Even the most faithful among us would have to concede that there are some people who use religion in order to obtain their own objectives, and sometimes those objectives have absolutely nothing to do with the actual scriptures and doctrines which allegedly serve as the basis not only of their faith, but of any subsequent claims that are presented as a natural extension of it. Statements made by religious authority carry a lot of weight among the faithful, and may have profound social and cultural consequences which deserve thoughtful consideration. And it seems only fair to say that individuals placed in positions of religious leadership - especially individuals whose statements are seen as prophetic clarifications or even additions to canonical religious doctrine - have a responsibility to make sure that the statements that they make do not contain factual errors and gross, objectively observable inaccuracies. Additionally, if a religious leader says something that might have been considered plausible at the time but later turns out to be factually inaccurate, the leader (or those who succeed him or her) has an obligation to their congregation to acknowledge the error instead of insisting that their membership continue to believe in (and defend) any untrue thing. To do otherwise is an abuse of the concepts of both religious authority and religious obedience.

I'm not really going out on a limb by saying any of this, as the contents of this paragraph likely appeal to most people's sense of what is to be considered fair and appropriate exercise of religious authority. After all, these are not exactly avant-garde "thinking-outside-the-box" ideas that I'm espousing, but rather innocuous and sensible values that are, for the most part, broadly accepted with little, if any, controversy.

But religion has proven its willingness to fight in order to preserve preciously-held beliefs, even in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. And it is willing to go to almost any length to silence opposing thought. Just ask Galileo, who was punished by the Catholic church for suggesting that, in direct contradiction of the Bible, the Earth wasn't the center of the universe, and that the Earth orbited the sun instead of vice-versa. Religion fought the idea of empirical science explaining the phenomena of the universe tooth and nail, especially when the conclusions of science contradicted the teachings of the church.

At some point, society had to concede to reason, and science's explanation of the heliocentric solar system was eventually accepted, at the expense of religion's credibility on such matters. But that took a very long time, and obviously, when one observes the ongoing debate over evolution, it is clear that the battle continues.

At the same time, I don't believe that drawing from the historical record and talking about events that actually happened should be construed as an attack on religion. Everything that I've written here is historical fact that isn't argued by religious scholarship. These things happened, and continue to happen, whether one likes it or not. My pointing out events from the inarguable historical record is no more of an attack on religion than a historian stating that slavery was condoned in this country prior to Lincoln could be considered an attack on the United States. Whatever happened, happened, regardless of whether or not any specific individual is able to come to terms with it.

Additionally, it is unfortunate the extent to which religion sometimes conditions its members to see any conflicting opinion as an all-out attack, and, once perceived as an attack, members are often conditioned to take it personally. This attitude that religious ideas or statements are never to be questioned, coupled with the assumption that anyone who dares question religious assumptions must therefore be fallen, or evil, or under Satan's influence, makes any rational discussion of any even remotely controversial topic impossible. This is why the right-wing "Tea Party" movement appeals to so many religious people - they are accustomed to declaring the infallible righteousness of their ideas without having to substantiate any of their claims with problematic facts or evidence. And this is why it took over 350 years for the Catholic church to finally acknowledge that, in spite of banning his books, placing him under house arrest for the rest of his life and threatening him with torture if he didn't recant his observations, Galileo hadn't actually done anything wrong when he observed that the movement of objects in the heavens didn't jive with the religious assumption of a tiny, geocentric universe.

At the time of Galileo's persecutions at the hand of the Catholic church, the church arrogantly assumed that it's beliefs about the true nature of the universe were divine revelations received from no less than the mind of God. Obviously, that assumption was wrong, and no warm fuzzy feeling assumed to be spiritual manifestation of God's truth was going to make it otherwise. Yet, religion hasn't stopped making wild, contestable assumptions which continue to compromise its credibility. If religion is God's mouthpiece, then God seems more than willing to make his most pious and devoted servants look like complete imbeciles. Now there's a great boss.

It might be seen as an attack to state that when it comes to the arts, religion has historically positioned itself as moral arbiter, declaring which works were to be considered acceptable and which works were not - determinations frequently made for somewhat less-than-enlightened reasons. But again, there are plenty of facts available to support this statement. These arbitrary determinations of what is to be considered acceptable continue well into the present day, and have certainly been evident within my lifetime.

