Malley, the archbishop of Boston; the authors and a variety of faculty and students gathered in the Irish Room at BC's Gasson Hall, under a giant stained glass window of St. Patrick, the patron saint of the archdiocese.

O'Connor, offering the gathering an overview of the book, provocatively suggested that in some ways, the archdiocese of today resembles the archdiocese of 200 years ago, with fewer Catholics and fewer priests than it enjoyed during the triumphalist decades of the early 20th Century.

In the book, one of the contributors, the Rev. William T. Schmidt, pastor of St. Patrick Church in Stoneham, offers a sober look at the history of parish life in the archdiocese, observing that the sexual abuse scandal caused a "crisis of confidence and trust in the leadership of the Catholic Church" and saying "the long-term impact of this crisis is still unknown.''

"The parishes of the Archdiocese of Boston are facing extraordinary struggles, disappointments, and challenges at the beginning of Boston's third centenary. Sunday Mass attendance on the part of Boston Catholics has dropped precipitously from more than 70 percent of baptized Catholics during the halcyon days of the 1940s and 1950s to less than 25 percent today. This depleted participation at Sunday Mass is certainly reflective of continuing anger over the clergy sex abuse scandal. It is also refelctive of some deep distress with the closure of parishes. It would be inaccurate, however, to attribute the depleted numbers at Sunday Mass to these issues alone. There has indeed been a steady erosion of Sunday Mass attendance since the 1970s that is reflective of sweeping changes within the church and society.''

The last word in the book goes to BC history professor James M. O'Toole, who looks back at the bishops of Boston, and then looks ahead:

"For the foreseeable future, the institution of the church will continue to shrink, and the number of priests and sisters will become steadily smaller. Even as new forms of lay ministry expand, the reconfiguration of the institutions and agencies of the church will have to be accomplished cooperatively. For their part, lay people are eager to participate in this process of seeking new ways of 'being the church.' As time puts distance between ourselves and the events of the scandal, it seems increasingly significant that large numbers of Catholics did not simply abandon the church. That they stayed with it, even amid the heartbreaking scandal, evinces a desire to remain faithful members of the church. That commonality of faith has sustained them for the last two hundred years and will be essential for the next century -- centuries -- of Catholics of Boston.''

Cardinal O'Malley spoke briefly as he accepted a copy of the book. Here are some video excerpts of his remarks:

(Photo above, by Wendy Maeda of the Globe staff, shows Cardinal Sean P. O'Malley of Boston greeting history professor Thomas H. O'Connor of Boston College on 4/21/09.)

Photographer Joe Johnson has shot a series of strikingly stark and textured images of empty megachurches, now on display at Gallery Kayafas in Boston. Cate McQuaid, reviewing the exhibit in yesterday's Globe, sees in the images a critique of the congregations, writing:

"Johnson visited Southern and Midwestern places of worship that welcome at least 2,000 parishioners. He went when they were mostly empty. His stunning and provocative images of the mammoth churches lay bare the cogs and gears that create their spectacle-driven services. With all the sets, smoke machines, light effects, and huge plasma screens, the churchgoing experience has ironically turned, in places like this, into something resembling a heavy-metal concert or a Las Vegas stage show, complete with stadium seating.

Look at "Stage Set. Munster, IN," used for a reenactment of the Stations of the Cross. It's a stone prison, with iron bars in the window and door, luridly splashed with blood-red paint. Orange cables, a worker's lamp, and a smoke machine surround it.

In "Screens. Louisville, KY," a giant, menacing, inverted black dome housing several plasma screens hangs godlike over the tiny seats below; Johnson shot the image from high in the upper tiers.

He captured "Bolt. Fort Wayne, IN" from below; a video camera stands in for a heroic or saintly figure gazing upward as lightning flies across the ceiling.

Churchly theatricality goes back at least as far as the creation of gothic cathedrals; Johnson captures the latest high-tech iteration. But he presents it nakedly, with electrical cords and control panels, in a way that calls out the ministers and their stage managers for manufacturing spectacles designed to trigger ecstatic responses in their congregants, rather than making quiet spaces for prayerful contemplation."

UPDATE: Arlette Kayafas, the director of the Kayafas Gallery, e-mails:

"I feel that it is my responsibility, as the owner of a gallery, to my artists, clients and community to select and exhibit work of the highest quality that engages the viewer, creates a reaction so that when one leaves the gallery he/she continues to think of the experience whether in agreement or not. Art, like religion, is a personal choice -- a mirror of whom each of us is. Contemporary art by definition reflects the pulse of society. I'm so pleased that by reading your blog and viewing several of Joe's images on line, people are sharing their opinions. Art, I believe, communicates without words. The viewer gives the definition, the words to the experience. The varying definitions bring about the dialog and with the dialog a better understanding of our differences and then change."

Kayafas also sent along a statement by the artist, Joe Johnson, explaining his project:

"Mega Churches have inspired thousands of Christian worshippers to gather within vast post-modern architectural spaces across the nation. Megalithic in size, these corporate structures, converted Hilton hotels, and restored theaters are transformed into halls of prayer each Sunday through performative rituals and multimedia spectacles.

Most definitions require that a minimum of 2000 worshippers must attend the weekend service for the building to attain the "Mega Church" status. Specifically I am photographing the empty interior architecture and sanctuary spaces where worship is performed. I use the descriptive power of photography to construct a personal vocabulary with which I can communicate what interests me about a subject. I tend to gravitate to subjects that have some inherent tension and mystery. With the Mega Church project, an interesting point of tension lies in a secular treatment of contemporary religious practice within Mega Churches.

This body of work attempts to reveal the mechanics of creating faith by capturing the wires, computers, light bulbs, and cords that are used to construct mysteries on stage for the faithful. The rawness of the abandoned mega-space and the eerie familiarity of its commercial fixtures question the intention and business of faith in the 21st century."

(All photos by Joe Johnson, courtesy of Gallery Kayafas.)

"Angels & Demons," the Dan Brown thriller, does not paint a particularly flattering picture of the Vatican -- major elements of the Catholic Church's hierarchy are depicted as secretive, violent, conspiratorial, and, of course, anti-science. But the novel is also obviously a work of fiction, by the same writer who brought us "The DaVinci Code.'' So is it anti-Catholic?

As the May 15 release date of the film approaches, William Donohue, the president of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, has been vociferously critical of the story, even publishing a booklet attempting to debunk the book and film. But now comes Ron Howard, the director of the film, offering a forceful defense, at the Huffington Post.

"Let me be clear: neither I nor Angels & Demons are anti-Catholic. And let me be a little controversial: I believe Catholics, including most in the hierarchy of the Church, will enjoy the movie for what it is: an exciting mystery, set in the awe-inspiring beauty of Rome. After all, in Angels & Demons, Professor Robert Langdon teams up with the Catholic Church to thwart a vicious attack against the Vatican. What, exactly, is anti-Catholic about that?

...But since Mr. Donohue has, in effect, smeared me by claiming I am smearing his Church, I want him to know this: I have respect for Catholics and their Church, and know they accomplish many good works throughout the world. And I believe Angels & Demons treats the Church with respect -- even a degree of reverence -- for its traditions and beliefs."

Donohue, not surprisingly, is firing back (the film's publicists must be ecstatic):

"Howard must be delusional if he thinks Vatican officials are going to like his propaganda—they denied him the right to film on their grounds. Moreover, we know from a Canadian priest who hung out with Howard’s crew last summer in Rome (dressed in civilian clothes) just how much they hate Catholicism. It’s time to stop the lies and come clean."

One interesting local angle: one of the most gruesome scenes in the book (depicted below in a still from the film) is set in Santa Maria della Vittoria, the titular church of Cardinal Sean P. O'Malley of Boston. I talked with the cardinal back in 2006 about the book (which he had read) and the church. The cardinal called the book "outrageous" (the full blog post is here) but said this about the connection to his titular church, which has benefited from the controversy because "Angels & Demons" tours of Rome bring generous tourists to visit:

"I think it's silly,'' he said. "But if it brings people to see the church, hopefully, being in a holy place, and in a place that is beautiful, hopefully it will be a religious experience for them. For us as Catholics, we believe that the beauty of the church, and the church music, is a way of lifting our minds to God's beauty.''

What do you think? Is Angels & Demons anti-Catholic? Or just a thriller?

(Photos by Zade Rosenthal/Sony Pictures.)

Finally, a reason to start blogging again.

Like much of the planet, I've watched the video of Susan Boyle's "Britain's Got Talent" performance several times, in my case while wallowing in despair over the plight of the news business. I knew she was a churchgoing Catholic -- her primary performance experience appears to be from the pews of the parish in her Scottish village -- but that seemed a bit of a thin peg for me. Over the last few days, however, the religion blogosphere has begun to reflect about why this instant cyberfable, of a frumpy church lady who belts out a surprisingly sound rendition of a schmaltzy but heart-tugging musical theater classic ("I Dreamed a Dream" from Les Misérables), has captured the imagination of so many. More than 20 million have viewed a video of her performance on YouTube, and the appetite for more is unabated -- Google reports that "Susan Boyle" is the fastest-rising search term in the Boston area and is the second fastest-rising search term in the world. I admit, I’m a bit of an easy cry, but even after watching over and over again, something about the combination of the performance and performer, the reaction of the audience and the judges, the song itself, and, it must be said, the expert but manipulative editing of the video, brings tears to my eyes.

The Rev. James Martin, a Jesuit priest who is the associate editor of America magazine, finds an affirmation of a basic element of his faith in the response to Boyle's performance, writing under the headline "Susan Boyle and the Love of God":

"The way we see Susan Boyle is very nearly the way God sees us: worthwhile, special, talented, unique, beautiful. The world generally looks askance at people like Susan Boyle, if it sees them at all. Without classic good looks, without work, without a spouse, living in a small town, people like Susan Boyle may not seem particularly 'important.' But God sees the real person, and understands the value of each individual's gifts: rich or poor, young or old, single or married, matron or movie star, lucky or unlucky in life. God knows us. And loves us. 'Everybody is somebody' said Archbishop Timothy M. Dolan at his installation Mass in New York City yesterday. That's another reason why the judges smile and the audience explodes in applause. Because they recognized a basic truth planted deep within them by God: Susan Boyle is somebody. Everybody is somebody."

Over at Christianity Today's new women's blog, cleverly titled Her.meneutics, Sarah Pulliam poses the question, "Why Do We Love Susan Boyle?" and reviews some commentary from around the blogosphere.

And the Anchoress, Elizabeth Scalia, blogs:

"Susan Boyle has reminded us of something we’ve forgotten for too long. Hypnotised by Madison Avenue and Hollywood and the culture of youth, we’ve forgotten that the things they offer to us as 'the norm' are ideals, and mostly fake ones. In embracing those fake ideals (how much money was spent last year in cosmetic surgeries and teeth-whitening?) we’ve forgotten that beyond all of those superficialities, we each have within us something of much greater value than perky breasts and unlined skin: the divine spark, the God-kiss, that lives in each and every one of us - no exceptions."

