The Resident Judge of Port Phillip

It seems rather hard to believe now, at fifty years’ remove, but as a 16 year old I was ‘born again’ and converted to evangelical Christianity. The early 1970s was a time of Jesus People, Larry Norman and Hal Lindsay’s book The Late Great Planet Earth. I’m not sure whether that would have counted as ‘Pentecostal Christianity’ as Australian journalist Elle Hardy describes it in this book because, although there was an emphasis on the Holy Spirit and although I was often in the presence of people who spoke in tongues (without ever doing so myself), it was also ‘It’s Time’ for the Labor Party after twenty-three years of conservative government in Australia. The Christianity I subscribed to had little to do with the prosperity gospel of much (not necessarily all) Pentecostal religion today – in fact, it leaned more towards anti-materialism and environmentalism- and I could see no conflict at all between progressive political ideas and Christianity, indeed I think that Christianity demanded it. I don’t think that the Pentecostal religion she describes here would have room for those views today.

Hardy’s book is divided into two parts: Part I The Good News: The Unstoppable Rise of Pentecostalism, and Part II Spiritual Warfare: The Battle to Build Heaven on Earth. She traces the modern manifestation of Pentecostalism back to 19th century America, disregarding, rather short-sightedly I believe, older British and European manifestations of Pentecostalism. Instead she identifies three founding figures: Charles Fox Parham, who preached in Kansas, Texas and Oklahoma; William J. Seymour, an African-American evangelist who was encouraged by Parham to bringing this new form of Christianity to the Black Community through the Azusa Street Revivals of 1906 to roughly 1915; and Aimee and Robert Semple whose speaking in tongues as part of their baptism in the Holy Spirit encouraged them to go to China (they believed that they were speaking Chinese) where Robert died. His widow married Harold McPherson, thus becoming Aimee Semple McPherson. All three ended up being embroiled in scandals of various types- a harbinger perhaps of the scandals that have dogged and continue to dog many Pentecostal ‘celebrities’. The Pentecostalism she describes distinguishes itself from other forms of Christianity in its heavy emphasis on the Holy Spirit, and its manifestation through speaking in tongues, miracles and healing. Rather ironically, some of the major ‘brands’ of Pentecostalism have distanced themselves somewhat from the speaking in tongues element (it is a bit unnerving).

She then embarks in Part I on a world-wide tour of Pentecostalism in its various guises across the globe, reflecting the sub-title of her book. She travels to Rock House Holiness church in Alabama, an ‘old-style religion’ type church that features snake-handling, but which also reflects the origin of much of the rock music that emerged in the 1950s where singers like Rosetta Tharp, B. B. King, Elvis Presley and the Righteous Brothers (of course!) made their start from their Pentecostal churches. The emphasis on music, most particularly through the Hillsong empire, continues today and often distinguishes Pentecostal worship, with its concerts, rock bands and lighting, from other forms of Christian worship.

Chapter 3 takes her to North Korea, where the Pyongyang Revival before the 1949 Communist Revolution saw 100,000 people converted, usually by American missionaries, to the extent that Pyongyang was dubbed ‘The Jerusalem of the East’. The North/South border between the Koreas is not just political: it is also the demarcation between Christianity and non-Christianity. Across the border, in South Korea, megachurches like the Yoido Full Gospel Church with its 200,000 regular attendees describe themselves as Presbyterian, but 85% of them are actually Pentecostal. It is quite common for defectors from the North to find themselves at these churches where, if they make their way to Seoul, they find themselves overwhelmed by the noise, competitiveness and discrimination they encounter there. They find that their conversion narrative becomes a form of ‘currency’ where churches provide scholarships, free health services and donations through their congregations, in return for these stories of redemption and conversion. A similar scenario is found in in the UK, where in Chapter 6 she finds large numbers of Travellers (gypsies) converting to Pentecostalism, where being a practising Christian makes an outsider more accepted in post-Brexit Britain. In fact, there are now 17,000 Pentecostal churches in the UK (one congregation for every 2 pubs!), with branches of international Pentecostal Churches e.g. Hillsong, the Universal Church from Brazil, and West African churches, not only ministering to their diaspora, but also engaging in a form of reverse mission, pushing back against ‘liberal’ Christianity and its acceptance in particular of gay marriage.