Perhaps nothing explains the cultural attitude towards the arts that I was raised within any better than a speech that was delivered in 1971 by a high-ranking member of the leadership of the church I was raised in. Now, I sort of have to tread carefully here, simply because having been raised in the church, most of the people I know and who I still value as my friends are church members, but even more so because the culture of the church that I was raised in still bears the scars of persecution from generations ago and has developed a persecution complex in which EVERYTHING is seen as an attack and EVERYTHING considered an attack is to be taken personally. But in any case, all I'm going to do is repeat what somebody in a position of religious authority actually said, and I'm going to try to stay out of the way here so that his words don't get misconstrued as an attack by me.

Here's some of what was said back in 1971, when I was four years old:

"Never in our memory have the forces of evil been arrayed in such deadly formation. The devil is well organized. Never in our day has he had so many emissaries working for him. Through his many agents, his satanic majesty has proclaimed his intentions to destroy one whole generation of our choice young people."

"The devil-inspired destructive forces are present in our literature, in our art, in the movies, on the radio, in our dress, in our dances, on the TV screen, and even in our modern, so-called popular music. Satan uses many tools to weaken and destroy the home and family and especially our young people. Today, as never before, it seems the devil’s thrust is directed at our youth."

At this point, the speaker cites somebody identified as "a concerned father... (and a) well-informed teacher of youth, (and) member of a college music department" and states the following about "the evil effects of some popular music":

“Music creates atmosphere. Atmosphere creates environment. Environment influences behavior. What are the mechanics of this process?

“Rhythm is the most physical element in music. It is the only element in music that can exist in bodily movement without benefit of sound. A mind dulled by drugs or alcohol can still respond to the beat.

“Loudness adds to muddling the mind. Sound magnified to the threshold of pain is of such physical violence as to block the higher processes of thought and reason. (And turning down the volume of this destructive music does not remove the other evils.)

“Repetition to the extreme is another primitive rock device.

“Gyrations, a twin to rock rhythm, are such that even clean hands and a pure heart cannot misinterpret their insinuations.

“Darkness [and dimmed lights] is another facet of the rock scene. It is a black mass that deadens the conscience in a mask of anonymity. Identity lost in darkness shrinks from the normal feelings of responsibility.

“Strobe lights split the darkness in blinding shafts that reduce resistance like the lights of an interrogator’s third degree or the swinging pendulum of the hypnotist who would control your behavior.

“The whole psychedelic design [this father continues] is a swinging door to drugs, sex, rebellion, and Godlessness. Combined with the screaming obscenities of the lyrics, this mesmerizing music has borne the fruit of filth. Leaders of the rock society readily proclaim their degeneracy.

“And the most diabolical deceit of this infamy is that it denies evil to be an absolute. Our religion is one of absolutes and cannot be rationalized into a relativistic philosophy of the ‘liberal (church members).’ We cannot safely rationalize away righteousness.

“What could be more misguided than fear that ‘if rock music were not endorsed by our leaders, we may lose many young people.’ Even now we are losing them to the songs of Satan, drugs, sex, riot, and apostasy."

The speaker, no longer quoting another source, then goes on to say that "The hedonist, who proclaims “Do your thing,” who lives for sinful, so-called pleasure, is never happy. Behind his mask of mock gaiety lurks the inevitable tragedy of eternal death. Haunted by its black shadow, he trades the useful, happy life for the bleak forgetfulness of drugs, alcohol, sex, and rock." He goes on to endorse censorship by suggesting that certain rock songs "be stricken from our songbooks."

"No filth is implied in many of the lyrics. It is proclaimed," he continues, “If there are any doubts as to the insidious evil of rock, you can judge by its fruits. The well-publicized perversions of its practitioners alone are enough to condemn its influence. Its ultimate achievement is that contemporary phenomenon, the mammoth rock music festival. As these diseased celebrations mount into the hundreds, they infect youth by the hundreds of thousands. And where is there today a rock festival that is not also a drug festival, a sex festival, and a rebellion festival?”

