Articles on This Journey

Along my journey, I am freelancing news articles about the intriguing religious communities I meet. Below are some of the pieces I've done so far, along with nice things other people have said about me.

August 19, 2008

For The Religion News Service.

WOODSTOCK, N.Y. – Sitting on his porch, the Rabbi Yisroel Gootblatt is strumming a guitar, playing an old Bob Dylan ditty. In a town known for artists, musicians, and other eccentric personalities, he blends in with the scenery. But he’s actually trying something quite different.

Gootblatt is a rabbi in the Chabad-Lubavitch movement in Orthodox Judaism who believes in the existence of the as yet unrevealed messiah on Earth. In order to speed the revelation process, Lubavitchers believe Jews must be united in their tradition, which Gootblatt often portrays as a battle.

“[All rabbis are on] their way on the front lines, leaving the security of religious community and going to a place where to varying degrees people are unacquainted with Torah and Jewish perspectives,” he says. “Woodstock is extreme in that regard. It’s a place where there’s an incredible percentage of the population of Jews who happen to be a lot less knowledgeable of their tradition, and even hostile to it,” Gootblatt says.

So he gets creative, creating a relaxed atmosphere where beer, music and conversation flow freely and loudly. “There’s actually a saying from the Talmud: ‘When the wine goes in, the secrets come out,’ ” he says. “When people are relaxed and having a good time, it’s the best way to share things that are meaningful.”

Those who jam with him call him the Rock ‘n Roll Rabbi, and his porch is a constant stream of punks, hippies, and other alternative types, covered in tattoos and piercings. While Gootblatt doesn’t necessarily approve of their choices, he’s willing to let a certain amount slide.

After the partying is done, the Torah comes out, and the rabbi is set for instruction. Unfortunately for Gootblatt, this is when a lot of the neighborhood avoids the house.

He has managed to catch one big fish, however. Eddie “Mad Dog” Caridi was the bassist for punk band Murphy’s Law and is a mainstay of the New York punk scene. When he decided to reconnect with his Jewish heritage, he heard about the Rock ‘n Roll rabbi all the way down in Brooklyn, and moved to Woodstock. He’s been living with Gootblatt for three months, and says that the rabbi hopes he will influence the youth who look up to him to learn of their heritage.

“We jam for like and hour, and then he’s like Torah, Torah, Torah, Torah, Torah. He gets overbearing with it.”

He’s making a little headway, but not a lot,” Caridi says. “Woodstock’s not a big religious town: it’s more like free love, do what you want. It’s not like a lot of people are seeking him out, but he is getting some response, which is good, because it’s better than none.”

August 11, 2008

For The Religion News Service

Published in the Albany Times-Union and the Charlotte Observer, among other places.

SABBATHDAY LAKE, Maine — Arnold Hadd is the last Shaker man on Earth.

A polite man, he is simple in his speech, still utilizing the traditional “yay” and “nay” in place of the common “yes” and “no.” Yet when the discussion turns to the Shakers’ perceived legacy as craftspeople, his mannerisms change.

“In the vernacular, it pisses me off,” he says. “Everybody comes here thinking we’re a guild of furniture makers, which is about as far away from the truth as it can be.”

But while such misinterpretation may be the bane of the Shaker tradition, it may also be its salvation.

Hadd, 51, is a member the last Shaker community here, situated on a small farm by a placid lake. In the 19th century, the farm housed hundreds, and there were as many as 6,000 Shakers across the country. But now there are only four, and new members are few and far between.

The United Society of Believers, as Shakers are formally known, was founded in 1747 in Manchester, England, yet followers were forced to move to America soon after to escape persecution.

Their name arose out of mockery of their worship — like the Quakers or even the Methodists — which often involved singing, dancing, and even convulsion and speaking in tongues said to be inspired by the Holy Spirit. A semi-isolationist group, Shakers built about two dozen communities, mainly between Maine and Kentucky.

