Virginia Tech Independent Investigation Released

On the governor's website. As I suspected, little (no) mention of religion in Cho's life or as a motivating factor in his actions.

Seung Cho and Religion

UPDATE: 8/29 Roanoke Times has another article speaking of Cho's entry into a research exposition. Look at the poem he wrote. Christian imagery. Marytrydom -- delightful suffering for God. And so much alienation.
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In today's Roanoke Times, there's an article kind-of wrapping up what we know about Seung Cho before the independent review panel's final report is issued (probably this week). Generally, it's an OK article, albeit more summary than penetrating analysis (as such things so often are).

Anyway, what really struck me was the section entitled "Demon Spirits" and the comments of the pastor Dong Cheol Lee from the creepily-titled One Mind Church in Cho's hometown of Woodbridge, VA. Cho and his family didn't attend that church but the pastor felt compelled to reach out to Cho on the recommendation of a neighbor.

Pastor Lee believes that Cho was possessed by the devil (or some sort of "demonic spirit") when he went on his massacre. And this, I think, is so significant and so overlooked in the reporting about the events of 4/16 -- the role of religion in motivating Cho to do what he did, which is something I've talked about before. Look again through this article and again through the rest of the coverage of Cho's manifesto and look how often he evoked God/ Jesus. And these new snippets: the Bible as Literature class that he felt so "content" in, how he told Nikki Giovanni she was going to hell.

The journalist may have actually been more right than he knew when he ended the whole Roanoke Times article with: "During one session, Giovanni described having once eaten turtle soup. Students shared experiences of consuming other unusual animal fare. Cho's poem the next week lashed Giovanni and the class. 'He told us we were going to hell,' said Marciniak-McGuire. During Cho's short, tortured life, he knew that territory well." (my emphasis)

Cho lived in a world of his own creation but one with recognizable roots in the Christian tradition -- a world populated by God and the Devil, in which they are both still active forces in the world; a world where Cho could choose sides in this Manichean world and think that he was doing God's work; a world where violence in the name of religion is justified because the stakes, one's immortal soul, are so high. He likely thought himself, like Mark David Uhl, like those in Battlecry, like Paul Hill, like the Lord's Resistance Army, like the crusaders, to be a "soldier of Christ." Normative Christianity may not condone such action but perhaps it's time to stop burying our head in the sand, pretending that such ideas aren't still out there.

The Problematic Crusades (2)

So, The LA Times has an article about new care packages intended for troops in Iraq. Great, right? Everyone likes cookies.

Alas, these packages don't contain cookies. They contain "Bibles, proselytizing material in English and Arabic and the apocalyptic computer game 'Left Behind: Eternal Forces' (derived from the series of post-Rapture novels), in which 'soldiers for Christ' hunt down enemies who look suspiciously like UN peacekeepers." The distributor of the packages, a fundamentalist Christian ministry called "Operation Straight Up," was hoping also to launch an entertainment tour for the troops called the "Military Crusade." The Defense Department has now pulled the packages and won't distribute them.

The article goes on to talk about the increasingly close relationship between Christian evangelical organizations and the US military.

Anyway, this all, I think, sort-of connects back to what I've said earlier about the memory of the crusades in the West. But this is a little different because my point here is about the word "crusade" itelf. In many instances, the use of it seems fine. A group's "crusade" to save a reservoir. A "crusade" to save energy in Johannesburg. etc. There's an assumed justness to those causes.

But when the term is connected to violence, it becomes so much more problematic. Pres. Bush's use of the term at the beginning of the Afghanistan war. The above example. etc. When used as such, the word takes on meanings more closely in line with the original event. Religious violence and still, perhaps in some people's eyes, justness of cause.

Words, images, and symbols all have multiple meanings. Nothing is or means anything else definitively. It means a whole bunch of things, so be comfortable with all of those meanings if you're going to use it. And if someone is comfortable with all of those meanings, it can tell you a lot about them.

Back to School (Virginia Tech)

Classes start up again here on Monday. This blog, in some ways, was created as a reaction to the events of 4/16, when, in conversations with colleagues, I began to see eerie similarities between Seung Cho's violent rhetoric and the violent rhetoric underlying and inspiring the First Crusade in 1095. In the essay that followed, printed first in our local Roanoke Times but since modified a bit, I tried to give a hopeful message and make the point that Cho's violence (not ALL violence) was aberrant, even if ultimately understandable. The message that Cho was trying to get across had its roots in a violent, aggressive brand of Christianity that is not considered mainstream anymore, although it still exists (the Liberty University bomber who called himself a "soldier of Christ" on his Myspace page and wanted to kill Fred Phelps in honor of Jerry Falwell, for example, was not exposed until after my original piece was in press). And yesterday, there's an interesting article in The NY Times Magazine on "The Politics of God."