For any of you who haven't seen it yet, or just want to watch again, here's the video:

What are your thoughts about what the response to Boyle's performance says about our culture?

(Photo by Andrew Milligan/AP)

Cartoonists often live on the edge, using sharp visual caricature to express an opinion about a controversy, and not infrequently one group or another complains that a cartoonist has crossed a line. This week, several Jewish organizations are denouncing the image above, by Pulitzer Prize winning cartoonist Pat Oliphant, as anti-Semitic.

Mark Pelavin, associate director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, sent along the following statement:

"Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Pat Oliphant's clearly anti-Semitic cartoon uses Nazi-like imagery to depict the state of Israel as a headless, dark militaristic force set upon a path of destruction. His portrayal of a fanged Star of David chasing down a Gazan woman is both offensive and outlandish, employing a symbol of faith and peace to unfairly depict Israel as both thoughtless and heartless. This deplorable characterization hearkens back to the vicious anti-Semitic propaganda of World Wars I and II. Published during a tenuous cease-fire in Gaza, this cartoon will only add fuel to the proverbial political fire and stroke the flames of anti-Semitism.

Mr. Oliphant clearly has the right to his views, however noxious. But newspapers, and others, are under no obligation to become publishers of such trash. We call upon newspapers worldwide to remove Oliphant’s offensive cartoon from their websites, making a clear statement that anti-Semitism, even in cartoon form, is intolerable."

And the Anti-Defamation League's national director, Abraham H. Foxman, also denounced the cartoon, saying:

"Pat Oliphant's outlandish and offensive use of the Star of David in combination with Nazi-like imagery is hideously anti-Semitic. It employs Nazi imagery by portraying Israel as a jack-booted, goose-stepping headless apparition. The implication is of an Israeli policy without a head or a heart.

Israel's defensive military operation to protect the lives of its men, women and children who are being continuously bombarded by Hamas rocket attacks has been turned on its head to show the victims as heartless, headless aggressors."

I called the Globe's cartoonist, Dan Wasserman, to ask him what he thought. Here's what he said:

"My take is that this is not an anti-Semitic cartoon. It's a tough, blistering attack on Israel's conduct in the war in Gaza. You can argue about whether what they did was justified, but their equipment, their planes, their tanks, are all covered with the Star of David, so the use of the Star of David doesn't seem to me to warrant the accusation of anti-Semitism. And the week we got revelations in the New York Times about the cavalier attitude of IDF soldiers toward Gazans, this seems to me perfectly legitimate.

Cartoons are supposed to offend people. There is a distinction between offending people gratuitously or mindlessly, and offending them because a cartoon challenges the way people think, and I think this cartoon is in the latter category. It's provocative. The goose-stepping soldier you can't not associate with the Nazis. But is that over the line? It's hyperbolic, but cartoons traffic in hyperbole. Oliphant has a history of pushing the envelope, and some of his cartoons are beyond acceptable comment, but I don't think this is one of those cartoons.''

Ezra Klein, at the American Prospect, agrees, writing:

"Implying that Israeli policy lacks head and heart is not anti-Semitic. It's not an assertion of an intrinsically Jewish trait. Jack boots and goose steps are not traditional anti-Semitic tropes. Foxman appears to be confusing anti-Semitism with criticism -- even extreme and offensive criticism -- of the Israeli government. And it's really not a good thing to be forcing critics of Israel to decide whether they are also anti-Semites. In some cases, you'll intimidate the critic into silence. And in others, you'll normalize anti-Semitism."

But over at GetReligion.org, Mollie Ziegler notes that Oliphant recently was criticized for a cartoon about Pentecostals, and suggests that maybe he should give religion a rest:

"I’m wondering if syndicated cartoonist Pat Oliphant shouldn’t resist the urge to use his acid brush to depict religious angles. Last time we discussed his work, he was demonstrating his ignorance and hatred of Pentecostalism on the pixelated pages of the Washington Post.

That sparked quite the reader response and a couple of reflective columns by ombudsman Deborah Howell.

He’s back in the news for a cartoon about Jews that I found sickening."

Feel free to express your thoughts, but try to be civil in doing so, and remember, we're discussing the cartoon, not every thought you've ever had about what's wrong with Israel or the Palestinians.

New Yorker cartoon editor Robert Mankoff tonight (3/24) is kicking off a New Center For Arts and Culture series with a talk on cartoons about Judaism. He was featured in Saturday's Globe talking generally about cartooning, but for the religion blog, I wanted to hear more about his thoughts about making fun of Jews, so I gave him a call:

Q: What distinguishes cartoons about Jews?
A: There aren’t very many cartoons about Jews. If you look back at the history of the New Yorker, you will see, especially in the '20s and '30s, when New York was changing, there were a number of, shall we say, interesting cartoons showing that change. I don't think the cartoons were anti-Semitic, but they would perhaps be looked at now in that way -- they recognized the changing nature of the city and the increasing place, especially in commerce, that Jews had in the city.

Q: What are cartoons about Jews like now?
A: In general cartoons poke fun at generic religion. So I have one with a guy leaving church, who says to the pastor, "I know he works in mysterious ways, but if I worked that mysteriously, I'd get fired.''

Q: Is there a special sensitivity to cartoons about Jews?
A: I think there’s a special sensitivity, in general, to cartoons about specific religions. New Yorker cartoons, in general, are not mean cartoons. Much of the humor in society is the humor of ridicule. But our cartoons are not the cartoons of self-satisfaction, but of self-dissatisfaction, and that makes them almost unique now in American culture, which is so polarized, and in which humor is basically a form of mockery in which the other is the fool, or the person whose balloon has to be deflated. We do that too, but most of the cartoonists do cartoons that are in some sense autobiographical. When you look at Jewish humor, for the most part, the jokes are quite layered -- they build up and eventually show some sort of logical inconsistency -- and a lot are philosophical. (In the broader culture) a majority of jokes have an aggressive component, a scatological component, or a sexual component, but Jewish jokes work through understanding the absurdities of the logic.

Q: Are there a lot of Jewish cartoonists at the New Yorker?
A: Jews are a tiny portion of the population, but are very well represented in the humor industry. Many of the cartoonists at the New Yorker are Jewish -- I’m Jewish, there's Roz Chast, and David Sipress. A classic cartoonist who represents certainly a Jewish sensibility is Roz Chast -- a real inward-looking sensibility, and the world as a worrisome, neurotic, yet humorous place, a sensibility which combines anxiety with humor.

Q: There have been several controversial covers depicting Jews.
A: I'm not involved in the cover, so that's not my controversy. But one thing everybody has learned is how intersected all media are. And to some extent, covers are different than cartoons -- they make much stronger satirical, even editorial, statements than the cartoons do.

Mankoff's talk takes place at 7 p.m. tonight at Temple Israel in Boston.

(Cartoon ©Robert Mankoff/The New Yorker Magazine.)

I suppose it goes without saying that there’s quite a bit of theater in many religious services. The clothing, the singing, the physicality of so much prayer – it’s no wonder that worship often finds its way onto the stage.

Last weekend, on a trip to New York, I had a chance to see two very different depictions of evangelicalism on stage, in productions written six decades apart, both with a quasi-journalistic underpinning and a heavy overlay of caricature.

The flawed-but-boisterous revival of "Guys and Dolls" now running on Broadway offers the musical depiction, familiar to theater-lovers, of a gifted gambler who falls in love with the upright, and uptight, leader of an urban Protestant mission clearly modeled on the Salvation Army. Based on a short story by the sometime newsman Damon Runyon, the show features what must be one of the greatest stagings of a prayer meeting ever – the scene in which a gambler named Nicely Nicely Johnson offers a testimonial of faith in the form of a sung dream about a conversion experience (“Sit Down, You’re Rockin’ the Boat,'' in photos above and at right). Although it’s not clear whether his testimony is sincere, and although the moralizing Save-a-Soul Mission is depicted as prudish, earnest, and condemnatory, the play ends with the apparent conversion of its hero, Sky Masterson, who joins the mission after falling hard for, and marrying, its leader, Sarah Brown.

Off-Broadway, I managed to catch the final performance of “This Beautiful City,’’ (in photos at left and below) a finely woven and highly entertaining exploration of the transformation of Colorado Springs into the evangelical capital of the United States. This production is so-called documentary theater – a now-familiar genre (think of "The Laramie Project," or the oeuvre of Anna Deavere Smith) in which the creators go out and interview people about a subject, and then actors portray those interview subjects, speaking or singing their actual words, on stage (in this production, there are some composite characters, which I suppose could be seen as artistic license, or as a storytelling cheat, depending on your perspective). “This Beautiful City,” which has an uncertain future but clearly deserves to be produced and discussed beyond New York, is more often funny than moving, but manages to provide a fascinating window into several evangelical congregations, as well as some of the skeptics who surround them (including a pamphleteer of sorts who refers to Colorado Springs as Middle Earth and the evangelical section of town as Mordor). Of course, the show is helped by the fact that one of the congregations it focuses on is New Life Church, and, while the theater company, The Civilians, was gathering its material in the fall of 2006, the congregation’s pastor, National Association of Evangelicals President Ted Haggard, resigned after acknowledging that he had been paying a male prostitute for sex and methamphetamines. (Haggard and his wife came to the show last week; no word on what he made of it, but the show’s writers did say that the Denver regional theater has passed on an opportunity to produce it.)

The parallels between the plays are obviously limited, but each does, to a degree, explore the collision between evangelicalism and a broader culture that greets it with suspicion. I'm viewing these with my religion-reporter hat on; there are other ways to think about these performances, but for those of you with an interest in how religion is portrayed in popular culture, these would be worth checking out.

(Photo at top, by Carol Rosegg, shows Tituss Burgess as Nicely-Nicely Johnson performing "Sit Down, You're Rocking the Boat" in "Guys and Dolls"; photo at right, also by Carol Rosegg, shows Mary Testa as General Cartwright in the same number. Photo at left, by Craig Schwartz, shows Brad Heberlee in "This Beautiful City"; photo at bottom, also by Craig Schwartz, shows Marsha Stephanie Blake, Brandon Miller, Alison Weller, Brad Heberlee, Stephen Plunkett and Emily Ackerman in that production.)

The 88-year-old Skinner organ at Old South Church, which has been silenced for three months because of concern about how the instrument's vibrations might affect a sanctuary wall damaged during MBTA excavation work on Dartmouth Street, will be played again for the first time at the church's Festival Worship Service at 11 a.m. Sunday. On Tuesday, organ technicians Jonathan Ambrosino and Joseph Sloane of Boston put the final touches on readying the instrument, removing some of the protective deck that had been built over the pipes to prevent plaster from falling in, and then tuning the pipes. Sloane held notes at the console, while Ambrosino, wearing a custom-made earplug to protect his eardrums from the intense sound inside an organ, checked the pipes for dirt and dust and tuned them using a metal tuning rod. Globe photographer David L. Ryan was there; he shot the video above, and the photos below.

