John T. Elson died on Sept. 7. John who, you ask? The New York Times’ obit explains that Elson was the Time religion editor who wrote the magazine’s famous 1966 cover story asking: “Is God dead?”
All journalists want to write a story that makes a big splash. John T. Elson, the religion editor at Time magazine, was no exception. But in 1966 he got more than he bargained for.
For more than a year, Mr. Elson had labored over an article examining radical new approaches to thinking about God that were gaining currency in seminaries and universities and spilling over to the public at large.
When finally completed, it became the cover story for the issue of April 8, as Easter and Passover approached. The cover itself was eye-catching, the first one in Time’s 43-year history to appear without a photograph or an illustration. Giant blood-red letters against a black background spelled out the question “Is God Dead?”
The issue caused an uproar, equaled only by John Lennon’s offhand remark, published in a magazine for teenagers a few months later, that the Beatles were more popular than Jesus. The “Is God Dead?” issue gave Time its biggest newsstand sales in more than 20 years and elicited 3,500 letters to the editor, the most in its history to that point. It remains a signpost of the 1960s, testimony to the wrenching social changes transforming the United States.
I just re-read Elson’s story. Its catchy opening rapidly dispels the notion, held by many then and now, that the article attacks theism:
Is God dead? It is a question that tantalizes both believers, who perhaps secretly fear that he is, and atheists, who possibly suspect that the answer is no.
Is God dead? The three words represent a summons to reflect on the meaning of existence. No longer is the question the taunting jest of skeptics for whom unbelief is the test of wisdom and for whom Nietzsche is the prophet who gave the right answer a century ago. Even within Christianity, now confidently renewing itself in spirit as well as form, a small band of radical theologians has seriously argued that the churches must accept the fact of God’s death, and get along without him.
And its catchy conclusion is ultimately faith affirming:
Gabriel Vahanian suggests that there may well be no true faith without a measure of doubt, and thus contemporary Christian worry about God could be a necessary and healthy antidote to centuries in which faith was too confident and sure. Perhaps today, the Christian can do no better than echo the prayer of the worried father who pleaded with Christ to heal his spirit-possessed son: “I believe; help my unbelief.”
In between the opening and closing were more than 5,000 words of solid, thoughtful religion journalism.
The Time article’s timing makes it a prime example of the “Holy Day Massacre” tradition of religion journalism. How many of us who cover journalism for the mainstream media have released provocative stories at Christmas or Easter time? And how many people of faith have responded by not venturing out of their cocoons to read mainstream religion coverage at holiday time, or any time?
My own evidence-for-the-resurrection Easter stories generated negligible reader response, while Easter stories quoting the John Dominic Crossan and other Jesus Seminar members nearly led to my own crucifixion!
Elson’s obituary also provides an opportunity to compare his media world to our own. There was poster circulated in some conservative Christian circles during the 60s and 70s that said:
“God is dead.” - Nietzsche
“Nietzsche is dead.” - God
But what seems most dead now is the old world in which a major newsweekly like Time could devote so much space to an important theological debate and, in doing so, significantly impact national discourse. Today, I wish important national issues like war and health care reform generated a similarly thoughtful debate
I’m going to pull Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death off the shelf, read it, and weep.
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Comments (8) |
September 21, 2009, at 6:50 pm
Steve— I may have to join you - I’ve been thinking about taking out Postman’s book myself
September 21, 2009, at 7:50 pm
You too can own a button or t-shirt with that statement on it.
Amen.
September 22, 2009, at 10:41 am
If this tradition does go back at least as far as 1966, it may have contributed to the journalistic secularism this board has such a problem with.
Contrarian journalism is an honorable tradition. Every September 11th, dignitaries memorialize the dead, but it’s perfectly acceptable for a newpaper to run a headline along the lines of “How secure are we X years later?” Or something like “How independent are we?” on July 4th. “Holy Day Massacre” journalism may have sprung from simple contrarian journalism.
September 22, 2009, at 5:29 pm
What’s often missed in the fuss over that famous Time “Is God Dead” issue is that one can believe in God and STILL understand precisely what Nietzsche was getting at.
When Nietzsche said “God is dead,” he was not saying that Yahweh had kicked the bucket, or even that God does not exist (though Nietzsche plainly DID believe that God does not exist). He was making a broader point about European society, is laws, it mores and its culture.
By the time Nietzsche proclaimed “God is dead,” it was no longer dangerous or controversial to say such things openly in academia or in the halls of government. Europe’s rulling and intellectual classes were no longer religious, and HADN’T been in ages. Now, one would THINK that, since Europe’s entire culture and ethos were built on Christianity, things would change drastically once Christianity waned. And yet, in 19th century Europe, almost nothing HAD changed. The baby (Christ) had been thrown away, but Europe was still clinging firmly to the bathwater (basic Christian morality).
Many Europeans acted as if the collapse of Christianity needn’t change anything. Nietzsche’s was screaming at such people, “If you no longer believe in what the Church told you, that should change your attitudes toward EVERYTHING, you dolt!”
Even a Christian should be able to grasp that, and some did. Dostoevsky famously wrote, “If God does not exist, everything is permitted,” and shuddered at the thought. Nietzsche, implicitly, laughed, “That’s right, Fyodor, and chaos is coming. It’s inevitable.”
Even someone who believes that God is real and that Jesus is his son can see that Christianity is no longer the force on our culture and society that it once was. God can be alive and still “dead” as a motivating force for musch of our society.
September 23, 2009, at 9:46 am
astorian:
What you describe can also apply to John Lennon’s infamous statement about the Beatles being more popular than Jesus.
He was talking about the youth culture’s head.
However, his later song Imagine indicates he thought it would be a good thing for Christianity to be gone.
September 23, 2009, at 9:58 am
astorian, I dimly recall from a freshman philosophy course half a century gone that, during the Enlightenment, there was quite a flurry of effort to recreate morality without founding it on revelation, still winding up with the same basic standards for dealing with one another. The philosophers — some of them, anyway — were preparing us for the absence of the Church or supernatural beliefs while still grounding us in “Christian” moral basics.
September 23, 2009, at 12:15 pm
Steve, that last line of your post - excellent and poignant. (It’s sad how his thesis is demonstrated with increasing force as our culture “progresses”.)
September 23, 2009, at 3:55 pm
Dave, you’re absolutely right. Men like Hume and Kant had been trying for century before Nietzsche to come up with a wholly rational basis for traditional morality. Nietzsche was laughing at THEM more than at Christianity.
Nietzsche no longer believed in Christianity or in pure reason, but he regarded Plato as a worthy foe, and understood the appeal of Christianity. On the other hand, he scoffed at Kant’s “categorical imperative,” and considered Marxists delusional. He could see that secular idealists had nothing to offer but Christianity Lite (no God, no salvation, but… golly, can’t we all still be nice to each other?”), which wasn’t worth taking seriously.