Levellers

Republicans are not going to have a good year in November–even if Hillary’s divisive tactics or the “Obama is a secret Muslim” crap helps McCain squeak out a narrow White House victory.  The “downticket” races for the U.S. Senate, the House of Representatives and state and local races look even bleaker for the GOP.  That’s not just my liberal wishful thinking. Karl Rove wrote an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal last week that tried to brace his fellow Republicans for bad news.  Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-GA), architect of the ‘94 Republican Revolution, wrote a long letter to House leaders begging them to take emergency measures or risk being the minority party in the House for long years to come! These are not easily spooked men, folks.

Look at the tough road ahead for the GOP:

Democrats only have a 1 seat majority in the Senate (which is why Obstructionist Mitch McConnell (R-KY) can block almost everything good the Dems were elected in ‘06 to accomplish). So, optimist Republicans could say that they only need a net gain of 2 seats (or 1 if McCain wins and his VP breaks numerous ties as the President of the Senate), right? Unfortunately for the GOP, only a 3rd of the Senate is elected every 4 years and this year, thanks to previous Republican victories, they have to defend 21 seats while Dems have to defend only 12.  Of those 12 Democratic seats, only 2 are remotely competitive: LA’s Mary Landrieu who looked almost as bad during Katrina as Bush did and South Dakota’s  Tim Johnson because of his mild stroke in ‘06.  But even Republicans think Johnson’s seat is safe and Landrieu’s seat is looking safer all the time. 

Meanwhile several GOP senators retired, leaving their seats open (always easier for a pickup by the other side). And the GOP has had difficulty recruiting strong candidates for their races. Further, a death by one Wyoming Senator and Trent Lott’s unexpected resignation means that both Wyoming and Mississippi have TWO U.S. Senate seats up for contention in the Fall. Now, both are GOP strongholds, but just running senate races is expensive–Democratic challengers in WY and MS could force the GOP to spend money there that it needs elsewhere–and this is the one year in recent history where Dems have more $ available than the GOP!

There is a longshot (EVERYTHING would have to go right for the Dems and wrong for the GOP) chance that Democrats could actually win a net of 10 more seats in the Senate, thereby giving them a filibuster proof majority! More likely is 5 to 8 seats with a 3 seat minimum pickup (VA, NM, & CO). I think we have a great shot at VA (giving it 2 Dem. Senators for the first time in my memory!), NM, CO, NH (Good-bye John Sununu of Reagan infamy), MN, ME (if both NH and ME go, that will turn all of New England, once the most Republican part of the country–but a far different kind of Republican, into Democratic territory), OR, NC.  There is a chance that we pick up Lott’s former seat in Mississippi because it picks Wicker (R) against the very popular former governor Ronnie Musgrove (D). State Sen. Rick Noriega (D-TX), a Marine and Iraq War vet against the war is giving strong challenge to Bush crony John Cornyn (R) in Texas!  I WOULD have had high hopes this year for getting rid of McConnell (R-KY), whose approval rating is at record lows, but our best chance (State Auditor Crit Luallen) declined to run and our second best chance was hounded out of the race. I don’t think either of the two remaining Dem candidates (to be decided a week from tomorrow at the KY primaries) can do it, but I hope I am wrong.

More bad news: The House is expected to lose more seats to the Dems than the Senate!  In special elections to fill retirements (which have to repeat in Nov.), we are seeing GOP strongholds go down: First former Speaker Hastert’s seat in Illinois. Then, a district in Louisiana that the GOP has held for 30 years! Now, tomorrow may see a third GOP stronghold bite the dust in northern Mississippi! (Even if the GOP keeps this one, they were forced to spend $1.8 million and send VP Dick Cheney to campaign here–in a spot they could have taken for granted even last year.)

Recent articles have shown what I have been saying for 2 years: White evangelicals are no longer a strict voting bloc for the GOP with the Religious Right in control. See also here. They aren’t automatically voting Democratic and many are registering as Independent, but if this strongest GOP voting bloc splinters in THIS year, it cannot be good news for the Republicans.  Bill Clinton captured 33% of white evangelical votes, while John Kerry only garnered 22%.  If that percentage is swinging back to the Dems, even in only some races, Republicans are in trouble.

And Catholics are the new ultimate swing vote.