Religion popped up during the Oscar ceremony several times, mostly in pretty unflattering ways. Tina Fey and Steve Martin alluded to a fake religion and then made a joke about "our religion, which we made up,'' which many bloggers are viewing as a reference to Scientology. Bill Maher, a vociferous critic of religion in general, told the crowd that "some day we will all have to confront the notion that our silly gods cost the world too greatly.'' And the most serious critique of institutional churches came from Dustin Lance Black (right), a gay man who, in accepting the award for best original screenplay, for "Milk,'' mentioned that he was raised in the Mormon church, and then said, "I wanna thank my mom, who has always loved me for who I am even when there was pressure not to" and "if Harvey (Milk) had not been taken from us 30 years ago, I think he'd want me to say to all of the gay and lesbian kids out there tonight who have been told that they are less than by their churches, by the government or by their families, that you are beautiful, wonderful creatures of value and that no matter what anyone tells you, God does love you and that very soon, I promise you, you will have equal rights federally, across this great nation of ours. Thank you. Thank you. And thank you, God, for giving us Harvey Milk."

God also got a shout-out from A.R. Rahman, a Sufi Muslim, who, in accepting the award for best score, for "Slumdog Millionaire,'' cited the Muslim phrase of praise, called the takbir, saying, "I want to tell something in Tamil, which says, which I normally say after every award which is...'God is great'.''

(Photo, by Kevin Winter/Getty, shows Dustin Lance Black accepting the Oscar for best original screenplay.)

OK, film fans: Sunday, of course, is Oscar night, and this year's nominees include multiple films with a faith angle -- from the Holocaust to Hinduism, with clergy sexual abuse and all sorts of good vs. evil thrown in.

Many of the religion angles illuminate conflicts and tensions. Most prominently, "Slumdog Millionaire,'' the likely best picture winner, struck me as unusual because it features a Muslim protagonist without any connection to terror; it also has a brief but clear depiction of tensions between Hindus and Muslims in India, and, most significantly, it explores concepts of fate and destiny. (The New York Times's web site has an interesting discussion of why Hindu nationalists are objecting to "Slumdog Millionaire" here.)

"Milk,'' another best picture nominee, has a memorable and disturbing scene at a Catholic church, and intimates that Dan White's Catholicism played a role in his discomfort with homosexuality, which led to his killing of Harvey Milk; the film also features unflattering documentary footage of Anita Bryant and the evangelical opposition to gay rights. Off-screen, Milk's screenwriter, Dustin Lance Black, nominated for an Oscar, is an ex-Mormon whose gayness highlights that faith group's trouble with its own gay members.

"Doubt,'' of course, reminds viewers of the ugly sexual abuse crisis in the Catholic Church, and paints an unflattering portrait of some religious women. And the films related to Judaism are provocative as well; the Foundation for Jewish Culture heard enough concern that it put out a viewers guide to "Waltz With Bashir,'' the troubling Israeli film that is a leading contender for best foreign language film, while over at Slate, Ron Rosenbaum says he is tempted to call "The Reader," a best picture nominee, the "Worst Holocaust Film Ever Made.''

ReligionLink, which is an affiliate of the Religion Newswriters Association, has put out a handy guide to religion themes in this year's nominees. The US Conference of Catholic Bishops issued its own list of the top ten films of 2008 here (the only two honored by the bishops that are also nominated for best picture by the Academy are "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" and "Slumdog Millionaire"). Beliefnet offered its own film awards, naming "Wall-E" (which the Academy is considering for best animated feature) the year's "best spiritual film.'' And Christianity Today, the evangelical magazine, will be blogging about the Oscars here.

I've posted a few items about film over the past year, including some observations about "Slumdog Millionaire" here and about "Milk" here.

If you have thoughts about the role that religion played in this year's nominated films, I'm interested; feel free to post comments here.

(Image at top, from Sony Pictures Classics, shows a scene from "Waltz with Bashir." Image below, from Fox Searchlight, shows a scene from "Slumdog Millionaire.'')

I have to admit that country gospel is not a genre of music with which I can claim any familiarity, but last night I stopped by the Clarendon Hill Presbyterian Church in Somerville to hear the Sacred Shakers, a group of local roots musicians who get together every few months to play. Although their music has quite a bit of Christian content, they said last night was the first time they had played in a church. One song particularly struck me -- their cover of a Bessie Jones adaptation of a gospel song about the sinking of the Titanic. I had no idea that there was a set of religious songs about the Titanic, but, sure enough, the Encyclopedia of the Blues details (under the heading "Accidental Disasters") a number of songs about the Titanic, often with moralizing lyrics. The version popularized by Jones, and recorded by the Sacred Shakers on their album, goes like this:

God moves on the water, April the 14th day.
God moves on the water, everybody had to run and pray.

Now Titanic left Southampton, with all their sport and game.
But when they struck that iceberg, I know their mind was changed.

Their mothers told their daughters, on a pleasure trip they may go.
But when they struck that iceberg, they haven't been seen anymore.

Warned by a freight boat, Captain Smith did not take heed.
Instead of giving a warning, he ran with greater speed.

One John Jacob Astor, a man with pluck and brains,
While all this great ship was sinking, all the women he tried to save.

He kissed his wife one last time, when the boiler it did explode,
He helped her to the lifeboat, saying, “I won't see you anymore.”

The story of the shipwreck is almost too sad to tell.
One thousand and six hundred went down forever to dwell.

Well, the 14th day of April, it was in nineteen hundred and twelve.
The ship had a wreck by the iceberg; It went down forever to dwell.

Who knew?

(Photo by David Kamerman of the Globe staff.)

The construction of a garden dedicated to victims of clergy sexual abuse at the new cathedral in Oakland has intensified a national discussion among survivors about the merits of such memorials. In today's Globe, I have a story taking a look at the issue, and its ramifications here in Boston. An excerpt:

The garden at the Cathedral of Christ the Light is the nation's first permanent memorial to abuse victims at a Catholic cathedral, and it appears to mark a new stage in the abuse crisis, as survivors and church officials debate whether and how to commemorate the victimization of more than 10,000 youngsters by more than 4,000 priests. Two Catholic parishes, in Iowa and New Jersey, already have memorials; a religious order in Chicago agreed to build one as part of a legal settlement, but that project stalled when the order asked survivors to suggest the design.

In Boston, the epicenter of the abuse scandal, survivors and archdiocesan officials have been contemplating the wisdom of such a memorial since the crisis erupted seven years ago.

But within the survivor community, there are significant differences of opinion about whether memorials are an important way to acknowledge the phenomenon of clergy sexual abuse and lessen the secret shame many victims feel, or are hollow symbols that relegate an ongoing crisis to the history books and allow church officials to avoid taking more concrete actions.

There are two videos that accompany the story. This one is about the memorial:

And this one is about the architecture of the new cathedral:

Lots of ink is being spilled over Rick Warren these days, including my story about him in today's Globe. Now comes Cambridge illustrator Louisa Bertman (full disclosure: she's my second cousin!) who has begun a series of portraits inspired by Facebook's quirky news feeds, and sends along this image of the country's new most favorite/least favorite evangelical, who tomorrow will give the invocation at Barack Obama's inauguration:

These rich photographs were shot earlier today by the Globe's David Ryan at Old South Church in Boston's Copley Square, where an aerial engineer named Emma Francis was examining the crack in the wall caused by MBTA excavation work beside the landmark church early last month.

I just got off the phone with the Rev. Nancy S. Taylor, the senior minister of the United Church of Christ congregation, who told me the "roped access" was necessary to determine whether there is any risk of plaster falling from the cracked wall when the organ is played. It turns out that the church's organ, with something like 6,500 pipes, causes the building to shake when it is played, and it hasn't been used since the damage because of a fear that plaster could fall onto the organ's pipes or electronics (apparently there is no risk to people because they don't stand under that wall). Today's tests found the plaster to be quite loose, but it remains to be decided whether the loose parts can simply be removed, or can be temporarily repaired, or whether the organ will be unusable for months or years.

Taylor said the roped access was achieved by removing a part of a window that is about 70 feet up, and putting two ropes through to anchor the engineer, and then hoisting her up on a harness with all kinds of equipment used to assess the damage.

The church is quite eager to resume the use of its organ for worship, weddings, and concerts.

"We're in a specialty business here -- we don't sell a product, our purpose is to worship, and a part of the way we do that is with beautiful music,'' Taylor said. "This organ represents to us a particular and unique and precious instrumental treasure that also manages to fill that space, so the thought of being without it for what could be months or years is hard to imagine.''

Taylor said the church has been making do with a variety of instruments -- in addition to its Steinway piano, it has used cello, trumpet, clarinet, drums, mandolin and flute.

Meanwhile the repairs to the church appear to be quite a ways off. Taylor said there is still an ongoing forensic investigation to determine what happened, but that it appears that an MBTA contractor somehow hit the church's pilings (the church, like everything else in the area, is built on fill, so it's held up by pilings) with a high-pressure jet of grout slurry, and the impact on the pilings lifted the church's wall.

"There's really no agreed understanding as to what happened, so the forensic investigation will involve test pits and mathematical computations where they plug in all kinds of things and look at the crack and try to say why it went the way it did,'' Taylor said. "But the MBTA is still taking responsibility and assuring us that the church should bear no cost at all in this.''

As if the 70-foot crack caused by MBTA work wasn't enough for Old South Church to worry about, now it appears that the publicity over the damage may be scaring some folks away from the building. The church's senior minister, the Rev. Nancy S. Taylor, called today to say that she is concerned that congregants and First Night celebrants are uncertain about the building's stability -- a concern that she says is unfounded, based on assessments by multiple engineers who have examined the crack on the inside and outside of the church's Dartmouth Street wall. The United Church of Christ congregation, located in Copley Square, has been using the building actively for weddings and worship and so on, and on Wednesday night will be hosting New Year’s Eve Concerts for brass and percussion at 6:30 p.m. and 8:00 p.m. Taylor sent along the following statement:

"Recent damage to Old South’s national historic landmark building (corner of Boylston and Dartmouth Streets), has caused some church members, as well as those in the general public, to worry if the building is safe. It is absolutely safe! A raft of structural engineers, geotechnical engineers and architects all assure us that the wall is completely safe. It is true that the church’s E. M. Skinner organ has been silenced for the foreseeable future but this is a measure imposed for the organ’s safety. Engineers have not been able to assess the condition of a large, inaccessible portion of plaster at one of the cracks. Vibrations from the organ’s great pipes can be felt in the pews and there is some concern that the vibrations could loosen bits or hunks of plaster. If plaster did come loose, it would fall into the organ pit, not onto people. Despite the inconvenience, the church is determined to ring in the New Year with as much pomp and circumstance as it can muster. On First Night Old South will replace their popular, house-filling Organ & Brass Concerts with Brass and Percussion Concerts. The best of Boston’s brass and percussion artists join Harry Huff, Old South’s Minister of Music, in a supersonic concert, playing electrifying arrangements of popular classics by Bach, Copeland, Mussorgsky, and LeRoy Anderson, as well as leading the audience in singing stirring favorites. The evening includes music for trumpets, French horn, trombone, tuba, percussionists and piano."