"The speech of the rock festival is often obscene. Its music, crushing the sensibilities in a din of primitive idolatry, is in glorification of the physical to the debasement of the spirit. In the long panorama of man’s history, these youthful rock music festivals are among Satan’s greatest successes. The legendary orgies of Greece and Rome cannot compare to the monumental obscenities found in these cesspools of drugs, immorality, rebellion, and pornophonic sound. The famed Woodstock festival was a gigantic manifestation of a sick nation. Yet the lurid movie and rock recordings of its unprecedented filth were big business in our own mountain home."

Sheesh, where to begin...

The funny thing is that in spite of the fact that I just quoted a huge portion of the speech, even quoting complete paragraphs at a time, there is somebody out there who will probably attempt to discredit me by saying that I took the above information "out of context." This would, of course, be a lame argument, and pretty much what I'd expect from someone who couldn't really argue the content.

The next argument that would probably be thrown at me is something along the lines of "but Karis, the speaker isn't making the grand, sweeping condemnation that you accuse him of making. He clearly states his concerns about "the evil effects of some popular music," and that "the speech of the rock festival is often obscene." Those aren't absolutist statements, so I don't see how you could interpret them as a sweeping condemnation of all rock music."

While there is no denying that the qualifiers "some" and "often" appear in those two sentences, in the context of the larger speech and the numerous broad condemnations made without qualifiers, they seem hardly representative of the speaker's point. In fact, when the speaker states that "No filth is implied in many of the lyrics," he doesn't follow up the statement with an acknowledgment that plenty of safe music exists within rock, but instead declares that filth "is proclaimed." Statements such as "The devil-inspired destructive forces are present... in our modern, so-called popular music," "This mesmerizing music has borne the fruit of filth," "songs of Satan, drugs, sex, riot, and apostasy," "the bleak forgetfulness of drugs, alcohol, sex, and rock," "the insidious evil of rock," "Its music, crushing the sensibilities in a din of primitive idolatry," and "The legendary orgies of Greece and Rome cannot compare to the monumental obscenities found in these cesspools of drugs, immorality, rebellion, and pornographic sound" contain no such qualifiers. Further, looking at the manner in which he cites that our religion is "one of absolutes and cannot be rationalized into a relativistic philosophy," it seems pretty clear that the speaker isn't splitting hairs. The speaker clearly isn't attempting to caution church members about some worrisome content that might be found in some rock, he is, in fact, making sweeping, unqualified condemnations of what he considers "unprecedented filth." The audience isn't hearing qualifiers. They're hearing condemnation. And the speaker, as a result of his status as a religious authority, is providing them with the justification to approach the subject not with logic and reason, or even with respect for the right of others, but with irrational, fear-based assumptions coupled with a perception that they are in possession of "righteous" anger. And even though the scope of the speaker's fear-mongering statements is infused with such unjustified exaggeration and hyperbole that his accusations objectively become untrue, his believers go off half-cocked into the world, armed only with exaggerations, falsehoods and assumptions that they accept without question, making their own sweeping condemnations with the utmost confidence, and even attempting to infringe upon the liberties of others (to create or to listen to the music they choose) with callous apathy.

It is important to note that this speaker, Ezra Taft Benson, who later rose to the highest position of leadership in the church, was a member of the John Birch Society who considered the Civil Rights Movement to be a communist plot. I'm not kidding. He simply wasn't the type of person who qualified his statements, so there's no reason to pretend that he was approaching this topic with a great concern for, you know, honesty and accuracy. Even if there were some legitimate concerns about some rock music that were worth expressing to the church congregation, and I concede that, at least from the perspective of mainstream conservativism, there were, this blustery old coot was more committed to bombastic fearmongering than he was to the truth, and he compromised both the integrity of his argument and his own credibility as a result.

But, that only matters if you are really evaluating the logic and rationality of his argument, which, of course, his audience wasn't. I could easily go on for pages and pages, crucifying this speaker's logic (such as it is) and arguments, because, believe me, there are a LOT of vulnerabilities to exploit (for instance, does his statement that "never in our memory have the forces of evil been arrayed in such deadly formation" place the perceived evils of rock music as even worse than that of, oh, for example, the Nazis? The Taliban?). But much of the debate would fall upon deaf ears simply because the speaker was a church authority, and therefore anything that tumbles from his lips is pretty much accepted by the church membership at face value.

