The Interpretation of Cultures, by Clifford Geertz (New York, N.Y.: Basic Books, 1973) is a collection of anthropological essays which combines a theoretical examination (how we should think about thinking about cultures) with field work (thinking about cultures). First collected in 1973, the volume has been reissued because its ideas simply will not go away. His writings may have wider application and a more urgent relevance than is apparent at first glance. I was particularly taken by his account of a funeral in Java. When I first read it, I was astonished, thinking: “He’s writing about the religious right in the southern U.S.” But as I reflect further, I see that Geertz is writing about me. In the essay on the funeral in Java, Geertz makes two initial observations:
1) Typically, anthropologists who observe religious practices from a functionalist perspective view the subject culture as a static, integrated whole. They fail to account for culture as a dynamic process in which change is a given. And so Geertz presents Java, home to a syncretic religious system which, over hundreds of years, has grafted elements of Hinduism, Buddhism and Islam onto a Malaysian animism. But more recent events have thrown Java into turmoil—Dutch colonialism, a revolution at the end of World War II, the incursion of political ideologies like Fascism and Marxism, urbanization, a growing trade economy …
2) A functionalist approach tends to view social and cultural structures as moving in tandem; one is a mirror image of the other. Geertz argues that the two are distinct structures, and while each informs the other, nevertheless they have independent trajectories. In the case of Geertz’s funeral, social and cultural structures collided with the result that the participants were hamstrung. Because each structure imposed demands which excluded the other, the participants lost sight of how best to discharge their obligations at what, in virtually every society, is an event of primary significance. It is, after all, at funerals that we consider what it is which gives meaning to our lives, we examine what motivates all our other activities.
Geertz tells of a funeral he observed in a small town called Modjokuto in eastern Central Java. The deceased was a 10-year-old boy who had been in the care of an uncle, the owner of a roadside coffee shop, a man of rural background, who had aligned himself with the Parmai political party. Parmai was a fusion of Marxist ideology with traditional religious values of rural Indonesia. The uncle assumed that the funeral would proceed according to customs which had been practised since time immemorial, and so he summoned the local Modin to begin the ritual. However, the local Modin was an official of a newly elected (and largely Islamic) government. The Modin belonged to the Masjumi, a political party which Geertz describes thus: “it stands for a socially conscious, antischolastic, and somewhat puritanical version of back-to-the-Koran Islam.” Underlying the distinction of political parties is a more pervasive cultural distinction between Islamic and nativist elements, the santri and the abangan respectively. When the Modin arrived and discovered the Parmai logo displayed by the uncle’s doorway, he refused to perform his services, saying that he was a Moslem and therefore did not know the Parmai way of doing things. (It seems implicit in the text that the Modin had known the Parmai way prior to the election.) And so family, friends and others struggled to find an appropriate way to proceed with the burial and associated rituals.
The analysis offers some disturbing insights. Geertz points out that, although the semiurban area was in a state of upheaval, nevertheless, as with many other similar locales, life was tolerable and inhabitants were able to get on with things. It was only in areas which attracted the incursion of religious practices that disruptions brought life to a standstill. Whereas a functionalist might propose that religion served the culture, Geertz concluded that, at least in Modjokuto, religion had become “the center and source of stress, not merely the reflection of stress elsewhere in the society.” Geertz goes on to point out that the disruption resulted from an ambiguity in the meaning imported into the funeral ritual. The participants no longer knew whether they were engaged in a religious service to mark the passing of a young boy, or in a political struggle to determine who among them had appropriate authority. The demands of traditional ritual worked against the grain of a modern society which was quickly displacing (overwhelming?) the society which had given rise to this traditional ritual.
Immediately, I began to draw parallels to religious life in an ever-changing North America. Even as we try to adhere to traditional ritual within our own lives, we find our practices unexpectedly invested with political meanings that draw them from their strictly sacred context. I do not dispute the validity of a political witness to faith (after all, it was Jesus who advised that we “render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s.”) However, I am suspicious when, for example, prayer becomes nothing more than confirmation, perhaps even authorization, of governance. I am not, here, referring to what the functionalist might describe as validation of a social structure. There is a palpable difference between “we pray for the president” and “we pray for the president as he decides to do X.” The first falls within the functionalist’s ambit; the second confuses worship for a GOP rally.
But my reflections did not lead me to a critique of the religious right. Instead, it led me to question “progressive” Christian movements to the extent that such movements establish an identity by reference to their distinction from their right-minded counterparts. The ambiguity of Geertz’s analysis is only possible in the context of social polarization: the santri and the abangan, the Masjumi and the Parmai. Does ambiguity of meaning arise within Christian rituals all on its own? Or does a similar polarization contribute to the confusion? There is never ambiguity of meaning amongst the religious right when it is left alone. Could it be that, when we introduce “progressive” values, our religion becomes “the center and source of stress”? Certainly, it seems symptomatic of “progressive” Christians that the old practices no longer work; they have to be reified or reinvented or re-examined and then reclaimed as valid within a new context. Unless they are invested with new meanings (or abandoned in favour of new practices), they prove useless, and we are anything but progressive.
I conclude with an encounter which occurred several years ago and which illustrates in a mundane way a mode of doing things which has become common among those who declare themselves “progressive” Christians. A man consulted me for legal advice; he was being sued after crashing his sister’s rental car. At the conclusion of our initial interview, he asked if I was a Christian. This seemed to be important to him, perhaps the determining factor as he decided whether or not to retain me as legal counsel. My response is instructive. I winced. No, I was not a Christian. (I did not say this aloud because I wanted the business.) The word “Christian” has become invested with multiple meanings, and, in order to distance myself from some of those meanings, I no longer identify as “Christian.” This traditional word is the latest victim of a Geertzian collision between cultural (religious) and social structures, leaving me without a way to identify myself. Some have chosen to call themselves “progressive.” Maybe I should follow the lead of the artist formerly known as Prince and hand out cards with a doodle on them whenever I want to identify myself.
Oh yes. I never did act for the man who had asked if I was a Christian. He never showed for our second meeting. His sister’s lawyer advised that he had been stabbed to death in a bar fight. No doubt his funeral proceeded without a hitch.