She visits the Universal Church in Brazil, where celebrity Pentecostalist Flordelis, politician and mother of 55 children (over 50 were adopted) , achieved media-wide coverage when she was jailed for conspiring to kill her younger husband. Indeed, Brazil is the most Pentecostal nation on earth, with the percentage of Pentecostalists rising from 3% of the population in 1980 to 30% in 2020. As she points out, the prosperity gospel preached by Pentecostalist churches is not a fallacy. Once people get their lives together through conversion, often leaving behind crime and addiction, and are encouraged to branch into small businesses which are patronized by the large number of fellow-congregationalists, people do become wealthier. Likewise in African nations. In Zimbabwe, half of the population belongs to an African Pentecostal Church, eclipsing 40% in South Africa, and one third in Kenya. African Pentecostalism often combines pre-Christianity and Pentecostal beliefs, reflecting the ability of Pentecostalism to shape-shift according to the culture. These churches often combine fasting, rituals, healing and miracles.

Part II then explores how this plays out in political trends. She starts off in Chapter 7 at Bethel Redding church in California, one of the largest and best known of the Pentecostal Churches in America. Despite being in a state dominated by liberals (in the American sense of the word), this is the heartland for the Christian Dominionist Project, better known as the Seven Mountains Mandate. This arose from about 1974 when Pentecostalists moved from the idea of The Tribulation which would presage the Second Coming, to the idea that Christians themselves would have to create the conditions of Heaven on Earth before Jesus could return by moving into the Seven spheres of education, religion, family, business, government, arts and entertainment and media. Within the U.S. the Seven Mountains Mandate has led to direct involvement in government administration, as for example in Brazos County, Texas, where the Jesus Said Love movement is contracted and paid to run ‘john’ schools as an alternative to fines or incarceration for men arrested for procuring the services of a prostitute through a ‘sting’. The related ‘Unbound’ movement, which purports to be anti-trafficking, is a way of stamping out prostitution completely (rather than legalizing it, which is another approach). It’s not surprising that this has morphed, for some people, into the QAnon child-trafficking conspiracy, and into links with the 6 January 2021 uprising.

In countries like Guatemala the rise of Pentecostalism, spurred by the arrival of US missionaries in the 1960s, has led to a rejection and even persecution of Mayan priests: a different situation from the Liberation Theology of Vatican II which encouraged a form of Mayan Catholicism. Indeed, Guatemalan Catholicism itself today can largely be described as Charismatic Revival, a reflection of Pentecostalism. Likewise in Nigeria, with its Muslim North and Christian South divide, Islamic mosques are finding themselves adopting Pentecostalist-type practices both as a way of distinguishing themselves from Islamic fundamentalism (e.g. Boko Haram) and as a way of stopping the drain of their adherents to Pentecostal Christianity. Similarly, the Jews for Jesus movement, a form of ‘Messianic Judaism”, adopts Pentecostalist- practices even though it is not recognized by the major Jewish denominations. She highlights the importance of Israel to the End Times narrative of Pentecostalism, with its ardent Zionism and support of Israel, Trump’s shift of the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem (and Australia’s craven pretense to do the same) and the popularity of package tours to Israel amongst Pentecostalists.

I had thought at first that she had over-reached in her subtitle ‘How Pentecostal Christianity is Taking Over the World’, given the numerical growth of Islam and the increased prominence of Hinduism in India. But when she lists politicians like Duterte in the Phillipines, Orban in Hungary, and the push towards Pentecostalism in both Ukraine and Russia, and describes the adoption of Pentecostalist practices in Catholicism and some forms of Islam and Judaism that are competing in the same ‘market’, perhaps there is more truth in it. I’m not sure that she actually explained why there is this political link between Pentecostalism and populist conservatism: to me, there doesn’t seem to be anything inherent in Pentecostalism that dictates that the two be aligned.

This is a broad-ranging book, truly international in its scope, written in an engaging style with enough personal vignettes to keep the human interest in what could have otherwise been a rather turgid exploration of theology. But really, it’s not about theology at all: it’s about a phenomenon that acts as an antidote to marginalization in both First World and Global South countries, and about Pentecostalism’s link with right wing politics, power and money.

My rating: 8.5

Sourced from: Yarra Plenty Regional Library, and read after hearing the author speaking on the New Books Network podcast.

Have you heard of Inés Suarez? I hadn’t, and from Isabel Allende’s Author’s Note at the end of the book, it seems few other people have either, because she was “nearly ignored by historians for more than four hundred years”. She was a Conquistadora born in 1507 in Spain, and along with her partner Pedro Valdivia, and then later with her husband Rodrigo de Quiroga, she established the city of Santiago that is today the capital of Chile.