For example, his argument that the lifestyles of the musicians are enough to justify the condemnation of their work as evil is clearly bullshit. While the debauchery of some musicians has been well-publicized, the speaker is making assumptions about the lifestyles of all rock musicians - again, there was no attempt made to qualify his statement - and conveniently ignoring the fact that utilizing this criterion as a standard for evaluation would also effectively condemn much classical music, significant works of art and architecture around the world, and numerous professional athletes. According to this speaker's logic, Tiger Woods' putting is to be considered immoral, as the talent and ability required to sink a putt stems from someone who has lived (according to the standards of the church) an immoral lifestyle. A businessman's company should be considered immoral if the owner cheats on his wife. Tax returns prepared by an accountant who views pornography is to be considered immoral. If your teeth are cleaned by a homosexual dental hygienist, then one would suppose that (according to the so-called morals of the church) the brightness of your smile should be considered immoral. I mean, really.

Now, like I said before, this speech was just one example of the attitude that the culture that I grew up in had, and in some cases, still has, about rock music. This speech isn't the flashpoint of such thinking, and certainly didn't represent the attitudes of every single member of the church. Not by a long shot. But, as the words were spoken by a church authority that are assumed to represent official church policy, and therefore the only way that church members could distance themselves from the claims being made by the church was through some form of disobedience. In a church of absolutes, if you're not marching in step with the others, you're an apostate. How dare you doubt the orders of the high command.

Just a reminder - even though I've criticized a speech, divulged info about the background of the speaker, criticized the use of religious authority and the expectation to conform, criticized the assumption of the possession of unquestionable truths without evidence, and criticized a culture's willingness to abandon its critical thinking skills by accepting claims at face value - I HAVE NOT ATTACKED RELIGION. Technically, I haven't. Promise kept. Peace and love, my homies.

In fairness, rock and roll culture has done little to thwart the commonly-held perception that it was threatening and even dangerous to the mainstream. Frequently, it seemed to revel in such a perception. The manner in which it questioned long-held traditional values was seen as a radical assault on the status quo, and the manner in which it aligned itself with the civil rights, the Native American rights and the women's rights movements in the 1960's - openly rejecting societal constructs which, when it comes right down to it, have continued to exist thanks, in no small part, to the the sanctioned marginalization of women and ethnic races presented in the Bible - was anathema to the conservative mainstream. Opposition to the Vietnam War and openly questioning the government were also seen as radical, and even communistic, behaviors. Instead of attempting to understand what was happening within this growing social movement and/or the underlying reasons why, many of the practitioners of religion chose, as they frequently do, to simply condemn. Hey, it required less effort, and you didn't have to sit in a beanbag chair pretending to like sitar music.

In the early 1980's, there was a travelling huckster named Lyn Bryson who went from town to town preaching about the evils of rock music. Somehow he was able to convince local chapels and meetinghouses to commit to two consecutive nights of his seminars, and the church leadership promoted these events heavily - utilizing fear, of course, ensuring that Mr. Bryson would have a packed house to preach to. He came and spoke at my church when I was about 15 years old.

On the first night of the "seminar," he railed at length about how dangerous rock music was to today's youth, and described a clear (in his opinion) connection between rock music and, of all things, astral projection, which, although myself and my friends had never heard of (and haven't heard mentioned since), Bryson seemed assured was spiritually dangerous and commonplace and a clear and present moral threat. Once he had sufficiently made the congregation, well, essentially fear its own imagination, he told horrific tales of Satanism, spoke of the power of pentagrams, subliminal messages and backward masking, and made it clear that rock music was the devil's chosen medium with which to communicate with and control the young. The centerpiece of his lecture was an in-depth evaluation of the lyrics to "Stairway To Heaven," in which each line was interpreted in the most devious, spiritually malicious way possible, pointing the way and establishing clear precedent for parents to rifle through their children's record collections and assume that anything that was ambiguous or that they didn't understand, no matter how potentially innocuous, was interpreted in the most fearful way. Undoubtedly, many records were thrown in the garbage by terrified parents when Bryson came to town.

One of the oddest things about the first night's lecture (at least structurally, given how batshit crazy the content was), was the fact that he continually made reference to the importance of attending the second night's lecture. Every few minutes he would reference some crucially important detail that he couldn't really talk about tonight but would cover in detail the next night. In spite of the fact that he already had a crowded room and a more or less captive audience, he was shamelessly plugging the next night's lecture.