(Photo, by John Tlumacki of the Globe staff, shows a bicyclist passing Old South Church in a snowstorm on Dec. 19, 2008.)

Have you ever wondered how Mary became a global icon, an object of widespread devotion and artistic exploration? That's the question being investigated by Miri Rubin (above), a professor of medieval and early modern history at Queen Mary, University of London. In the Ideas section of today's Globe, I have an interview with Rubin about her work, which is leading to a new book, "Mother of God: A History of the Virgin Mary.'' An excerpt from the interview:

IDEAS: How does she move to become a global figure?

RUBIN: After the year 1000 we see this really important process that some have rather grandiloquently called the birth of Europe. . . . What happens over the next few centuries is a very intimate relationship to Mary within the monasteries. After all, these are boys who've been taken away from their families. This is an attempt within the monastery to create, in a way, a sort of a fictive family, a family of the monastery, to fight sin, to fight the struggle with temptation, and Mary is the absolute companion of those particular struggles. [Mary] is consoler, is above all a mother figure, and she's still quite a sort of ladylike figure, quite a grand figure in representation. But we begin to see around the 12th century, this softening of Mary . . . not the sort of hieratic, frontal, priestly figure, but someone who is more playful, in relationship with her son. . . . And then in the 13th century, with the coming of the big preaching orders that aim to educate not just the elite but people in towns and in their vernacular . . . the material becomes extremely vivid, extremely lively, and Mary becomes like the woman next door.

You can read the full interview here.

(Photo by Amy Price.)

The damage caused to Old South Church in Boston by an MBTA construction project was worrisome to a lot of folks, but few more than the couple whose wedding had been planned to take place at the National Historic Landmark yesterday afternoon. The bride and groom had some nervous moments, but happily, their wedding was able to proceed, and took place without a hitch. As luck would have it, the groom's aunt, Audrey Wennblom, is an old friend and colleague of mine (she worked as an editor at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer when I was a reporter there), and while en route back to Seattle today she sent along the following dispatch, and the photo above, from her iPhone:

"Justin Rawlings and Anna Baxstrom were all set to go to their wedding rehearsal at Old South Church Friday when they got word that a crack in the church wall meant that there would be no organ allowed--the vibrations, you know. But the church provided a piano and trumpet player instead, which sounded just fine to the 120 guests gathered in the church Saturday at 5 p.m., most of whom had walked just block from the Lenox Hotel where they were staying and where the wedding would have been held had the church defaulted. The crack, in fact, provided a little grist for the wedding homily delivered by officiating minister, the Rev. Kenneth H. Orth. He warned the couple that they may have 'cracks in their relationship' and 'cracks in a perfectly constructed life' but that their love would see them through. Before the ceremony ended, Dr. Orth promised that the church would work 'diligently and faithfully with MBTA' to repair the damage."

Here's my story from Saturday's paper about the damage to the church. And here's a follow-up, from today's paper, by Megan Woolhouse, about the parade of visitors stopping by to see what happened.

Also this weekend, the church's senior minister and chief executive, the Rev. Nancy S. Taylor, sent an e-mail update to members of the United Church of Christ congregation:

"Dear Old South Members and Friends:

As you may have heard, read or seen on the news, the MBTA's work outside our Dartmouth Street wall has resulted in a serious, through-and-through crack in our east facing wall. This occurred somewhere around 10pm on Tuesday evening … at a time in which the MBTA and its contractors were working at our site. Old South's geo-technical engineer noted the problem early Wednesday and a stop-work order was immediately implemented. The resulting crack extends from the foundation to the very top of the wall and into the ceiling roof. It is viscerally painful to see.

The MBTA and its contractor take full responsibility and promise to make us whole. In the meantime, we have brought in our architects (who know the building well) and their structural engineers, along with our organ builder and geo-technical engineer. (Our stained glass consultant will be brought in shortly.) A small army of such folk has been in and out of our building all day: peering, poking, measuring, consulting, advising and reaching some conclusions. Our first concern was safety.

The temporary results are threefold:

1) We are approved to resume all normal activities in the sanctuary through the weekend (concerts, wedding, worship), with the exception that the organ will not be used. The reason to refrain from playing the organ stems from a concern that its vibrations could cause bits of the interior plaster to come loose. They are not concerned that the stone wall will come tumbling down.
2) Over the weekend the engineers will attach to the building ten or so sophisticated crack gages. These will be affixed at all the areas of concern, can be read and monitored remotely, and will measure any and all movement of the building and its cracks.
3) The major through-and-through crack will be temporarily filled to keep out the weather; the wall's weakest sections may be stitched (not unlike a medical suture).

Over time this same small army will come to conclusions and agreements about a more permanent solution.

Rest assured that the very good work that was done two years ago in negotiations with the T (deep thanks to Rusty Aertsen) puts this squarely on the shoulders of the MBTA and their contractors (their insurance not ours) and that they have already agreed to our need to hire our architects, our structural engineer, our organ builder, our stained glass consultant … and the bills go to them.

I cannot say enough about Old South members who spent hours and hours in the past few days at meetings, climbing around the building, talking, consulting, listening, learning, and consistently advocating our stewardship of this national historic landmark building. Many thanks to Tom Bulkeley who is our point-person for the MBTA project and to Lois Corman who chairs the Operations Committee. Both were in the church virtually all day today and much of yesterday and Wednesday as well. Thanks to Roger Burke whose expertise as an engineer and deep knowledge of the building continues to serve us well. Thanks to Sean O'Donnell who sings in the choir and who doubles as one of organ builders, for stopping in over and over to see that things were going well. Many thanks to staff members who came in to help out on days off and/or worked extra hours: Helen McCrady, Amy Perry, Elias Perez and Quinn Caldwell.

There is much more to say, but I need to sign off. Please know that your staff and lay leaders are working tirelessly and strategically to manage a near-crisis, to handle the media, to juggle building users, to maintain our regular commitments in a very busy time of year, and to continue to provide a beautiful safe space in which to serve, worship and celebrate the deep beauty of this holy season.

Come to the Old South Craft Fair tomorrow, note that our outdoor Christmas Tree is up and lit, that Gordon Chapel is decorated and that we are preparing our hearts and minds and souls for the coming of the Christ Child.

The Rev. Nancy S. Taylor"

Some breaking news, literally: a large crack has developed in Old South Church, one of the grand landmarks of Copley Square.

At a joint news conference today, both the church’s senior minister, the Rev. Nancy S. Taylor (above left), and the MBTA’s assistant general manager, Charles L. O’Reilly (above right), said the crack was caused by work done by a T contractor installing elevator shafts to make the Copley Square T station accessible to the handicapped. O’Reilly said the multi-year, $45 million construction project has been indefinitely halted.

Taylor and O’Reilly both said that the T would be responsible for repairing the church, which is a National Historic Landmark; O’Reilly said the T would in turn seek to hold its contractors responsible for the damage.

The construction project was complicated by the fact that the church, like much of the Back Bay, is built on fill, and both church and T officials said they were mindful of the fact that Trinity Church, an Episcopal parish across Copley Square from Old South, was seriously damaged by the construction of the John Hancock Tower three decades earlier.

Taylor said the crack appeared sometime Tuesday night or Wednesday morning, and appeared to have been triggered by a single construction event, rather than to have happened over time. This morning the crack was clearly visible both on the exterior Dartmouth Street wall of the church (which is at the corner of Dartmouth and Boylston, just above one of the Copley Square T entrances) and on the interior of that wall.

The damaged wall is the so-called “fine arts wall” of the church, with 140-year-old stained glass windows, and the workings of one of the largest organs in New England.

Taylor said it is not clear whether there is any structural damage to the church, and she said safety engineers will examine the church today before deciding whether to allow a concert, two weddings, and worship services scheduled for this weekend to proceed. She said it is also not clear whether the organ, which creates significant vibrations when played, is usable. She said there is no estimate of the financial cost of the repairs, and that the value of the church is inestimable.

The T said that its project was mandated in order to comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act, and that it had demanded that the contractors take extra precautions to protect the church’s wall. The church and the T had been talking for more than two years about the project, and had installed monitors on the church walls, and hired a battery of specialists, in an unsuccessful effort to prevent the damage that has now occurred.

Because the Copley Square area is built on fill, underground construction has always been problematic in the area. Trinity Church, across Copley Square from Old South, wound up winning $4 million in a jury award after suing the Hancock for damage caused during construction of the tower in 1975.

Taylor said that Old South was fully supportive of the T project in the interest of making Copley Square more accessible to people in wheelchairs and with other mobility limitations, and she said T officials have been collaborative both in their efforts to prevent the damage and in their pledges to "make the church whole.''

Old South is a congregation of the United Church of Christ, which is the largest Protestant denomination in Massachusetts, and which has also been the denomination of president-elect Barack Obama. The congregation traces its history back more than three centuries, to 1669, when it was established as the Third Church in Boston; it was later renamed Old South, and moved from downtown (the building now called the Old South Meeting House) to its current location in the Back Bay in 1875.

The building, with an exterior of Roxbury puddingstone and a richly colored interior, is considered a fine example of Ruskinian Gothic architecture. It was designed by Charles Amos Cummings in the 1870s, was updated by the Tiffany firm in 1905, and was completely renovated in the mid-1980s by Shepley Bulfinch Richardson and Abbott.

News of the damage was first reported by Alecia, a blogging actress who spotted the crack last night when she showed up at the church for a rehearsal. That blog post was brought to wider attention this morning by Universal Hub.

UPDATE: Susannah Abbott e-mails to say that the concert planned at Old South tonight has been moved because of the damage:

"Due to the damage to Old South Church, which precludes the use of the organ, tonight's holiday concert by professional choral ensemble Boston Secession has been relocated to the Church of the Covenant, 67 Newbury Street (between Berkeley and Clarendon Streets). The start time for the concert has been changed from 8:00 to 8:15. Further details about the concert are as follows: Boston Secession presents Chestnuts Roasting: A Secession Holiday Concert, Friday, December 5, 2008 at 8:15 pm, Church of the Covenant, 67 Newbury Street, Boston. A joyous seasonal celebration, overflowing with favorite choral chestnuts. Carols and hymns spanning five centuries – from Sweelinck, Poulenc, Distler, Lauridsen and others – are spiced up, Secession-style, with a sprinkling of parodies by P.D.Q. Bach and Tom Lehrer. And, join us in singing top tunes from Handel’s Messiah – bring your score if you have one!"