After marrying Juan de Málaga, she was left in Spain for years as her husband travelled to the New World in search of riches. When he did not return, she received permission to go in search of him. She arrived in Peru in 1538, where she learned that he had been killed. As the widow of a Spanish soldier, she received a land grant and and encomienda rights to a number of Indians. Her land was adjacent to that of the Spanish conquistador Pedro de Valdivia and they became lovers. When Valdivia decided to push into the territory now known as Chile, she accompanied him, ostensibly as his domestic servant, to avoid the strictures of the Church. After a harrowing trip down through the Andes and the Atacama Desert, they arrived at the valley of the Mapocho river, in December 1540, some11 months after leaving Cuzco and established Santiago. The indigenous Mapuche people resisted the invaders over several battles. The Mapuche destroyed Santiago on September 11, 1541 (what is it about that September 11 date?). Vastly outnumbered, the Spaniards retreated to the plaza, where Inés decided to decapitate seven Mapuche hostages who were being held for ransom, arguing that the Mapuche were calling out encouragement to their kinsmen. She threw the heads into the crowd, who fled. However, Santiago itself was in ruins, and the settlement almost starved until it was able to re-establish itself. Meanwhile, her lover Pedro de Valdivia was summoned back to Peru to face charges levelled against him by his enemies. He was found innocent of all charges, except that of living with Inés Suarez in the manner of man and wife. He was forced to break off with her, and bring his own Spanish wife (who had also been left in Spain while he was off adventuring) to Chile. He arranged for Inés to marry one of his generals, Rodrigo de Quiroga, whom he left in charge of Santiago while riding off to try to subdue the Mapuche. She was much younger than Rodrigo, but they fell in love. After the death of Valdivia, Rodrigo became Governor twice, in 1565 and 1575. She and Rodrigo died in Santiago in 1580, within months of each other.

Well, there’s certainly enough in that life to fill a book, and I’m a little surprised that others had not done so before Isabel Allende’s book (there are some earlier attempts, but not very well known). As a well-known Chilean writer, she is well placed to popularise Ines’ story, and she says in her afterword that she spent four years researching her. It’s a shame, then, that the final product is so flat.

Part of the problem is Allende’s choice of a memoir, supposedly written to her daughter, as the frame story. As a result, it is a book with little conversation (as Alice in Wonderland might have complained) and when there is conversation, it seems rather implausible that it would be remembered verbatim. As a historian, I acknowledge and salute Allende’s determination to stay within the boundaries of the history, but it doesn’t necessarily lead to a riveting story. Allende imagines herself into Suarez’s emotional life with her lovers, but the most dramatic scene of her life story (if, indeed it is true- some historians question this) is where she executes the seven hostages, and this is merely reported, with little anguish or regret on her part, and without rich – if gory- description. The narrative voice of Suarez, recounting her memories, is rather stilted and academic, and it was difficult to suspend disbelief enough to go along with the conceit that it is Suarez talking. I can understand that, as a woman writing about another woman, Allende would want Inés Suarez to tell her own story, but I think that a better frame story might have been told from the point of view of an observer.

So all in all, a bit disappointing, especially from a writer with the profile and reputation of Allende.

My rating: 6.5 (There was an Amazon Prime series made of her story, based on the book. It is on YouTube (Ines Del Alma Mia) but the subtitles are only in auto-generated Spanish).

Sourced from: the little library in Macleod Park.

SPOILER ALERT

I enjoy reading memoirs, but they are a strange beast. First, there are the events that the memoirist decides to include or exclude. Second, there’s the voice that the writer adopts, and here Heather Rose adopts a present-tense, unadorned voice with short sentences. And then there is the structure that the writer chooses to shape their memoir. Heather Rose’s memoir is subtitled ‘A Memoir of Loss and Discovery’ and she uses the loss/discovery dichotomy as the fulcrum on which her memoir balances. Despite the title, you have the sense that for sure something bad is going to happen here.

It starts idyllically enough. Born in the 1965, Heather Rose grows up in a new subdivision, close to the River Derwent and under the watchful shadow of Mount Wellington. Her earliest memory, as a two-and-a-half year old, is of her mother climbing a ladder to hose down the roof during the Hobart Black Tuesday fires on 7 February 1967. Their house was spared, and she continued to grow up in Hobart, ensconced in a family with loving and present grandparents. Her maternal grandfather, Grandad Burgess, built a tiny shack on the Tasman Peninsula, 120 kilometres from home, five minutes from the beach and on the shores of a tidal bay. They spent all Christmas holidays, Easter, long weekends and school holidays at the shack where they ran wild, going fishing with their Grandad, and rather intimidated by their intelligent but imposing Nan Burgess. They had even more contact with their paternal grandparents, who lived across the road from the primary school they attended. As the family lived more than a kilometre from the school, the children would go across to Nan and Pa Rose’s house for a home-cooked lunch every day, and return there after school until their mother picked them up. When Heather Rose was eleven, her grandfather died suddenly of a heart attack, and she learned that

Grief is when nothing can be done and there’s no going back to fix it, and there’s no going forward without knowing that it can never be fixed.