Upon arriving the second night, Bryson's previously hidden agenda was now made clear. The second night was more of a concert than a seminar. Bryson, guitar in hand, presented a performance of his own original music, and, of course, cassettes of his songs were available for purchase. Parents who were now, as a result of having attending the first night's lecture, wracked with fear about the satanic influences in, well, everything, could feel assured that Mr. Bryson's music was quite possibly the safest, most trustworthy music for their children's delicate ears. And parents who felt guilty about demolishing their children's record collections the previous night could compensate with a gift of, you guessed it, Lyn Bryson playing guitar and singing his bland, non-threatening and patently awful music on cassette. Also available for sale was a series of cassettes of Bryson's anti-rock lectures, souvenirs of his crusade to terrorize congregations into obedience. By the time people realized that they had been taken (assuming, of course, that they ever did), Bryson, like the circuit preachers and snake-oil salesmen of the past, would be busily spreading paranoia and selling his wares to a desperately terrified audience in another town.

In a way, one has to admire the man's verve. The "churches" section of the yellow pages in every city provided dozens of potential contacts, and these churches would, out of some misplaced sense of moral obligation to protect the youth from Satan's influence, do all of the promotion for Bryson's "seminars," and once the congregation was gathered, Bryson could then push all of the emotional buttons which, in turn, created a viable market for his music in a community that otherwise wouldn't have likely shown any interest in his work at all. Whether he actually believed anything that he said in his seminar is almost entirely beside the point. He knew how to make religion work for him. Even if everything that came out of his mouth was complete bullshit - and, make no mistake, it was - and even if there isn't a single soul who still treasures the music that Mr. Bryson exploited his audience's fears in order to sell - and, make no mistake, there isn't - he certainly profited from the misplaced trust of the congregation.

And it must have felt pretty good for Bryson. In fact, it must have felt like revenge. You see, Bryson had good reason to be disillusioned by the music industry. Known alternately as "Lynner the Spinner" or "Lynster the Spinster" in his gig as a DJ while going to college, he was also a member of a vocal group called the Sandmen. Enthusiastic about the possibility of a career in music, he released a few songs as a solo act. "Big Mean Drag Machine" was an attempt to crack the then-popular market of songs about cars, and "Trials and Tribulations of the BYU Boy Missionary" marked his first attempt to exploit a religious audience in order to further his ambitions. He must have been excited when he got a job with the Hanna-Barbera production company, but must have been disappointed when it amounted to one song on a Flintstones-themed children's album. By the time his anti-rock crusade began, it must have been difficult to watch other artists his own age enjoying a level of success that he would never know. So he travelled across the country spreading frightening tales about how band names were really acronyms for Satanic statements (you know, KISS as "Knights In Satan's Service" and other such nonsense) and convincing the most suggestable among the congregation that subliminal messages were abundant on rock records, and that it was impossible for human beings to come up with phrases that could have one meaning when played forward and yet an altogether different meaning when played backwards - but that such a task wasn't impossible for Satan, and therefore Satan himself was ghost-authoring a good portion of the Album Oriented Rock on F.M. radio. Satan must have found those royalty checks for "Another One Bites The Dust" and "Stairway To Heaven" pretty satisfying. Certainly more satisfying than the royalty checks from a Flintstones kiddie record.

The one tirade of Bryson's that really sticks in my memory, however, was when he suggested that Olivia Newton-John might be the Anti-Christ. And he had his reasons for believing such an idiotic thing, and even quoted some passage that described the Anti-Christ's appearance in a manner that was remarkably similar to that of our Australian Sandra Dee, allowing us to see all of the pieces of the Satanic Xanadu conspiracy come together right before our eyes. And all because her wildly successful and suggestive (but hardly pornographic) song "Physical" had topped the charts around the globe. I remember this specifically because at that exact moment I was sitting on the church pew next to a girl who could just as easily have matched the description of the Anti-Christ that Bryson had offered to condemn Ms. Newton-John. And, really, who is to say that he could have been any more wrong if he had pointed his accusatory finger in the face of my friend than at the vocalist of such pointedly evil songs as "Have You Never Been Mellow" and "Please Mister Please." Yes, I'm rolling my eyes as I type this.