(Photos by George Rizer, Globe staff.)

Yesterday was the 20th World AIDS Day, and lots of religious organizations marked the occasion with statements or services of some sort. Here in Boston, artist Michael Dowling has developed an unusual tradition for commemorating the day -- an annual 24-hour vigil of art, performance and prayer inside a cavernous circular domed hall called the Cyclorama, at the Boston Center for the Arts.

Last night was the first time I had ever seen the Medicine Wheel, and it was hard to know what to make of it at first -- there was a maze of displays and activities, including some conventional artworks, memorial shrines, and impromptu performances/readings/rituals referred to as "offerings.'' There were people sleeping on the floor, eating, chatting, or just alone with their thoughts -- some, like me, had popped in for a few minutes, while others had been there for hours. There were at least two people carrying hula hoops, and two with dogs.

Some of the installations from previous years were on display, including a striking wall consisting of painted maps that tracked the path of HIV infection rates across the globe over time, and another group of walls adorned only with hatch marks symbolically counting off infection numbers. The shrines were also interesting -- little boxes with small memorial displays inside, arrayed atop pedestals and arranged in a circle (the wheel), with flameless votive candles all around. People were invited to bring some kind of personal object or memento to become part of the display.

The main activity this year was something called "The Paper Project" -- a simultaneous work of creation and destruction, in which people wrote prayers on pieces of paper, tore them up, and gave them to the artists (many of them South Boston teenagers) who blended them with some kind of red-dyed goop to make pulp that in turn formed a thick paper of melded prayers that was displayed on yet another wall. The work was the brainchild of Michael Dowling, who runs Medicine Wheel Productions. Here's the official description:

"This year, Dowling developed The Paper Project as a public art project that involves thousands of people from all walks of life in creating a single work, fragile and resilient, temporary and enduring. A single sheet of hand made paper 600 feet long and 12 feet high created by thousands of people over the course of ten months at Medicine Wheel Studio in South Boston using entirely recycled materials. Participants wrote hopes, fears, dreams, prayers and truths onto paper, which was broken down and reconstituted into the continuous sheet of earth colored paper, so that the thoughts and prayers exist together, woven into the fabric of the whole. Prayers for peace in the world, for an end to violence in our neighborhoods, for a longed for child, for a job or a lover or an end to personal suffering, will all come together as a single human prayer to become who we know we were meant to be. Conflicting prayers and desires are side by side, bearing witness to the human condition without the fraught emotions we attach to it. In this way The Paper Project evokes the wisdom of the dead, the detachment of the mystic, the transcendent knowing of the divine."

I shot a few photos on a friend's iPhone -- these give you a glimpse of what the installation looked like.

I can't decide whether I think this is serious or a joke, ridiculous or provocative, but it's certainly a good read. Over at Slate, Jon Katz, who writes about rural life, pens an essay titled, "Holy Cow! What my 3,000-pound steer has taught me about faith." Here's how it begins:

"I've attended churches, Quaker Meetings, synagogues, and Buddhist temples. I've taken yoga and read Joseph Campbell, Thomas Merton, C.S. Lewis, St. Augustine, and the Bible. I pray often. But I had an unsettling realization recently, which is that my steer Elvis already has the spiritual equanimity I have been seeking. He is comfortable within himself, has no discernible anxiety, rolls with life as if it were a gentle wave, is uncomplaining, generous and loyal to his mate, and trusts and accepts people."

There are some very funny, and vivid, descriptions of life with Elvis, but by the end of the essay, Katz comes to an obvious conclusion:

"It occurs to me that the price of such equanimity is that you have to be a cow and that to be a human means you struggle to find these things but know in your heart that this is an uneven struggle, filled with successes and victories, ups and downs, crooked lines and gates and fences."

(Photo, of a Highland steer, by Peter Kemp/AP.)

Moment, an independent Jewish magazine, examines the role of Judaism in the life story and comedic style of Daily Show host Jon Stewart -- formerly Jonathan Stuart Leibowitz. An excerpt:

"As his star has risen, Stewart, born Jonathan Stuart Leibowitz, has also become an ambassador of Jewishness. Dispensing Jewish humor like a tic, Stewart’s impish grin, self-deprecating punch lines and jokey cultural references are a staple of the show. He has referred to himself as 'Jewey Von Jewstein' and cracked wise on Jewish noses, circumcision, anti-Semites, Jews who play baseball (a short list), Israel as 'Heebie Land' and his grandma at Passover. When it comes to Jewish and Israeli politics, he stomps where WASPier comedians fear to tread. But although he regularly brings up the fact that he is Jewish, he rarely speaks earnestly about his Jewish upbringing or what being Jewish means to him."

And one more, with a quotation from Rabbi Moshe Waldoks of Temple Beth Zion in Brookline:

"It’s impossible to watch The Daily Show without quickly divining that Stewart is Jewish. 'Stewart brings a sharpness of wit and a clear desire to never let the audience forget who he is by bringing his Jewishness up again and again,' observes Moshe Waldoks, a rabbi in Brookline, Massachusetts, and co-editor of The Big Book of Jewish Humor. His cultural Jewishness, that is; Stewart regularly hosts The Daily Show on Yom Kippur, the holiest day in the Jewish calendar. (A New York Mets fan, Stewart did name one of his pit bulls Shamsky, after Art Shamsky, a Mets player who declined to play on Yom Kippur.) Well-versed in Jewish affairs, he is the first to admit that his knowledge of the religion doesn’t run deep. 'I’m not a religious scholar,' Stewart conceded to viewers in 2001. 'Let’s face facts: Very few people would confuse me with Maimonides.' He gently pokes fun at his own lack of observance. 'I fasted today, not out of any religious duty but because I don’t want to let a day go by where I can’t feel worse about myself. So Happy Yom Kippur to you!' Stewart wished his audience in 2003."

(Photo, by Josh Reynolds for the Globe, shows Jon Stewart at Northeastern University in October.)

California is facing a measure that would restrict gay rights amidst a national debate over how the nation's legal framework should view homosexuality. The conservative religious community throws its muscle behind the proposition. And the gay community protests. Sound familiar?

That was the scenario not only this year, when California voters approved Proposition 8, which would overturn same-sex marriage, but also in 1978, when California voters rejected Proposition 6, which would have barred gay and lesbians from working in the schools.

The 1978 battle is at the heart of the new biopic, "Milk," which opens tomorrow, and which seems likely to intensify the focus on the tension between conservative religious congregations and gay rights advocates. The film is about the political career of Harvey Milk, a gay rights activist who was assassinated shortly after being elected to the San Francisco board of supervisors.

I saw the film at a screening last night, and the parallels drawn between 1978 and 2008 are unmistakable. In depicting the debate over Proposition 6, the so-called Briggs Initiative, the film focuses on the role of Anita Bryant in rallying conservative Protestant churches to support the measure.

Although the film has actors recreating most roles, it uses archival news footage of Bryant, as well as reports by Tom Brokaw, Walter Cronkite and others, to document the campaign. Bryant, who was affiliated with a conservative Southern Baptist congregation, is clearly situated in a religious context, and the film suggests that the debate over gay rights in the 1970s helped spur the political activism of the religious right. The film also places Milk's assassin, Dan White, in a deeply Catholic subculture -- a key scene in the film occurs at the christening of White's child, where Milk and White discuss gay rights, and White's wife suggests the topic is inappropriate in a church.

The dynamics on display in 1978 are, of course, echoed in the current debate over the role of the Mormon church, as well as Catholic, evangelical, African-American and Hispanic congregations, in supporting Proposition 8. In the three decades since the period depicted in the film, homosexuality has roiled many American denominations, with ceaseless battles over whether to ordain gays, whether to bless gay unions, and whether to support same-sex marriage. In response to the religious right, a religious left has emerged that is supportive of gay rights, so the debate now takes place not only between the religious and the nonreligious, but also within the world of religion. But the film offers a provocative look at one of the early acts in this still unfolding drama.

(Photo, by Phil Bray/Focus Features, shows Sean Penn as Harvey Milk in "Milk.")

This photograph by Rania Matar, a Lebanese-American artist living in Brookline, is among the works now on display at the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston as part of an exhibit of the work of four promising Boston artists competing for the James and Audrey Foster Prize. In Saturday's Globe, art critic Sebastian Smee examines the photo, called "Three Nuns," as part of a review of the exhibit. An excerpt:

"Matar was born in Lebanon and took these photographs on travels back to her homeland. Her images feature many women wearing black headwear, although not all of them are Muslim; many are Christian Maronite nuns.

As a collection of images, Matar's fairly small display argues for the human richness and complexity of Lebanese society even in a context of destruction (several images show battered buildings and rubble). But there are individual images that stand apart and have a genius all their own.

The best is a photograph taken this year in Beirut called 'Three Nuns.' It shows three Maronite nuns in black garb standing in front of a congregation praying with eyes closed. All face the same way, toward Matar's camera.

The nun on the left regards the camera sourly, with pursed lips and contemptuous eyes. The middle nun looks at the camera, but with an expression of calm equilibrium, while the nun on the right has caught some of the mood of the congregation: Her tilted head suggests dreamy, divinely inspired detachment.

The photograph is the result of what looks like astonishing serendipity, but Matar obviously had to put herself in an awkward position before serendipity could strike. The photograph is the best in the room."

(Photo courtesy of Gallery Kayafas.)

Danny Boyle seems to have a thing for dreamers. Four years ago, he directed "Millions,'' a small but wondrous film about a 7-year-old English Catholic boy who talks to saints and comes upon a lot of money. Now, the British director is back with "Slumdog Millionaire,'' a fantastical yarn about an Indian Muslim boy who is inhabited by a driving sense of destiny and also flirts with a great sum of cash.

The film opens today in Boston; I'm leaving the reviews to the critics (the Globe's Ty Burr is giving it a perfect four stars) but as a religion writer, I'm intrigued by Boyle's dance with faith in film. Slumdog, which I've seen twice in screenings, is not about religion, but there are obvious religious overtones. The three main characters, brothers Jamal and Salim and their friend, Latika, are all Muslim children who are orphaned in a horrific anti-Muslim riot instigated by Hindu nationalists. In a classic Boyle touch, as the riot is unfolding, Jamal has a vision of an icon of a Hindu deity, Rama, who springs menacingly to life with a bow and arrow in hand; Jamal blames Rama for the most tragic event of his life. There are other explicit religious references -- Salim, in particular, seems to become more pious as he becomes more corrupt; he is seen at one point kneeling in prayer on a prayer rug, and at several key moments he utters "God is good,'' a rough translation of Allahu Akbar, the standard expression of praise by Muslims. But Islam is almost incidental in the film; religiosity is mostly suggested via Jamal's urgent, unrelenting, fatalism.