p.15

She is to learn even more about grief the following year. A boating tragedy sees her family rent apart after her brother Byron and Grandad Burgess drown when their fishing dinghy overturns in Lime Bay, half an hour from their beach shack. It is in the wake of this tragedy that she has her first visitations – or whatever you want to call them- from the spiritual realm. The morning before the tragedy, she dreamed that her brother was drowning, and she blamed herself for years for not rousing her parents, convincing them to do something – that it could not be fixed. On seeing her brother leave for the fishing trip, she saw a white light around him as if he were glowing; after his death she saw Byron in their house, sitting in the chair by the bookshelf, standing in the open door. But the family is broken: no-one mentions Byron’s name; her remaining brother becomes moody and volatile; her sister becomes quieter. And

A bitterness sets in between my parents. There are silences at the dinner table, arguments, fights and long cold spells in which Mum and Dad do not speak to one another. I want everyone to be happy. If only, I can make everyone happy, maybe it will be okay. Years later, when my own marriage unravels, I experience the same sense of defeat. I have failed to keep everyone happy.

p. 28

The shack is sold, her parents separate, her mother remarries and her father ‘retreats into a monkish solitude’.

She leaves Tasmania in 1984 to travel around Asia; the backpacker’s rite of passage. She catches typhoid in Java, heads into Thailand, visits opium dens in Malaysia, then becomes addicted to heroin in Thailand. It is the midst of a heroin stupor that she goes looking for death, finding it as an old door mounted in the wall of a cave, that she only has to push open. Then she hears a small voice that says “No. Not this way. Not here. Go back. Go back. Not now.” It is this experience that propels her towards a monastery in Bangkok, opening up the second pillar of her memoir: discovery.

Then follows a long section on her spiritual journey, which takes her from monasteries to Native American sweat lodges and the grueling Sun Dance ritual. Here I felt as if I should be enjoying this memoir more than I was. I am a spiritual person, and attracted to that yearning and questioning that hums under my day-to-day life. But I found myself recoiling in bemusement from the physical extremity and bizarreness of the rituals she describes (appropriates?) as part of her spiritual source. Perhaps there’s a reason why words fail in the face of spiritual experience. How to distinguish the earnestness of this spiritual search for the sublime and transcendent from an unhealthy obsession with the self and the sidelining of other people and issues?

This emphasis on the ineffable dissipates in the chapter near the end of the book titled ‘Elephant’. She has mentioned in passing her diagnosis of ankylosing spondylitis, a crippling hereditary chronic arthritis that brings flare-ups and periods of remission. She uses her hard-won skills in meditation and supplements, but also drugs, supplements and medical cannabis. After many pages describing her own spiritual journey, she becomes frustrated by the remedies, diets, rituals and meditations prescribed in books by Eckhart Tolle, Louise Erdich, the Dali Lama and a long list of other authors. She spells out a long list of forty-nine therapies she has undertaken over the last forty years, from physiotherapy to a whole shopping list of New Age rituals, and any number of food regimes: no starch, low starch, paleo, candida elimination, vegetarian, vegan, no fruit, no sugar no fats, no red meat, raw food, the fast diet. (p 214) As she gradually has fewer flare-ups, perhaps associated with age and menopause, she takes nothing for granted. This chapter, although it seems inconsistent with all the spiritual exegesis that takes up the central part of the book, almost gives the sceptical reader an escape-route: she has undergone all this mortification of the flesh but she needs to heed it, in the end.

She returns to the theme of loss in the closing chapter. Some forty or more years after Byron and Grandad Barnett’s drowning, she tracks down a copy of the coroner’s report on their deaths. Her parents had never seen, or requested, it. She resists the word ‘closure’, but she notes that reading the report eases something in both her parents, to know that there had been multiple attempts to save them. It is when she returns to swim in the bay where they died that she realizes that, for Grandad and Byron, it was what happened. But nothing bad ever happens; that every life is perfect in its own way. She closes with some learnings about memories and their place in our life that reflect, although couched in a bit of ‘woo-woo’ery, both age and experience:

There are memories to acknowledge if we are to learn to live with ourselves, events we revisit over and over, wondering who we are, and why we made those choices. There are always parts too painful to either forget or surrender, and parts that remain unknown until something or someone comes along who offers an invitation. Trauma is a form of haunting. In the darkness of life, there is an invitation for expansion…I’ve come to accept that what I perceive as myself is actually something malleable, prone to change, to shed and reconstruct, and to blossom at unlikely moments and for unlikely reasons. That seems to be the nature of being human. We become what we are story by story, piece by piece.

p, 233, 234.

My rating: A bit too hardcore spiritual and flaky for me. 7.5/10

Read because: I had read ‘Bruny’ and was interested to see what she would do with memoir.