And, while it may not help Obama (thanks to the “secret Muslim” crap and the controversy over Rev. Wright) in all Southern States, the New York Times notes that bi-racial alliances for Democrats are increasing in Dixie, especially at the local and state levels, but increasingly also at the national level.  Even though race is still a factor in U.S. politics (Duh!?) and will lead Obama to lose WV and KY to Clinton tomorrow(WV) and next Tues.(KY), the time of the “Southern Strategy” of racial politics seems to be drawing to a close.  As the U.S. becomes ever more racially and ethnically diverse, no political party will be able to win with ONLY white support.

Now, even if everything goes fantastic for the Dems in November and they take the White House and large majorities in both Houses of Congress, plus governorships, state legislatures, etc., this will NOT usher in the Rule of God.  In fact, it could lead to gross overconfidence and swaggering pride for the Democrats–as the GOP victories in ‘94 did for them.  Major losses by the Republicans in the Fall could lead them to a major stock-taking and reconsideration–not just of tactics, but of basic message.  Could we see a return of the Eisenhower/Rockefeller/Harold Stassen/Mark Hatfield/Gerald Ford style Republicans? I hope so. That would be good for the country.

The work for a more just and peaceful world goes on no matter what party is in power. Christians do not give ultimate allegiance to any Party or ideology, just to the Rule of God.  But electoral politics do matter:  politicians and parties can create the conditions in which it is easier or harder to work for justice and peace.  Weigh the issues carefully my friends and vote your consciences–then remember that we trust in God and not in mere mortals, whether the mortals we back win or lose.

Reprinted from Mainstream Baptists.

Baptists who work for shalom (peace grounded in justice) have several upcoming cool events/opportunities.

The annual summer gathering (which the kids and teens call “peace camp”) of the Baptist Peace Fellowship of North America will be 14-19 July 2008 on the campus of St. John Abbot College, Sainte-Anne-de-Bellvue, Quebec, Canada. (I think this is the last year that U.S. Americans can travel to Canada and return without passports.) This year’s conference theme is The Way That Leads to Peace and will focus on the connections between individual lifestyles and collective action for peacemaking. Monday night Keynote Address will be by Jim Loney, one of the members of Christian Peacemaker Teams who were kidnapped for 4 months by Iraqi insurgents in 2005-06. Mornings include music, morning prayer, Bible Study, and a variety of workshops. The BPFNA is the only peace group I know that includes a full program for children and youth and young adults every year. Many people schedule this week as their annual family vacation. Lawrence Martin (Wapistan), who is a member of the Cree First Nation, will lead the morning prayers. Bible Study will be led by famed Baptist ethicist (and my mentor), Dr. Glen H. Stassen, now Smedes Professor of Christian Ethics at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, CA. Glen will focus on the 10 Practices of Just Peacemaking. There will be afternoon workshops, too. By having a week long conference, the peace camps also build in time for naps, or playing tourist, etc., so that one doesn’t wear out with meetings–as sometimes happens when similar events take place in a weekend. The arts and creativity and music, etc. fill these annual gatherings. The evenings center around worship and preaching. This year’s preachers are Rev. Mary Hammond, co-pastor of Peace Community Church (American Baptist) in Oberlin, OH and Rev. Lee McKenna, a former BPFNA staff member and expert in global conflict transformation, of Toronto, ON. For more info. and/or to register, visit www.bpfna.org/conference or contact LeDayne McLeese Polaski at ledayne@bpfna.org or 704-521-6051. I don’t get to go to these every year and will, sadly, have to miss this one. But every time I get to go and bring my family, my faith is deepened, challenged, and renewed. It can be lonely to be a Baptist who cares about peace and justice, especially in the U.S. These gatherings make connections that are vital–and help us grow the next generation of peacemakers, too. If you have never been, I especially urge you to work diligently to attend this one. Non-Baptists are always welcome, too.

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One of the ways that the BPFNA has worked for peace over the years is to sponsor “Friendship Tours” between citizens in North America and other places of the world which currently or in the past have been in conflict, internally, or with North American governments. On 15-24 August 2008, there will be a BPFNA Friendship Tour to Nicaragua. For more information, contact, Deirdre Hinz at dhinz@unitedseminary.edu . I made 2 trips to Nicaragua during the ’80s with Witness for Peace during the time that the U.S. govt. sponsored and funded the terrorist Contras and fell in love with this beautiful and tragic nation.

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Since the U.S. government is still not fulfilling its obligations to the people of New Orleans, your congregation can help by partnering with a New Orleans congregation (especially in the 9th Ward) that is trying to rebuild–and help the neighborhood rebuild and the evacuated residents return. Churches Supporting Churches is not a strictly Baptist effort, but BPFNA signed on from the beginning. Look for ways for your congregation to become involved (and then write your Congressional leaders and demand they help, too!).