I called the director, Danny Boyle (above), to ask him about the film. Here's a partial transcript of our conversation:

Q: What's with the characters' use of the expression 'It is written'?

A: For the Western audience, it's kind of cute, romantic -- it's cute and lovely. But in India, it means something very different. It means something quite extraordinary -- that you have fulfilled your destiny. We think of destiny, and of things being fated, as quite passive. But not there. It's something you have to fulfill -- your destiny...We wanted to make it the driving force of the film. Jamal is determined. He's not just an underdog having a dream, but he believes so much that it is destined to be, and he will do anything to achieve it.

Q: What is the role of religion in the world of the film?

A: It's quite interesting. Religion there feels much wider than it is here. It's not just that there are so many gods (in Hinduism). It's the penetration of religion. It feels like it permeates life.

Q: Are you religious?

A: I was brought up Catholic, and kind of abandoned it. I admired the way they prayed (in India) to deities. It's difficult to explain in Western terms the way they approach it, but it is not through narrowness. We think of God in quite a narrow way, but they think of God in the spiritual part of your psyche, the spiritual side of life.

Q: What role does Jamal's Muslimness play?

A: It's very important in the beginning, because his mother is killed in a riot, a religious riot, prompted by right-wing Hindu nationalists. But, beyond that, their religion was just part of their lives in a very ordinary way.

Q: Do you see similarities between the Muslim boy in this film and the Catholic boy in Millions?

A: There's a dreamer in both of them, whose dedication to his imagination is more important than the tactile stuff.

I was struck by the presence of Muslim protagonists in a film that is not about terrorism, and I was interested to note that the religious affiliation of the characters is not mentioned in the publicity material for the film or in much of the press coverage to date. But Muslim critics are paying attention; over at altmuslim, for example, Wajahat Ali enthuses, "I must point out that Jamal, the protagonist, is a sweet hearted and resourceful Muslim Indian boy who never once commits terrorism or a religiously motivated act of violence. Hallelujah! Furthermore, a really good-looking girl, his beloved Latika, actually fancies him without duress or coercion - what a welcomed rarity!"

Christian critics have focused on Jamal's (and Boyle's?) insistent hopefulness. In a rapturous review in Christianity Today, Brandon Fibbs writes, "Boyle infuses all of his films with a haunting spirituality, seen as plainly and overtly in Millions as in his elegant zombie movie, 28 Days Later. Each of his stories operates as vehicles to steer us closer to a worldview fired by shameless optimism." And the US Conference of Catholic Bishops (which recommends the film for adults) says of the film, "Though harrowing at times, director Danny Boyle's sweeping panorama of Third-World life -- adapted from Indian diplomat Vikas Swarup's novel 'Q & A' -- is ultimately hopeful, stressing the dignity of the underprivileged and the primacy of spiritual over material values...As the portrait of a man who encounters evil in many forms yet remains fundamentally innocent, and who gains wisdom from all he endures, 'Slumdog Millionaire' is an exhilarating celebration of humane values."

(Photo, by Ishika Mohan/Fox Searchlight Pictures, shows Danny Boyle at the Taj Mahal.)

Mel Gibson has been in and around Boston for much of the last three months, shooting his new film, "Edge of Darkness,'' and for the last two Friday nights the film crew has been camped out in front of the Cathedral of the Holy Cross, in Boston's South End.

On Friday night, as it happens, I was meeting a friend for dinner at Sage, directly across Washington Street from the cathedral, and we arrived to find the whole block had been commandeered by the filmmakers, who spent the night rehearsing and then filming a shot in which Gibson emerges from Foodies, holding a shopping bag in each hand, and walks a few feet east on Washington, past shops that had been relabeled for the occasion (including a fake lighting store called Shady Business). The scene was kind of complicated because it was supposed to be raining, so a downpour was being generated from a huge raintower, and a small army of extras were functioning as pedestrians and drivers. There was a large film crew, with trucks and tents and headphones and lights, coordinating the shot, and they were using the patio in front of the cathedral as a staging area. A large crowd of onlookers gathered to watch, including your faithful religion correspondent.

Two things piqued my interest, given that this is Mel Gibson, who is associated with an extremely conservative and quasi-schismatic brand of Catholicism, and who in 2006 memorably exploded in a drunken anti-Semitic rage at a police officer two years after making the film, "The Passion of the Christ,'' which had aroused the ire of many in the Jewish community. First, I wondered how the crowd would react to Gibson's presence, and second, I wondered how Gibson was relating to the Archdiocese of Boston, given that he was filming on what is essentially the cardinal's front lawn (Cardinal Sean P. O'Malley lives in the cathedral rectory, but he is managing to miss the action by travelling to Rome).

The crowd reaction appeared to be completely unaffected by Gibson's controversial history, and I'm told that's been the case throughout his time here -- large numbers of people have gathered to see a movie star, period. When the film was first announced, some in the Jewish community were concerned, but the official Jewish community has said nothing about Gibson's presence. There have apparently been two instances in which private property owners have declined to cooperate with the film because of Gibson's participation (Universal Hub has the details on a Roslindale rejection here), but otherwise the reaction has been quiet.

As for the relationship with the official church -- Gibson is one of Hollywood's most prominent Catholics, and his "Passion" film won a lot of praise from conservative Christians, but he has a strained relationship with Rome. His dad is reportedly a Holocaust-denying sedevacantist (those are folks who believe recent popes are all illegitimate), and Mel has built himself his own private parish above Malibu that is unrecognized (in fact, it is not considered Catholic) by the Archdiocese of Los Angeles. Recently, the New York Post reported that Gibson has apparently spent $42 million on his church, which the paper described as having about 100 members who "follow a 16th-century style of Catholicism, with Mass conducted entirely in Latin and a strict dress code for women.'' Over at Whispers in the Loggia, blogger Rocco Palmo remarked on the strangeness of the situation, saying "In what'll always be one of history's great ironies, the box office from the film most-explicitly promoted in church circles in recent memory... essentially bankrolled schism.''

I asked Terry Donilon, the spokesman for the Archdiocese of Boston, how the archdiocese is relating to Gibson. This is what he said: "The Cardinal did not meet him, nor did the Cathedral folks. His production crew paid a very small fee for use of the property for staging, place to feed the crew, etc. They filmed overnight on the 2 Friday evenings. Gibson has been filming around the state.''

(Photo, by Lisa Poole for the Boston Globe, shows Mel Gibson during a break from filming in the Public Garden on Sept. 5.)

Apparently, in Beverly Hills, no place is sacred. Mark Wahlberg, the Dorchester boy turned Hollywood star, is irritated that people have been handing him scripts at Mass. From Starpulse.com:

"I go to church and people ask me if they can be on Entourage, what's gonna happen. I go to church to worship, I don't go to church to talk about it. The stuff that I did with my entourage back in the day is stuff that I'm not proud of and I'm asking forgiveness for; I don't want things brought up in church, but, if you go to church in Beverly Hills, those kind of things happen... I get scripts, resumes, books - people tried to come up to me with a children's book before and I wouldn't take it. They got upset with me. This is church."

H/T: GetReligion.

(Photo, by Elisabetta Villa/Getty Images, shows Wahlberg last week in Rome.)

In my quick perusal of the Forward's annual list of the most influential Jews in America, I missed a couple of local figures.

The Forward 50 this year includes Ilan Stavans (left), a professor of Latin American and Latino culture at Amherst College. The Forward said of Stavans:

"Scholars want to be judged by the quality, not the quantity, of their work, but in the case of Mexican-born literary critic Ilan Stavans, the numbers are inescapable. Simply put, the range and volume of his writing and expertise — and influence — are astonishing. A tenured professor of Latin American and Latino literature at Amherst College, Stavans has areas of interest that range from Latin American Jewry to Spanish and Yiddish literature, the immigrant experience, the evolution of language and the cultural role of dictionaries. At 47, he has written no fewer than 20 books of fiction and nonfiction, three of them in 2008, and edited 14 more, including definitive anthologies of Pablo Neruda's poetry and Isaac Bashevis Singer's stories. Three more of his books are due out by the summer of 2009, notably a groundbreaking, 2,000-page anthology of Latino literature. For all that, he's not simply a collector of dry facts. His theories of language are hotly debated around the world. He hosted his own PBS talk show for five years and helped stage-manage the 2004 I.B. Singer centenary celebrations (including a special section in the Forward). But nothing captures his complexity better than his latest books: a study of the modern rebirth of Hebrew and a graphic novel titled "Mr. Spic Goes to Washington." Yes, one man can move worlds."

The list also includes Matthew Brooks, the executive director of the Republican Jewish Coalition, who while an undergrad at Brandeis chaired the Massachusetts College Republicans.

(Photo of Ilan Stavans was taken in 2004 by Robert E. Klein for the Boston Globe.)

Boston's Actors' Shakespeare Project is staging a new production of "The Merchant of Venice" in which it is trying to directly explore the full impact of the troubling play. The company has chosen a Jewish director, Melia Bensussen, and a Jewish actor, Jeremiah Kissel (above, as Shylock) to lead the production of the play, which has often troubled and fascinated audiences and scholars because the Christian characters are so anti-Semitic and the Jewish character is often portrayed as villainous. An excerpt from my story in today's paper:

Their version of "The Merchant of Venice" looks from rehearsals likely to be unstinting, harsh, jarring. The characters will dress in contemporary clothing and speak in their own accents, as if the events in the play could happen today. And there will be no softening of Shakespeare's lines. Not only is Bensussen keeping the racist language that is sometimes excised, in which Portia rejects the Prince of Morocco over his complexion, but she cast a black actor to play that role. She says she insisted on casting a Jewish man to play Shylock because she thought a non-Jewish actor would be too cautious to fully explore the character's dark side. Bensussen also intends to emphasize the role of money and the issue of indebtedness - a decision she had made even before a real-world credit crunch caused global stock markets to tank, making the play's theme of loans gone bad far more topical than the troupe had anticipated. "On a very personal level, this play has been a challenge to me," Bensussen says in an interview before rehearsal. "I directed it in '93, and I shied away from the hard edges. I was afraid to do the play as written and worked very hard to sentimentalize the play, to soften the difficulties. And then this became a personal haunting. Is it because I'm Jewish that I can't tackle this?" Kissel says simply, "Shylock is a role that I've had in my imagination for quite a long time. You don't turn it down if you get a chance."

(Photo by Stratton McCrady.)

The program for the annual meeting of the American Academy of Religion, taking place this weekend in Chicago, includes some pretty arcane stuff -- "Music in Confucian Moral Cultivation" and "Heterogeneous Tantras in Practice" -- so this afternoon I stopped by a session on Harry Potter titled "The Potterian Way of Death: J. K. Rowling's Conception of Mortality.''