The foundations of the faith include living like Christ, which for Shakers means living celibately and sharing communal property. They also believe in the equality of the sexes, living peacefully, and continuous revelation.

But their belief in the sanctity of hard work — embodied by their adage, “Hands to Work, Hearts to God” — has created a predicament in the faith’s twilight.

“The general population associates Shakers with their furniture and (a) few of their items,” says Leonard Brooks, a Shaker historian who has lived with the Sabbathday Lake community for 30 years. He is currently director of their library and museum, which displays the artwork of the Shakers, from divinely-inspired drawings and songs to intricately crafted baskets and furniture.

“It’s unfortunate that craftsmanship is all people see, as the Shakers are so much more,” Brooks says. “They’re like living Psalms. In them, you read how brutal God is, throwing everything at you. Shakers recognize their shortcomings and challenges, and don’t overstate their virtues. They are laborers who experience the full range of experience of life, just as in the Psalms.”

Thousands of tourists visit the community every summer to see the artistry of generations of Shakers. But some Shakers are upset that furniture might be all they see. In fact, a well-known quote circulates among the Shakers reflects their frustration: “I don’t want to be remembered as a chair,” said Mildred Barker, a Shaker who died in 1990 after living in Sabbathday Lake for almost a century.

So it might seem ironic that a community would advertise aspects that it does not want to be known for, yet it’s part of an intentional plan. Visitors are not just offered a window on Shaker production, but are able to tour the entire farm, from the fruit orchard to the meeting house. And if they come on Sunday, they are welcome to join in worship.

“Our mission is just to make people aware,” says Hadd. “Some people just take away that they’ve seen more furniture, but a lot of people take away that is a living community, which they weren’t aware of.”

And Shakers hope, some visitors may decide to join the community to keep the tradition going. Since Hadd became a member in 1978, dozens of people have stayed with the Shakers. But only two have stayed permanently.

Spreading the Shakers’ message through tourism is hard, and Hadd says the amount of people who can’t see past the object gets to him.

“It’s really difficult because as Americans, we look at output,” Hadd says. “But what we produce isn’t actually important; it’s work, it’s laboring. I have yet to figure out how to get that through to people.”

Nevertheless, he has faith that Shakers will persevere as long as need be.

“We believe it is the truth, and whether others see it as the truth or not, we have to live and die by it,” he says. “But I have a firm belief that as long as this is God’s work, God’s going to send the hands to keep it going.”

After all, people don’t dedicate their lives to making furniture. Even Jesus gave up being a carpenter.

“He saw something else a little higher,” Hadd says.

July 28, 2008

This was a nice post by T.A.B. on Yer Sweet Chimneys:

Matt Streib is on a seven-month bike tour of religious locations around the country. So far he’s ridden with Quakers in rural Pennsylvania, participated in a 700+ person Mormon pageant/spectacle in upstate New York (hence the getup in the first photo), tried to fix a cell phone for a Hassidic couple on the road, hung out with Shambhala Buddhists in Vermont, visited the last Shaker congregation in the world in Maine, talked with Christian Scientists in Boston…and more. Did I mention he’s camping through all of this? And he’s already biked over 1000 miles, all in less than two months.

Matt’s posts and photos are completely fascinating, and as a Cornell- and Medill-trained journalist with a pre-existing unique take on religion, I couldn’t think of anyone better (or anyone with enough perseverance and smarts, frankly) to take on this project.

Especially as a nonreligious person navigating the contemporary Protestant-centered political realm (it’s hard to escape, particularly in an election year), I found that it’s easy to forget the incredible diversity of religions that exists here in the States. Matt’s posts and podcasts on the people and places he’s encountered are thoughtful, balanced and totally engaging.

July 21, 2008

This is a nice post from Read the Spirit with an essay I wrote for them:

This week, we’re focusing on heroes. Follow us through the week and you’ll learn a whole lot more than you might imagine. Oh, the places we’ll take you this week! We’ll rove from America’s heartland to China, from the tale of a young hero to a conversation with a noble old prophet on Wednesday who still is jousting with giants about the meaning of faith.