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The Fourth Global Baptist Peace Conference will be held in Rome, Italy 16-21 February 2009. It is co-sponsored by the Baptist Peace Fellowship of North America, the Alliance of Baptists, International Ministries of the American Baptist Churches, USA, Unione Cristiana Evangelica Battista Italia (The Baptist Union of Italy), and the Evangelical Baptist Church of Georgia. (That’s the Republic of Georgia, not the U.S. State of Georgia! I made the mistake of thinking that was obvious once. Sigh.) As many readers of this blog know, 2009 marks the 400th anniversary of the modern Baptist movement, dating from the time in 1609 that John Smyth’s exiled congregation of English Separatists in Holland, dissolved their congregation based on a covenant and, influenced by the Dutch Waterlander Mennonites who were their hosts, reconstituted their congregation based on Believers’ Baptism. (Of course, since Smyth and most of the congregation eventually merged with the Dutch Mennonites, some may want to say that the actual founding of Baptists dates from when Thomas Helwys and a handful of others broke with Smyth and returned to Britain to found the first Baptist congregation on English soil in Spitalfields, outside London, in 1611. But global Baptists seem to want to celebrate our history in ‘09 rather than waiting for ‘11 and who am I to argue?) This February Peace Conference in Rome will kick off the global celebrations of 400 years of Baptist history and look to the future of our Christian movement.

Like previous global Baptist peace conferences in Sweden (1988), Nicaragua (1992), and Australia (2000), this one will feature storytelling, training in nonviolence and conflict transformation/resolution, networking, and spiritual development for Baptist peace and justice activists around the world. There will be worship, speakers, workshops, etc. culminating in a massive public event in Rome to demonstrate global Baptist commitment to peace and justice. I have seen the list of Baptist leaders coming from around the world and will soon highlight them in a follow up post. If you cannot go, get your congregation to raise funds to send one or more from your church to this event. Then get them to bring back pictures and present to the congregation. Also, help raise funds for scholarships for people from poorer parts of the world to attend. Contact Paul Hayes at paulchayese@juno.com or Dan Buttry at dbuttry@comcast.net or Ken Sehested at ken@circleofmercy.org to help raise funds, plan events, or register yourself. We need to find ways to get global publicity for this event as a contrast to the ways that more well-known Baptist groups and individuals preach and act politically for oppression, destruction, militarism, etc. The world needs to see this face of the Baptist movement.

Medieval Nuns Who Solve Mysteries.  You would not believe how many series fall into this category.  I include only a few of the better ones here.

Sister Fidelma is the creation of Peter Tremayne, the pen name of Irish journalist Peter Ellis. Ellis has degrees in Celtic studies and that background allows him to create a very believable world for his sleuth.  Sister Fidelma is a “religieuse” or nun in mid-7th C. Ireland, the period in which Celtic Christianity was being overpowered and subordinated to the increasingly autocratic Church of Rome.  At this time in Irish history, monks and nuns could still marry (as could “secular” priests throughout Western Europe) and many convents and monasteries were mixed sex in composition.  Women could still manage to wield considerable authority, too.  Sister Fidelma is not only a nun, but a dalaigh, an advocate of the ancient laws of Ireland, a position that combined features of the modern police investigator with the modern attorney at law.  (She is also sister to the Irish king!)  The Celtic names are difficult, but the laws and customs are clearly explained in each book.  Tremayne’s descriptive passages need some work, but he constructs suspenseful plots.  This is the best series of “Medieval nuns who are detectives.”

• Absolution by Murder (1994).
• Shroud for the Archbishop (1995).
• Suffer Little Children (1995).
• The Subtle Serpent (1996).
• The Spider’s Web (1997).
• Valley of the Shadow (1998).
• The Monk Who Vanished (1999).
• Act of Mercy (1999).
• Hemlock at Vespers(2000). A collection of Sister Fidelma short stories.
• Our Lady of Darkness (2000).
• Smoke in the Wind (2001).
• The Haunted Abbot (2002).
• Badger’s Moon (2003).
• The Leper’s Bell (2004).
• Whispers of the Dead (2004). More short stories.
• Master of Souls (2005).