In the mainstream media, Potter's world most commonly intersects with the religion beat in the form of a perennial debate in some corners of Christendom over whether the Potter series is anti-Christian, in that it glorifies magic and witchcraft, or pro-Christian, in that it celebrates good over evil. But the 50 or so professors who gathered this afternoon blew right past that question, and moved on to deeper matter -- what exactly is Rowling's take on the value of life after death?

First up was Paul Corey, a religious studies lecturer at McMaster University in Canada, who was fairly critical of what he views as Rowling's excessively simplistic and black-and-white take on good vs. evil. "Why isn't there an evil Hufflepuff?" he asked. Corey managed to compare Voldemort to suicide bombers, saying "they, like Voldemort, kill so they can transcend death,'' and to Michael Jackson, saying that in his pursuit of immortality, Voldemort "lost his nose, his skin turned white, and he looked like a reptile.'' But then Corey began to explore how Voldemort's quest to conquer death might differ from, or resemble, the desire of Christians for eternal life in heaven. "What is the difference between a Christian and a death eater?'' Corey asked. He said both want to banish the impure and to receive immortality. Corey noted that the epitaph on the gravestone of Harry's parents, "The last enemy that shall be destroyed is Death," is actually a quote from the apostle Paul (First Corinthians 15:26), and said that the quotation triggered a dispute between Harry and Hermione over what exactly destroying death means -- does it mean actually defeating death, or living beyond death? And is there life after death in Rowling's world? Corey suggests the jury is still out, saying, "the series never answers the question definitively.''

Oona Eisenstadt, an assistant professor of religious studies at Pomona College, took a different approach, exploring ways in which the Potter series functions as a Christian allegory. She suggested that, in the series, Rowling has effectively split each of the major New Testament roles in two, saying, "Rowling has made the split in order to facilitate a differentiated theological understanding.'' For example, Eisenstadt said, Dumbledore and Harry Potter represent Jesus, with Potter as Jesus's human incarnation, who dies and is reborn to defeat Voldemort, and with Dumbledore as Jesus in heaven, as a divine intercessor. She described Snape and Draco Malfoy as two aspects of Judas, and the horcruxes and the hallows as two facets of the afterlife. Most provocatively, Eisenstadt, who teaches Jewish studies, suggested that the goblins and the Ministry of Magic both stand in for the Jewish community as seen by anti-Semites. "Rowling takes the rapacious and unscrupulous characteristics of the Jews (as seen by anti-Semites) and assigns these to a non-human species,'' she said. She noted that the goblins are "small, hunched and wizened,'' love money and precious metals, work as goldsmiths, are hoarders, run the bank, and cheat when they can. "Clearly the goblins are the anti-Semites' Jews,'' she said. "The other side of the anti-Semitic conception of Jews is legalism,'' she said, "and legalism is the quality of the Ministry of Magic." Eisenstadt said the ministry "is unquestionably the Pharisees,'' and said that as the ministry's role evolves during the Potter series, "the reader can not help but understand it as a commentary on politics at large.''

(One observation by Eisenstadt that caught my attention was her critique of the Hogwarts administration for allowing a Sorting Hat to assign children to houses with others of the same personality type. "An enlightened school board would break up Slytherin,'' she said. "But there is no enlightened school board in the wizarding world.")

Finally, Lois Shepherd, an expert on bioethics at the University of Virginia Law School, explored the connection between the body and the mind in the Potter series.

A postscript: the hotel where the religion professors are meeting is across the street from Grant Park, where Barack Obama is scheduled to have his election night rally, and there are lots of folks walking by wearing Obama gear. But in the lobby of the Hilton this evening, I saw an academic wearing campaign button for a ticket only Potter fans can appreciate: Fudge/Umbridge.

(Photo above shows Ralph Fiennes as Voldemort in the 2007 film "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.")

I hadn't caught this, but several alert religion bloggers have noted that, in her guest appearance on Saturday Night Live, GOP vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin told actor Alec Baldwin (left) that she prefers his brother, Stephen (right). That's of interest in evangelical circles because Stephen is the born-again Baldwin brother, as AP reporter David Bauder noted in his story.

Over at GetReligion, Daniel Pulliam writes:

"The reference is subtle enough that many people missed it or just failed to mention it. I know while watching the show Sunday morning (after a good night’s sleep) I didn’t pick up on the reference. I wonder whether the SNL writers knew the connection they were making between Palin and the other Baldwin?"

At Christianity Today, Sarah Pulliam also makes note of Palin's preference.

Here's the SNL clip:

The Archbishop of Newark, John J. Myers, is unhappy that Bill Maher's new film, "Religulous,'' was filmed in a local parish, Our Lady of Mercy in Park Ridge. Newark Star-Ledger religion writer Jeff Diamant reports:

"In the scenes filmed at the church, Maher, a 52-year-old native of nearby River Vale in northern Bergen County, interviews his mother, Julie, and his sister, Kathy, about the family's attendance there when he was a child. Julie Maher, who died after the filming but before the movie opened Oct. 3, was Jewish, and talked about her late husband's devotion to Catholicism. Those scenes are not among the most inflammatory parts of the film, which targets religious beliefs, including literal interpretation of Scripture. Maher, for example, ridicules the doctrine of the Virgin Birth of Jesus and the biblical account of the talking snake in the Garden of Eden. He challenges believers -- evangelical truck drivers, U.S. Sen. Mark Pryor (D-Ark.) and a host of clergy -- about the supernatural elements of religious doctrine. And while Catholics are less of a direct target in the film than evangelical Protestants, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, which has a movie-reviewing divi sion, rated the movie "O" for offensive."

Diamant also has a follow-up story, in which the pastor of the church says he had been given permission to allow the filming.

(Photo shows Bill Maher on location at The Holy Land Experience in Orlando.)

A new poll of Jewish voters by the American Jewish Committee finds the Democratic candidate, Sen. Barack Obama, with support from 57 percent of those surveyed. The Republican candidate, Sen. John McCain, has 30 percent support, and 13 percent remain undecided. The survey was taken before last Friday's presidential debate.

A similar survey four years ago found the Democratic candidate, Sen. John Kerry, with 69 percent support among Jews, compared to 24 percent support for the Republican candidate, President George W. Bush, 3 percent for the Green Party candidate, Ralph Nader, and 5 percent undecided.

In a news release, the American Jewish Committee said it found significant differences among the different Jewish denominations:

"Differences between Orthodox and non-Orthodox are pronounced in the support given the presidential candidates. Thus, Obama has the support of 13 percent of Orthodox Jews, as against 59 percent of Conservative Jews, 62 percent of Reform Jews, and 61 percent of the Just Jewish.' Conversely, McCain draws 78 percent of Orthodox Jews, as against 26 percent of Conservative Jews, 27 percent of Reform Jews, and 26 percent of the 'Just Jewish.'"

JTA (the Jewish Telegraphic Agency) explores the results in a story yesterday:

"(Democrats) say that a Republican campaign depicting Obama as overly sympathetic to Palestinians and as insufficiently confrontational with Iran, as well as an internet-based campaign falsely depicting Obama as a secret Muslim, has hurt support for the Democrat among Jews. 'The concerns about Obama, the issues, the smears, the falsehoods, have already been widely circulated and are well known,' said Mik Moore, who runs JewsVote.org, an effort to get out the Jewish vote among Democrats. Matt Brooks, who directs the Republican Jewish Coalition, said his ads in Jewish newspapers in swing states where Jews may make a difference -- particularly Florida, Pennsylvania and Ohio -- have raised substantive questions about Obama. Brooks cited Obama's emphasis on the need for more diplomacy in dealing with Iran and his bungled efforts to explain his views on Jerusalem -- and Brooks predicted bigger gains come Election Day. 'This poll is just another data point in an ongoing series of polls that underscore the tremendous problems Barack Obama has among Jewish voters,' Brooks said."

Over at the Spiritual Politics blog, Mark Silk observes:

"The survey period includes McCain's current high water mark; he'd be doing a few points worse if the entire survey were taken in the past few days. As expected, Jewish voters turn out to heartily approve Obama's choice of Joe Biden (73-15), and disapprove of John McCain's choice of Sarah Palin (54-37). Palin's numbers seem unlikely to get any better; I'd guess worse. The Orthodox love McCain, supporting him at a 78 percent clip; but they constitute only eight percent of the community. Just a bit more than a quarter of the others support him. Jewish question of the day: Will Sarah Silverman move the needle?"

Silk is referring to a new video by Silverman urging young Jews to embark on a "Great Schlep" to Florida to persuade their grandparents to vote for Obama. The video is, of course, edgy and expletive-laden, but if you're OK with that, hit the play button:

(Graphic from American Jewish Committee.)

The Morgan Library & Museum in New York is displaying three rare Gutenberg Bibles simultaneously -- an unusual opportunity to see different versions of the 15th Century books, which are famous as the first books printed in the West, and also as the first printed from movable type. An explanation from the Morgan:

"The invention of printing is commonly credited to Johann Gutenberg, who developed the technique of casting metal types and composing them letter by letter, line-by-line, to produce pages ready for the press, where they could be inked and printed on sheets of paper or vellum. To exploit this invention, he set up one, possibly two, workshops in Mainz, Germany, and raised a considerable sum of money for the production of the Bible, which was completed around 1455. Bibliographers believe that Gutenberg and his successors printed between 120 and 135 copies of the Bible on paper and between 40 and 45 copies on vellum, of which nearly 50 copies survive, not all in good condition. A complete copy contains the Latin Vulgate text of the Bible in 1,282 pages, usually bound in two stout volumes."

I had a chance to visit recently, and spoke with a curator, John Bidwell (a Cotuit native!) about the significance of the Bibles. Here's a brief video, with pix:

Randy Newman (right), the singer, songwriter, and film score composer, muses about heaven in the new issue of Rolling Stone:

"Sometimes you do think, 'Jeez, it'd be great if there were an afterlife.' Especially if you're sixtysomething, like I am, and you meet someone who's religious, and you think about how they have that faith. I mean, it doesn't make you want to run out and hold up a banner for atheism. What's the point? 'Follow me! Don't believe in an afterlife!'"

(Photo by Andrew Harrer for Bloomberg.)

I'm a little late noting this, but a planned revival of "Godspell" on Broadway has been postponed, apparently a victim of the weak economy. The statement from producer Adam Epstein:

"I am devastated that, due to the loss of a major investor in the harsh reality of a slowing economy, there were no other options at this time than to postpone. I could not in good conscience move forward without full confidence that the capitalization was in place and that all of those employed by the production could be responsibly taken care of. . . Even in light of the situation, my passion for this vibrant production is unwavering and it is my goal to regroup as soon as possible."

Godspell, a musical version of the Gospel of Matthew, began as a senior thesis project at Carnegie Mellon and initially consisted of lyrics from the Episcopal hymnal. With a new score by Stephen Schwartz, it ran for five years Off Broadway, from 1971 to 1976, and then for an additional year on Broadway. It was made into a movie in 1973. Although the show is frequently performed around the country, it has not been revived on Broadway.