All I can say this week is: Stay tuned!

TODAY, I’m pleased to introduce a young hero. At least, in my book, Matthew Streib “had” me with these lines in the introduction to his brand-new Web site, American Pilgrimage:

“Everyone always leaves America to find spirituality. From Delhi and Jerusalem to Guadeloupe and Lourdes, there are guides and travelogues and voyagers who have found themselves, found their ancestors, or found God.

“But what about our country?”

Well, in each new age, we need new heroes like Matthew, who at 26 has set off on his bicycle to chronicle America’s spiritual nooks and crannies.

Such a voyage launched my own career in journalism. More than 30 years ago, during America’s bi-centennial, I set off around North America for months of travel by bus (and occasionally by boat and by thumb) and, since the Web hadn’t been developed in 1976, I chronicled my adventures as a series of weekly columns for the Flint Journal.

There have been other similar pilgrims. When writing in this mode, we’re actually part of a wonderfully rich genre in American letters. In fact, if you’ve got a favorite roving hero from America’s past — send me an Email. I’d love to hear from you on this theme. We’re assembling another Reader Roundup page for Friday, so get me your note in the next couple of days.

But, let’s jump into our week right now with a letter specially written from the road by this young hero for ReadTheSpirit …

An Epistle from Matthew on his American Pilgrimage

As a child, I never had a faith of my own. My parents were agnostic and incurious about religion. God was never discussed. When I first looked for any religious text, all I could find was an old Oxford Annotated Bible in the basement that my mother had used for a class in college.

But I’ve always felt called to faith, and since I was 13, I’ve been on a journey to find a tradition that I can call home. From attending Jewish Shabbat and Catholic Mass with high school friends to eventual degrees in religion and its history, I am on a path of constant learning about interpretations of God. And because of my upbringing, I feel like a blank slate that is being filled.

This has brought me to my present pilgrimage, a seven-month exploration of American faith with nothing but a bicycle, a backpack and my essential equipment. I am visiting religious sites that are vibrant, compelling, and show the unique complexities of Americans’ connection with the divine.

When many people think of pilgrimages to find God, they think of travel to the Old World, to Mecca and Jerusalem, Tibet and Lourdes, the foundations of faith. But America has so much to offer that is often overlooked.

Few other countries can rival the amount of faiths that have arisen and thrived in America, from the Church of Latter Day Saints to Shambhala Buddhism to the Shakers. The United States, a melting pot without a state church, has been host to constant questioning, restructuring and revelations, with periodic Great Awakenings adding new ideas and perspectives to the mix.

I seek to find out why America is so special and unique, and remains a dynamic incubator of religious innovation. Granted, polls from places such as the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life show that increasingly, Americans are choosing categories such as “no religion” to describe their faith. While many interpret that as stagnation and atheism, it’s really just a symptom of a greater change.

In the month that I’ve traveled so far, I’ve found Jews at a Quaker gathering, Methodists at a Mormon pageant, and Church of Christ members at a Buddhist retreat. Even at diners, campsites and rest stops, I rarely encounter someone who doesn’t have a story about their faith, even if they don’t subscribe to a religion. Americans aren’t losing their faith, they’re rediscovering it in new ways and they don’t know how to categorize it.

During my pilgrimage, I visit at least one new site every week, and plan to see most of the country and almost every faith I can think of by the time I’m done. And on my blog and in my podcasts, I’m trying to package my journey in such a way that others can experience the richness that this country offers.

Every week, be it acting out a scene with Mormon actors, chanting Buddhist mantras to gong accompaniment, or exploring Catholic crypts, I am constantly questioning and reexamining what it means to be close to God.

I may never find the tradition that suits me perfectly, but I take comfort in the fact that I am trying. And, as many religions say, the path is just as important as the destination.

July 18, 2008

For The Religion News Service, by me and Renee K. Gadoua.

