Structure and Sexual Misconduct

We appear to be in a watershed moment. The floodgates have been opened to a seemingly endless cascade of sexual misconduct claims, ranging from the rape of minors to inappropriate and undesired language. One reaction I have heard is lament: "When will the accusations end?" This is understandable. However, I tend to see things much more optimistically: This is what social change looks like. It's uncomfortable and ugly and disappointing but good, good because it signals a change in norms. We are together affirmatively stating that such behavior is no longer acceptable; moreover, such behavior will be sanctioned. In a way, a desire to "make it all go away" is a wish to return to a time when our silence tacitly approved of such behavior and, thus, allowed it to continue unabated. As disquieting as it is, this is progress.

What's more, I think we can start to talk about the social structure and culture that has possibly and ironically elevated those among us who are more likely to do such deviance to positions of power, authority, and celebrity. Think about the presidency as an example. It takes a special--and not in a good way--person to consider him- or herself qualified to be the most powerful person in the world. To look at the impossibility of that political office, at the crushing and awesome responsibility it affords, and to say, "Sure, I could do that!" is the height of hubris. Not to mention the gauntlet one must travail to ascend to the catbird seat. We should not be surprised that virtually all candidates for president are, to some degree, clinical narcissists. We should recognize that it is a system of our own design that elevates people with these characteristics (and indeed perhaps even engenders these attributes) and that these very characteristics are what make such people feel entitled to act as they please without fear of consequences. Think Nixon and Watergate or Kennedy and Clinton and their sexual dalliances. Narcissism is not so much a personality disorder as it is an inevitable result of our way of doing social order. It is more bad society than bad actors.

This line of thinking can easily be translated to the systems that elevate movie stars, musicians, comedians, Senators, and CEO's. All require and encourage antisociality. This isn't to say that such behavior is confined to these fields. We ordinary folks are not immune. It is, however, an empirical question worth investigation: do people in positions of power, authority, and celebrity do sexual misconduct at a disproportionate rate?

An even more uncomfortable question to ask is, inasmuch as these elites, whom we've elevated, embody our ideals, what does this say about us?

Is Anti-government Sentiment Actually about How One Views Authority?

Hypothesis:
Those who hold traditional views of authority (TVA) will be more likely to have negative views of government.

Theoretical explanation:
Those who hold TVA will be apt to think of their government wielding this kind of authority. Ironically, those who hold TVA will be the least accepting of being the subjects of traditional authority (e.g. a family patriarch resisting being controlled by others). Thus, those who hold TVA will be more apt to see the state as an unjustly-imposed burden. On the other hand, those who hold rational-legal (i.e. bureaucratic) or professional-client views of authority will be apt to think of their government wielding this kind of authority, will be more likely to see that authority as just (or at least not inherently unjust), and will be more apt to see the state as (at least a potential) ally or, even more, as representative of the collective.

Test:
One could generate indices of questions to measure views of authority and attitude toward government and look for correlations.

Book Review: *Revelations* by Elaine Pagels

In Revelations:Visions, Prophecy, & Politics in the Book of Revelation, Elaine Pagels clearly lays out a historical argument about how a contested text made it into the New Testament at all and why it has remained simultaneously controversial and wildly popular up until the present. Below is a summary of her conclusions.

The author of Revelation, John of Patmos, was likely a Jewish refugee of Judea writing around 90 C.E. after Jerusalem was sacked by the Romans around 70 C.E. and was profoundly affected by the destruction of the Temple. According to Pagels,

What John did in the Book of Revelation...was create anti-Roman propaganda that drew its imagery from Israel's prophetic traditions... [emphasis in original] (16).

The book was a piece of wartime literature, a revenge fantasy, and a cry for justice. It is a work of theodicy and clearly claims that good will prevail over evil in the end. To avoid Roman retribution, John wrote cautiously and cryptically. The highly symbolic nature of the text proved important for its ultimate survival.