It challenges us, I think, to recognize the importance of political theology -- not just in dealing with political Islam but also what its role is in modern Western society. In general, it's a very good read, especially considering that it's a condensed version of an entire book (more probably, at least the Introduction to that book). He also offers a (n entirely appropriate) warning that the developmental path the West has taken isn't necessarily to be replicated.

I have some quibbles with his characterization of the Middle Ages (of course) though, not so much in what he says but in how he says it. Conflating 1000+ years of history into a PP is problematic but I think he hits the nail on the head, especially how late medieval society seems to collapse and begin eating itself, more concerned about internal coherence than external enemies. This is an apocalyptic moment too and one that only enhances his argument, I think. The problem, however, is the last sentence in that PP -- "It was madness." No, it freaking wasn't.

That sentence almost subverts his whole point in the essay. Madness implies incomprehension. It implies that this is something we, moderns, don't find illustrative of our current condition. But read my first PP in this post. That kind of violence, that kind of tension between "us" and "them" is all too common today, as is the rhetoric/ language that underpins it. Lilla provides plenty of examples in the rest of his essay. Yet, the Middle Ages are still "other," strange, different, dark. My point? If only the Middle Ages were so different.

UPDATE: Christopher Hitchens at Slate.com also has a reaction to Lilla's article. He argues exactly the opposite of me -- that modern society should be given more "credit" for shaking off God/ religion. I think Hitchens argues too far (surprising, I know) and essentially agrees with Lilla's main point, and one that I too won't dispute -- that man now has a choice in whether to believe in God or not. That very fact -- that choice -- is indeed something amazing and without precedent in human history and it does seem to be a particular historical accident of the West's.

Rebuilding Charlemagne

Jeff Sypeck at Quid Plura has an interesting post on what Charlemagne would've made of modern Europe. As a big fan of all things Charlemagne, I don't have much to say except that I like it. Then again, this blog is all about thinking long and hard about what the Middle Ages were and what they weren't.

I Don't Hate You, Really

I feel like I should clarify something because, in this post and this one, I'm pretty sure that I'm sounding like I hate the Middle Ages or (perhaps better) that I hate the people who lived in the Middle Ages. That's not true at all.

Granted, I don't particularly like most of the people I've "met" in my studies -- it would be particularly unpleasant, I think, to have a beer with Fulk Nerra, for example -- but I'm still absolutely fascinated by them. What they did, how they did it, and why they did it. Sometimes, just sometimes, like the mournful closing to Book IV of Nithard's Histories or the image of Otto III in the Gospel Book created for his coronation as emperor in 996 (shown here), it hits you that these are real people who lived real lives. In the latter, an orphaned boy of 16 had just become emperor, son of a German emperor and a Byzantine princess. Look at Otto's eyes. Every time I look at this image, I can't help but feel that that crown, placed upon his head by the hand of God Himself, weighs heavily upon him.

Will It Never End?

Just saw this op-ed in The Daily Telegraph (UK), in which the writer talks about how much he loves the "medieval."

I'm not sure about his history but I'm pretty sure "medieval" predates 1827 and I'm pretty sure that this author is not alone in "rescuing" the word "medieval" from its Pulp Fiction-related evilness. I'm darn sure that the 2 books he mentions are not the first to appear on modern medievalism (although they both do sound interesting). Anyway, despite the op-ed's laudatory tone for 19th-century medievalism, the author may also want to look at this book by Elizabeth Siberry. It documents the use of the crusades in the colonial enterprise. I know, it complicates a nice story, but doesn't reality always do that?

On Heroes

Via Unlocked Wordhoard, Old English in NY has a meditation on modern heroism (inspired by the recent spate of films on Beowulf). There are some interesting things here, including the discussion that continues in the comments and a link to the artist Martin Firrell's new project that considers some of these same things (sans Beowulf). I think you could also expand the discussion to include other models of medieval or modern "heroes" -- like Charlemagne or Tony Soprano, among others -- and I think that Ms. Hurley's final musings about the role that medievalists (not just Anglo-Saxonists) have to play in this discussion is spot on.

Anyway, I'm interested to see where all this goes. In particular, I wonder if heroism is really wedded to, and if so if it can really be divorced, from violence. I mean, firefighters are heroes in our society, right? So too are people that jump into rivers to save others who are drowning. Are they less heroes than soldiers or (in fiction) characters like John McClane? And what of the new NBC show, Heroes (or comic books more generally)? There's certainly violence in this latter instance but it's reluctant and certainly not the focus of the narrative. Their heroism stems from their abilities and their willingness to use them to help others, not necessarily in their conflict with the forces of evil. This leaves me wondering exactly how wedded to violence heroism really is in this society, or in any other.