Published in the Albany Times-Union, among other places.

PALMYRA, N.Y. — Actors know that a career on stage takes dedication and sacrifice, but Mormons in the annual Hill Cumorah pageant take that to a whole new level.

With a discerning application process, just one week to prepare and an all-volunteer crew, Mormons create a high-tech dramatization of ancient events for thousands of pilgrims who travel here from all over the country.

Ever since 1937, the Hill Cumorah pageant has re-enacted stories from the Book of Mormon, which tells of Jesus’ interaction with ancient peoples in the Americas. The pageant is staged on the very hill where Mormon prophet Joseph Smith is said to have found golden plates with the peoples’ history inscribed on them.

Beyond being great theater, the pageant unites Mormons and spreads the faith, especially in a year when Mitt Romney’s Mormonism and a (non-Mormon) polygamous sect in Texas dominated headlines.

Matthew Thomas, 55, spent thousands of dollars to travel from St. Louis with his family of four to act in the nine-day pageant. All participants must pay their own way, so the family is staying in an RV on Hill Cumorah property.

“There really isn’t a better family vacation,” he said. “We’ve done pageants before in Nauvoo, Ill., but this is much larger, much more intense.”

Intense indeed. Thousands of Mormons apply to be a part of the pageant, but only 716 were chosen this year in a process that involves praying over one-page application forms. Cast members arrive in New York only a week before the pageant begins, and must be assigned roles, learn choreography, memorize their lines, and figure out how to put on their period-specific costumes.

The pageant begins in 600 B.C., where the prophet Lehi receives divine knowledge about the impending destruction of Jerusalem and enslavement of the Israelites. Unable to save their people, the families of Lehi and another righteous man set out on the Atlantic to the New World, referred to as the “promised land.”

“It’s one thing to read about Lehi and his family crossing the ocean in a wooden boat,” said Marc Clay, a Mormon leader in central New York who first saw the show as a teenager and later joined the church.

“When you read that it has one meaning. When you see the storm and the lightning and the thunder and the mast breaks and the sail falls down, you get the feeling of despair in their plight in the ocean.”

Once established in the Americas, the followers of the righteous sons of Lehi, called the Nephites, constantly battle against the Lamanites, the followers of the disobedient ones. After Jesus dies in Jerusalem, he appears to the peoples of the New World, and there is tentative peace. But eventually, the Nephites, who stray from righteousness, are destroyed. Moroni, son of Mormon, hides the plates at Hill Cumorah where Joseph Smith would discover them centuries later.

About five weeks before the pageant starts, a couple dozen teenage boys piece together what the pageant is perhaps most famous for: special effects. With a deluge battering the ship at sea, bursts of flame destroying Jerusalem, and Jesus descending from three stories above the ground, the pageant is a Broadway-style spectacle.

In fact, the effects had been so immense that organizers had to tone them down after the 9/11 attacks because the amount of explosives posed a possible security threat.

Most importantly, the cast members must overcome their stage fright in front of the 39,000 pilgrims who attend each year. As much as 25 percent of the audience is non-Mormon, according to church statistics, and cast members spend hours discussing their faith with audience members before each performance. In typically organized Mormon fashion, the impromptu missionaries are armed with tiny stickers to mark those who they’ve talked to, so that no one is overlooked.

Toi Clawson, a spokeswoman for the pageant, said that the play is a great way to engage non-Mormons. “Even people who are not of our faith feel that connection of what it would be like to greet the savior when he comes down, and it’s quite moving,” she said.

But the pageant also helps strengthen the faith of a far-flung Mormon flock by creating an ad-hoc community of participants from around the globe, participants say.

“Someone once said that theater is the suspension of disbelief, and for me and my family, this experience is the demonstration or the realization of belief,” Thomas said.

“When the savior comes in the final scenes, it’s very touching, because it’s my faith, my knowledge that that day will come, and it will be a beautiful time to see him and thank him for what he’s done.”