Catherine LeVendeur is the creation of Sharan Newman (1949-) who has an M.A. in Medieval Literature and has completed work for a Ph.D. in history. LeVendeur is a novice when we first meet her, sent to a convent by her father because she is too intelligent and headstrong for him to successfully marry off. The year is 1139, LeVendeur is 18, and she has become a novice at the Convent of the Paraclete in France. Her Abess is Heloise (who, in actual history, was the lover of the philosopher-theologian Peter Abelard before the relationship was broken up and the lovers forced into separate holy orders!) Before the end of the first novel, Catherine is an ex-nun and in subsequent novels is married.  So, this series may not actually fit the category of “clergy detectives” even when stretched to include nuns.  I haven’t read this series, but the descriptions of Catherine and Edgar’s marriage sound too modern to be believable–even though I know there were more strong-willed, independent, and powerful women in the Middle Ages than we generally think.  Still, it is true that our Western concept of Romantic love began in the Middle Ages, even if few marriages were love matches. There are other parts that don’t ring true. One reviewer said the novels tend to read like a view of Medieval France from the perspective of a contemporary American Jew, rather than from the perspective of the characters themselves.

• Death Comes as Epiphany (1993).
• The Devil’s Door (1994).
• The Wandering Arm (1995).
• Strong as Death (1996).
• Cursed in the Blood (1998).
• The Difficult Saint (1999).
• To Wear the White Cloak (2000).
• Heresy (2002).
• The Outcast Dove (2003).
• The Witch in the Well (2004).

Prioress Eleanor is the creation of Priscilla Royale who appends historical notes to the back of the 3 novels to date in this series.  She has created an interesting cast of characters and background. Eleanor is a nun in the Order of Fontrevand, an actual monastic order (which no longer exists) whose mother house was in Paris, though these stories are set in England. Fontrevand was a rare (for the time) double order: monks and nuns housed separately in double houses, but with the Prioress head of both the monks and nuns–an order most thought unnatural.  We begin in the year 1270 and Saxons still chafe under Norman rule.  Eleanor of Wynthethorpe is the only daughter of a minor Norman lord who was raised mostly in a convent. At 20, she is appointed prioress of her own abbey (Tyndal) over more experienced women–with predictable results.  She solves crimes in tandem with Brother Thomas, who, unknown to her, has no true calling as a monk. Rather, Thomas was a young clerk who was caught in a homosexual encounter and imprisoned and tortured and threatened with death at the stake  if he did not agree to become a monk–and an investigative spy for Mother Church. There had been no executions for “sodomy” in Britain at the time, but many were clamoring this punishment, which was common on the Continent. The fascinating thing about this series is that Eleanor privately struggles with feelings of lust for Brother Thomas (despite spending hours prostrate on cold concrete in penance!) while Thomas struggles to keep his sexual orientation and his past from Eleanor and his monastic community.  The first two mysteries are fairly believable, but by the third installment, it is difficult to believe that a Prioress from an isolated convent would have so many chance encounters with murder.  Royale’s strength as an author is to show us characters with the prejudices of their age, but also to show us that the Medieval World was not as monochromatic as we imagine. For instance, women had less rights in the Victorian era of than in the Middle Ages. Further, since death in childbirth was common, few children in the Middle Ages reached adulthood with both parents still alive, and often had a succession of step-parents. Thus, they had more in common with modern children than with the intact, two parent household of the idealized 1950s. The books are fun and if more are written, I will probably give them a try.

• Wine of Violence (2003).
• Tyrant of the Mind (2004).
• Sorrow Without End (2006).

Contemporary Nuns Who Solve Crimes (Again, culled from an unbelievably long list.)

Sister Cecile is the most unbelievable of these fictional sleuthing women religious.  The creation of the late Winona Sullivan, Sister Cecile is a rich heiress whose father (a professional atheist) had tied up her inheritance in such a way that she could not use it for religious purposes. She gets around this by becoming a licensed private investigator (hanging her P.I. license between a copy of the Sistine Madonna and a gold framed photo of her mother). Through an arrangement with her order, she accesses her inheritance through her credit card for non-religious purposes, the expenses of her investigations. Profits earned are then able to go to her order. (Sure, because this happens all the time!)

There are four (4) Sister Cecile novels:

• A Sudden Death at the Norfolk Cafe (1993).
• Dead South (1996).
• Death’s a Beach (1998).
• Saving Death (2000).

Aimee and David Thurlo write the mysteries of Sister Agatha, a former investigative journalist and journalism professor who had not been a pillar of virtue before becoming a nun. She is an extern nun at Our Lady of Hope convent in the New Mexico desert. The order (the Sisters of the Blessed Adoration) is fictional, but based on 2 actual cloistered orders that have special meaning to Aimee. As an extern nun, Sister Agatha is responsible for her order’s interaction with the external world and does not have to celebrate all the liturgical offices with the other 9 sisters of the order.  As with many real world convents and female religious orders, this one suffers from a dearth of new vocations!

