"Knox or Fox or Fitzgerald?"
"Frances Fitzgerald. Cities on a Hill. Got a terrific summary of the Burned-Over District." He flipped through the end of the book. "Fox," he said triumphantly. Margaret and Katie Fox. About twelve and fifteen, I don't know which was which, farmer's daughters, famous for their ability to communicate with the spirit world through the ghost of a dead man who haunted their family's house."
"Now I remember," I said. "They had double-jointed toes."
"They had toes like tympani," Bernie said. "If they'd been born in this century they would have played them in a band. They popped their toes like mad under the table and interpreted the noises as rappings from their friendly ghost. They were very big in Rochester."
"I'll bet they were a hit in Utica too. Who was running the show?"
"Must have been their parents. Raking it in, too. I think the little girls came up with the trick themselves. Mommy and daddy just handled the receipts."
"I don't think my little girl came up with her trick herself."
"And which little girl is this?" Bernie poured some more wine. His glass was already empty.
I told him about the Revealing.
"I've seen posters," he said promptly. "Big color shots of mother and daughter. Mostly ripping off Raphael for composition. You know, those circular Madonnas and Child. How did the Revealing work?"
"That's sort of a new twist."
" The only thing older than the old story is the new twist.' That's F. Scott Fitzgerald. What is it?"
"She's supposed to be a channel."
"Spare me," Bernie said. "There are enough dull people in the world without millions of equally dull disembodied spirits popping up and putting in their two cents' worth every time some actress closes her eyes. What are the criteria for becoming a disembodied spirit, anyway? Do they get degrees? Does some panel certify them? How do we know we don't get the worst of the bunch? How do we know they haven't been disembodied because they were bores and liars? Being disembodied doesn't sound to me like something you get for good behavior. And if they're so terrific, how come they're hanging around waiting to get a chance to talk to us? It sounds sort of like spending eternity at a pay phone, waiting for some change to drop out so you can dial a number at random. And only knowing one area code, and not a very good area code at that."
"Bernie," I said, "I'm only giving you the party line."
"Campus is full of these jerks," he said. "It used to be you could go over to Kerckhoff, get your synapses jangled on coffee, and talk about Kierkegaard or something. Now it's all these bananas with clear eyes and turbans listening to New Age music on nonanimal headphones and humming along."
"It's been a while since I've seen any animal headphones. What are they? Little imitation dog ears?"
"You know what I mean. Not even any real rubber, it's like those little faucets hurt the trees or something. And the way they dress, Simeon. Remember how hard we used to work to look a little sloppy? These kids dress like actuarial tables. Put a bunch of them together and they look like a graph illustrating the contents of the typical middle-class airhead's closet." Bernie had somehow managed to convince himself that he wasn't middle-class.
"Well, so what?" I said more quarrelsomely than I had intended. "We wore blue jeans as a uniform of nonconformity and learned to meditate. I remember saying a one-syllable word over and over until I fell asleep, and when I woke up, trying to convince myself that I'd had a mystical experience. It was the religion of the month, and the smart ones wore it out in three weeks. Now we've got channels and fire-walking and Shirley MacLaine. I'm not sure there was a new religion every fifteen minutes in the fifties, but there have been a couple of thousand since."
"You know the theories," Bernie said. "New religions tend to arise in times of transition, when old values are being challenged or are wearing out. That leaves out the fifties. Christianity was first a Jewish response to the oppression of Rome, and then, centuries later, a Roman adaptation to the decline of the empire. Luther arose as the political systems of Europe began to fall apart. Et cetera. It's all too neat for me. I take a messier view of history."
"And the Burned-Over District?"
"Society in transition with a vengeance. The Revolution only fifty years old, immigrants streaming in from Europe, people still worried about violence in the streets every time a president's party lost the election, and the country beginning to fall apart at the seams over slavery. People talk about two hundred years of American stability, the peaceful transference of power and all that, as though it actually happened. This country wasn't even a hundred years old when it self-destructed. It wasn't until Lincoln appropriated what he called War Powers and turned the presidency into a functioning kingship, and then sent Grant to crush the South, that things settled down."
"Bernie," I said, "you can't sympathize with freedom and the pre-Civil War South at the same time. Don't get sidetracked. You're being very helpful."
He sat back, a little surprised. "I am?"
"So where do all the new religions go? And don't say heaven."
It was the kind of question he loved. He drank a full glass of wine for lubrication while he gathered his thoughts. I poured for us both.
"As we said, they tend to arise in times of social change, when people have begun to doubt that the world will automatically continue to obey the million or so rules that keep them safe in their dinky little houses. Cults usually either fervently embrace the values that are being threatened- like, say, the Muslim and Christian fundamentalists do these days-or fervently challenge them, as did the original Christians and the Oneida Colony, to choose a couple of examples.
"Most religions are founded by a single charismatic individual. He or she, as Anthony F. C. Wallace says, has an experience, a hallucination, a moment of divine inspiration, an encounter with a greater force. Moses and the burning bush, Muhammad and the voice, Joseph Smith and the book of gold. The leader is changed by the experience and communicates it. Some of his listeners become converts." He picked up the book and flipped back a couple of pages to an underlined passage: "Listen, here's Fitzgerald paraphrasing Wallace: 'Some of these converts experience an ecstatic vision such as their master had, while others are convinced by rational arguments, and still others by reasons of expediency.' Boy, I'll say. The converts organize and then, almost inevitably, encounter some form of opposition.' In fact, they need the opposition. It solidifies their internal discipline and gives them a them-against-us attitude. We're so terrific we frighten them and they have to oppress us, but, oh boy, one of these days… Look at the Old Testament for the best example. It's one long wail of oppression, the longest protest song on record." He put Fitzgerald on the shelf, spilling wine as he did it.
"And then what happens?"
"Simeon, you know all this stuff already."
"What do you want me to do, Bernie, talk to myself? What's the problem, is it time to rotate the lasagna?"
"Then one of three things can happen. Either the religion adapts to a more mainstream position, or the society changes to embrace the religion's position, or both. Usually both, actually. Or the religion disappears. It's not that much different from any social movement. The Mormons moved west and dropped polygamy. The Millerites somehow survived the day in 1841 that Christ was supposed to show up, although their leader got canned and they changed their name to Adventists after they came down from the mountain, which must have been a pretty embarrassing trip. Imagine telling your neighbors that the world was about to end and then having to go home and mow the lawn."