Coming soon to a theater near you: a mocking attack on organized religion from Bill Maher, the comedian and television host.

The film, "Religulous,'' is scheduled to open Oct. 3, and the preview is now playing in theaters -- I caught the preview over the weekend at the Kendall, and, not surprisingly, Maher's point of view looks to be highly critical, starting with the title, which is a combination of "religion" and "ridiculous.'' The film, which Maher calls "a documentary about religion," is directed by Larry Charles, who also directed "Borat.'' In the film, Maher interviews people about religion and God; needless to say, the snippets featured in the trailer show believers in a highly unflattering light. Many of the trailer's scenes of religious people are underscored by Gnarls Barkley's hit song, "Crazy.''

Maher is best-known as the former host of "Politically Incorrect,'' a political talk show that ran on Comedy Central and then on ABC. He now hosts a show called "Real Time with Bill Maher" on HBO. He has been a persistent critic of organized religion, both as a comedian and commentator.

Earlier this year, on "Late Night with Conan O'Brien,'' he summed up his antipathy toward religion, saying, “You can’t be a rational person six days of the week and put on a suit and make rational decisions and go to work and, on one day of the week, go to a building and think you’re drinking the blood of a 2,000-year-old space god. That doesn’t make you a person of faith…That makes you a schizophrenic.”

Maher's mother was Jewish and his father Catholic; he was raised Catholic, and has been particularly critical of Catholicism, often drawing the ire of the Catholic League. In April of this year, on the eve of a visit to the US by Pope Benedict XVI, Maher described the Catholic Church as "the Bear Stearns of organized pedophilia,'' and said, "If you have a few hundred followers and you let some of them molest children, they call you a cult leader. If you have a billion, they call you 'Pope'.''

Maher talked about the film with Larry King on Feb. 4. An excerpt:

KING: Do you suspect when "Religulous" comes out to get a lot of flak?

MAHER: Yes, but I get a lot of flak anyway. That's been their trick for hundreds of years. They say the word faith and somehow we all have to back off and pretend that what they believe is not destructive, and I won't do that. And there are millions of people who won't do that. The minority that is what I would call rationalists, that is people who don't believe in something supernatural, something that was obviously fables that were written by men before men knew what a germ or an atom was. OK?

Yes, we're rationalists. That's like 20 percent of people under 30. That's a bigger minority than lots of minorities. They just don't speak up. I'm hoping this movie and this movement will encourage people to speak up about this. They accuse me of being a Catholic bigot. First of all, I don't have it out especially for the Catholics. I think all religions are coo-coo. OK? It's not just the Catholics.

I'm not a bigot. Just because I wish for the demise of an organization that I think is entirely destructive to the human race, that doesn't make me a bigot. I also wish for demise of Hamas and the KKK. Not that on every score the Catholic Church is the same as those two organizations. But to me they are destructive organizations. I'm not a bigot because I root for their downfall.

KING: But you can offend them?

MAHER: I have been doing it for 15 years. They're perfectly within their rights to be offended. But they're not going to shut me up. They're not going to do it by saying the magic word, faith. This is what I believe. Yes, you believe it. I'm going to say why it's dumb.

The film has already screened in New York and California, so that it could qualify for the Oscars; writing in Variety, critic Robert Koehler called it "brilliant" and "incendiary" and said, "To believers expecting a blind hatchet job, this will prove both thought-provoking and a bit disarming; skeptics may be surprised (as Maher is) by the occasionally smart replies to his queries."

Stay tuned.

(Photo, from Lionsgate, shows Bill Maher at the Vatican, in St. Peter's Square.)

Helena Bonham Carter, the 42-year-old British actress, talks with Globe correspondent Lynda Gorov about playing a Jewish mum in the new British film, "Sixty Six," about a boy whose dreams of a grand bar mitzvah run into trouble when his big day turns out to coincide with the World Cup. An excerpt:

"Unexpected new information about the Oscar-nominated actress ('The Wings of the Dove,' 1997): She's crazy for scrap-booking, a hobby mostly unknown in England; she's got a bit of a mouth on her; and, translucent skin and Merchant Ivory movie credentials aside, she's no corset queen. Turns out she's Jewish on her mother's side. That last bit is actually relevant, in that her latest movie, 'Sixty Six,' has her playing a classic Jewish mother (well, in this case, mum). Initial reaction (mine) aside, it's in fact not the most against-type casting since Melanie Griffith pretended to be a Jewish/Irish secretary/spy in 1992's 'Shining Through.' Bonham Carter actually describes her own heritage as 'Jewish, Catholic, mongrels, paradoxical.' 'My mother was triumphant: 'You're finally playing your roots instead of the English rose,' she said. 'Still, it was a very fine line not to go completely over the top.'"

The film is scheduled to open in Boston on Friday (at the Kendall).

(Photo shows Gregg Sulkin and Helena Bonham Carter in a scene from "Sixty Six.")

Isaac Hayes is being remembered in many ways today, but here at the religion desk, we pause to recall his staunch defense of Scientology, which led him to resign as the voice of Chef (right) on "South Park" to protest an episode that mocked his faith. The "South Park" folks, in return, killed him off, or at least seemed to.

The incident in which Chef is killed (which originally aired on March 22, 2006) is too gruesome for me to post (and it's not funny either, IMHO), but for a taste of what got Hayes so exercised, below is a clip called "Stan Chooses Scientology.''

The Globe's Joseph P. Kahn commented on the Hayes-South Park dust-up in 2006, writing:

"Hayes played Chef on 'South Park' for nine irreverent years, during which the show mocked virtually every religious group under the sun. Nevertheless, he asked to be contractually released Monday, saying, 'Religious beliefs are sacred to people, and at all times should be respected and honored.'"

And in the New York Times, also in 2006, Alessandra Stanley reflected on the relationship between celebrity, Scientology and South Park, writing:

"Isaac Hayes left 'South Park' after an episode of the animated series on Comedy Central savagely mocked his religion, the Church of Scientology, and its most famous follower, Tom Cruise. Earlier this month, Comedy Central pulled a rerun of the offending episode, 'Trapped in the Closet,' after speculation that Mr. Cruise was displeased. Viacom, the parent company of Paramount, is about to release Mr. Cruise's movie, 'Mission: Impossible III.' Oh, and Viacom also owns Comedy Central. It looks like two sides are pretty much even. Yet the creators of 'South Park' didn't make fun of Viacom's pliability on the premiere of the show's 10th season Wednesday night. Instead, Matt Stone and Trey Parker reserved their scorn for Mr. Hayes and the Church of Scientology: the episode was entirely devoted to portraying Mr. Hayes's character, Chef, as the victim of a sinister brainwashing cult."

(BTW, if you visit the South Park web site today, among the top searches, not surprisingly, is Isaac Hayes.)

Paging Sister Wendy! The film director Roland Emmerich ("Independence Day") has filled his London townhouse with a variety of unusual art objects, including, according to a feature in the home section of The New York Times, a wax statue of Pope John Paul II reading his own obituary under the stairs. Under the circumstances, it's not clear (at least to me) why he looks so happy, or so young. An excerpt from the story:

"He instructed his designer, John Teall, of Flux Interiors, to make the house 'as nonfrumpy as possible,' he said, so that 'when the neighbors peek in, they might want to call the police or something.'"

(Photo by Gavin Jackson/Arcaid for The New York Times)

I have to admit, Cardinal O'Malley's new titular church, Santa Maria della Vittoria, is a blogger's dream.

First of all, it's directly, and I mean directly, across the street from Santa Susanna, the church that belonged to the last three cardinal-archbishops of Boston, but that O'Malley can't have because it now belongs to Cardinal Bernard F. Law for life.

Second of all, it's featured prominently in Dan Brown's bestselling novel, "Angels and Demons,'' and is a popular spot on the "Angels and Demons" theme-tours that now show tourists Roman sites mentioned in the book.

Let me stipulate up front: the church is completely lovely. It was closed when photographer David Ryan and I stopped by yesterday at midday, but the cheerful rector, Rev. Stefano Guernelli, was kind enough to let us in anyway. The church is more like a chapel, with pews that might be able to seat 100 worshipers, and every surface is covered in baroque painting and sculpture. The most famous object, and the one that intrigued Dan Brown because it is often viewed as sexually charged, is Bernini's sculpture of St. Theresa of Avila in Ecstasy.

The church is overseen by Discalced Carmelite friars -- who, given their sudden Boston connection, proudly pointed out that there are at least four houses of Carmelites in the Boston archdiocese. A few of the enterprising friars took it upon themselves to just show up at the apostolic palace on Friday so they could introduce themselves to O'Malley and give him a guidebook to the church; on Saturday the cardinal repaid the favor, stopping by to visit a few hours after we were there.

"The friars were very, very friendly, and I was very moved by the fact that young St. Theresa (of Lisieux) had actually gone to that church and prayed there,'' he said, referring to Theresa of Lisieux, a 19th Century Carmelite nun who is now a popular saint often called the Little Flower. "Of course, the baroque statues and paintings are magnificent. They have a nice shrine to St. Francis there too.''

I asked O'Malley whether he had read "Angels and Demons," or Brown's even bigger bestseller, "The Da Vinci Code.'' To my surprise, the cardinal has read both novels -- he says they were sent to him by his sister. He said the plots are "outrageous," in terms of their fictionalizing of Christian history, and the endings poor -- "I wouldn't give them an A as literature,'' he said, but he was obviously intrigued to know what all the fuss was about. (The U.S. bishops' conference has actually posted a web site debunking "The Da Vinci Code,'' in anticipation of the May 19 release of the film.)

I then asked the cardinal what he made of the "Angels and Demons" connection to his new church, and this was his response:

"I think it's silly,'' he said. "But if it brings people to see the church, hopefully, being in a holy place, and in a place that is beautiful, hopefully it will be a religious experience for them. For us as Catholics, we believe that the beauty of the church, and the church music, is a way of lifting our minds to God's beauty.''

(I have not actually read "Angels and Demons" -- "The Da Vinci Code" was enough for me -- but in my effort to be a responsible beat reporter, today I swung by la Feltrinelli, an Italian bookstore with an English-language section, to pick up a copy, and I plan to read it on the flight back to Boston.)

At some point, O'Malley will have to return to Rome to formally take possession of the church, as the ritual is known, and then he will be responsible for protecting its finances and spiritual life in some way, although not for overseeing it on a day-to-day basis. He said he doesn't know when the possession-taking will be, but that it might be September, or the next time he needs to be back in town. The ceremony is usually accompanied by pomp and parties; it's not clear how O'Malley, who isn't much for that sort of thing, might modify that tradition.

(Rev. Stefano Guernelli in the sanctuary.)