John* was neither an orthodox Christian nor a traditional Jew, a second generation follower of Jesus, a movement on the verge of becoming a religion proper. John wrote during a time of theological crisis among those adherents to the early movement over the delay in what Jesus insisted was the imminent coming of God's kingdom. Compounding this, there was also a political crisis after Caesar's assassination, resulting in an explosion in the imperial cult. At a time when the Roman Empire was desperately enforcing social cohesion, the fledgling Christian religion was decidedly anti-social in that it embraced the socially marginal (e.g. women, children, the poor, etc.), challenged traditional familial structure and power, and prohibited participation in the imperial cult, the public ritual affirmation of the Roman political system.

The social forces that pressed cultural accommodation by the early Christians helped to elevate Revelation. In the book, John argued for the centrality of prophetic (cf. charismatic) authority and was against those who argued for apostolic (cf. bureaucratic) authority, though John's version of authority would ultimately lose. For John, though, at this time, the evil in his revelation is not just Rome but also the heterodox and heretics, contemporary Christians, groups that likely included Paul of Tarsus and the growing ranks of gentile converts, all of whom he disagreed with.

Revelation only just squeaks into the Bible, though. After John's death, Irenaeus co-opts Revelation, using the book to insist on both right (or moral) action (i.e. works or deeds) and right belief (i.e. orthodox faith), "right belief" being support of apostolic (cf. bureaucratic) authority. The end of Christian persecutions (though these had always been rare, brief, and localized) came to an end in the fourth century in Rome, which created another crisis for readers of Revelation who expected all-out war and not patronage from the Roman state. The book could then be turned against anyone with whom the reader disagreed, notably in the fourth century independent monastic communities. Anthanasius, continuing Irenaeus' work to further the apostolic model of church authority, includes Revelation in the first authoritative list of permissible books for orthodox Christians (i.e. the canon), and while none of Anthanasius' contemporaries included Revelation on their lists, it is Anthanasius' canon that prevailed.

Pagels writes that

...John's apocalyptic visions helped create coherence among all who identified as Catholic [i.e. universal, or orthodox] Christians and to establish a common bulwark against all whom they saw as outsiders. Ever since, Christians have adapted his visions to changing times, reading their own social, political, and religious conflict into the cosmic war he so powerfully evokes (173),

and

Because John offers his Revelation in the language of dreams and nightmares, language that is "multivalent," countless people for thousands of years have been able to see their own conflicts, fears, and hopes reflected in his prophecies. ...[M]any readers have found reassurance in his conviction that there is meaning in history--even when he does not exactly what that meaning is--and that there is hope [emphasis in original] (34).

Pagels' analysis is quite sociological, and though she does not use this Weberian language herself, she essentially makes an argument that explains the institutionalization of Revelation through the struggles between charismatic and bureaucratic authorities in the early Church and its historical popular appeal through its promise of victory for the just and the malleability of its definition of evil. As a sociologist, I found Pagels treatment of gender, class, and more broadly, social marginality and their foundational roles in the social significance and endurance of Revelation wanting. This likely could be its own book-length treatment, however. The book, built on several previously published journal articles, would work well in undergraduate classes on the sociology of religion or religious history. Graduate students would likely benefit more from reading the original journal articles directly. Overall, this a great work that deserves a place in the sociology of religion.

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* - Contrary to popular belief, the evidence is strongly against authorship by John the Apostle, presumed author of the Gospel of John, even though several of the early Church Fathers conflated the two men and their writings for strategic reasons.

Pulling Back the Curtain on Dr. Oz

Strike two for Oprah. Turns out that Dr. Oz is right up there with Dr. Phil. First, Dr. Oz made an inaccurate claim that apple juice contains dangerous levels of arsenic and refused to back down. Now, Dr. Oz is perpetuating a discredited theory about the genetic basis for race and is refusing to back down. Regarding both issues, he claims to have "done his homework." Stop listening to Dr. Oz! And, for that matter, can we all agree that we should be a lot more critical of Oprah, too?