So it isn't difficult to see how Mr. Bryson, after receiving an indifferent shrug from the music-buying public regarding his own work and sensing his own hopes for a music career fading into obscurity, might have found it somewhat thrilling to tear down the popular musical icons of the day in order to create a cultural vaccuum in which his captive audience, in the absence of any popular artist left unmarred by his invective, would more readily accept his own songs as some kind of pale substitute for music that was actually listenable.

But he also helped to fabricate a foundation for the condemnation of music and artists based on rumors, heresay, and urban myths. And people who might have otherwise used their own reasoning skills in order to attempt to determine what they might have considered either troubling or innocuous about the music their children were listening to ended up taking Mr. Bryson's word at face value, as his presence at the pulpit of a religious institution imbued Mr. Bryson with the perception that his words and ideas were officially sanctioned by the leadership of the church. Of course, it didn't hurt that much of Bryson's polemic, while differing in specific (although unsubstantiated) details, was reminiscent of speeches which had been coming from church leadership and whose ideas had been accepted by the culture for decades. In the minds of many church members, Mr. Bryson's seminars were the embodiment of sanctioned church policy, and the broad strokes with which Mr. Bryson painted musicians (again, not unlike the broad strokes of condemnation utilized by church leadership) effectively made even the tamest musicians appear as suspicious as the most overtly confrontational ones, convicted for no actual crime other than perhaps not appealing to the personal tastes of Lyn Bryson (or perhaps serving as a continual reminder of his own musical shortcomings), as he held court in his self-appointed role as judge, jury and executioner.

As someone who has always been creative and interested in the arts, the message was distressingly clear. Although the culture payed lip-service towards the importance of developing one's talents, the application of those talents towards secular uses, the type of which receive condemnation on an almost weekly basis from church pulpits across the country, was not to be particularly encouraged. Learning to play piano is a useful skill as long as you play the piano in church. But if you want to use that talent to go play Jerry Lee Lewis songs at a local club, then you're just another lost soul with misplaced priorities who refuses to humble himself before the will of the Lord, and you shouldn't expect to find the type of encouragement that you might otherwise hope for. You might be lucky to find a circle of supportive friends among the faithful, but you'll also receive your share of disapproving glances, and you might even find yourself alienated by more than a few, and maybe even some that you wouldn't expect. And that alienation will probably hurt.

And this is why it is important for leaders, religious or otherwise, to thoughtfully consider the consequences of the shit that they say. They need to think about who is being turned against who, and for what reasons, and if those reasons justify the rift created by the fabrication of unsupported belief.

That's if his claims were true. It has been many years since I've heard his talk tapes, and I think I may be confusing him with Jack Christensen, but I remember Bryson saying that he wrote half of an album. Then a record company executive told him that he wouldn't be paid or at least paid less than Bryson thought he would get, because the record wasn't selling well. I'm not sure what that had to do with his message about sex, drugs and Satanism in rock music, but it seemed to me he was lashing out over losing his fee.

It is very annoying to be musical in the Mormon church, because very often if you can play piano you get shanghaied into accompanying for meetings, which requires a lot of practice at least for me, you're not paid, the hymns are terrible, and there's an irritating sense of entitlement that people have toward you and you can't refuse without suffering social consequences. I understand that they have now banned all classical music and only allow Mormon hymns to be played even as prelude music. Also as you said, any musical interests you may have outside of their very narrow tolerances is frowned upon, which I found to be very confining. Music is where the Mormon church's narrowmindedness really shines through.

An interesting point about many of the hymns attributed to LDS authors of the pioneer era - almost all of them borrowed existing melodies from other sources. A good portion of "LDS hymns" are simply plagiarized. Funny to consider that the church demands reverence for stolen material.

Excellent, thoughtful post, Bernelli.

The only Benson familiar to me was Steve, so this was my first contact with ETB.

He certainly knew how to use "charged language" for the purpose of manipulation. The overdramatization is extreme, with an unhealthy sexual undercurrent that leaves you feeling rather soiled...

I was particularly impressed by the following overcharge image:

"the devil’s thrust is directed at our youth"

So Satan's thrusting at us, is he?

Yuk

The ETB quotes are crazy. I remember having a special meeting in seminary where they just preached to us about the evils of rock music. This was in the early ‘90s. We were actually given a list of artists and songs not to listen to- unbelievable.