To date, there are 4 Sister Agatha mysteries:

• Bad Faith(2002).  With a Sartrean title like that, one would think this was about a ’60s style liberal Protestant, rather than a Catholic nun!
• Thief in Retreat (2004).
• Prey for a Miracle (2006).
• False Witness (2007).

Famed author Anthony Boucher (1911-1968), writing under the pen name of H. H. Holmes (which was also the pseudonymn used by an infamous real life criminal!), wrote the 2 novels of Sister Ursula.Boucher was a devout, pre-Vatican II Catholic who served as a layreader. This helps give these novels some air of realism and his mystery writing skills are superior to many of the other “nun-as-sleuth” novelists.  If you are only going to sample one series in this category, go with the Sister Ursula novels.

• Nine Times Nine (1940).
• Rocket to the Morgue (1942).

Alison Josephs (1959-), a journalist and British TV producer turned novelist, has created the Sister Agnes series. She studied the detective genre for some time before trying her hand. She decided that the most successful fictional sleuths were those with no ties like Philip Marlowe. She decided to make her heroine a nun since it is otherwise difficult to imagine a woman without ties, without anyone relying on her such as a mother, daughter, or husband/partner.  Sister Agnes has been a nun for 15 years when we meet her and is now outside of a convent running a project for runaway teens.  This is a far more believable setting for a nun getting entangled in murder mysteries, in my opinion.  This is a contemporary series and gives no easy answers of faith–Sister Agnes struggles with her doubts and fears and, having been in an abusive marriage before becoming a nun, continues to struggle with her vow of chastity. (Her temptations are sexually explicit, so this is not a series to introduce to young readers.)

• Sacred Hearts (1994).
• The Hour of Our Death (1995).
• The Quick and the Dead (1996).
• A Dark and Sinful Death (1997).
• The Dying Light (1999).
• The Night Watch (2000).
• The Darkening Sky (2004).
• Shadow of Death (2007).

Anglican/Episcopalian Priests as Fictional Sleuths

This is ALSO a much longer list than I would have expected. So, once more, I am only going to list the best of those I have surveyed. 

The Revd. Harry Westerham, Vicar of Cobbleswick (46 mi. from London) was the creation of Victor. L. Whitechurch (1868-1933), himself an Anglican vicar.  He appeared in only one book with a rather dated English dialogue. But the Revd. Westerham is a very interesting and engaging sleuth–far more so than many of the Medieval nuns!  The Crime at Diana’s Pool (1926) may be difficult to locate in your local library or second hand bookstore, but keep at it.

The Rev. Charles Meyer (1947-2000), an Episcopal priest in the American Southwest, actually created not one, but TWO priest-detectives!  Rev. Lucas (Father) Holt is a former prison chaplain who has reluctantly taken over St. Margaret’s Episcopal Church in downtown Austin. We are told that this parish has well-off parishioners whose theology covers everything from charismatic fundamentalists to social justice liberals “and every perversion in between!”  Fr. Holt maintains regular contact with a group of ex-cons he helped rehabilitate and seems to like many of them more than some of his parishioners.   He is a priest with a strong social conscience and one can find 3 excellent novels with him as protagonist:

• The Saints of God Murders (1995).
• Blessed Are the Merciless (1996). The title sounds to me like the way Dick Cheney misreads the Bible.
• Beside the Still Waters (1997).

The other priest detective created by Meyers is Rev. Matt Beck, chaplain of Grassland Hospital, NYC.  Beck worked his way through General Theological Seminary (an actual Episcopal Seminary) while working a part-time job and working full time on his marriage. He was only married two years, though, before his wife was murdered–which is ten years before we first meet him. He’s now dating a photojournalist.  In the only novel featuring Fr. Beck, Deathangel (2000), he encounters a serial killer.

Margaret Scherf (1908-1979) created one of the more interesting clerical detectives in The Rev. Dr. Martin Buell, a round, widower with a sardonic sense of humor who has been sent to take over Christ Church, Farrington, CO. As a high church Episcopalian, he finds the parish far too Low Church Protestant and keeps threatening to quit and become a cattle rancher.  These are mid-20th C. and may be a bit dated, but some church problems seem perennial–as is murder, unfortunately. 

• Always Murder a Friend (1948).
• For the Love of Murder. Orig. Title: Gilbert’s Last Toothache (1949).
• Divine and Deadly.   Orig. Title:  The Curious Custard Pie (1950).
• The Elk and the Evidence (1952).
• The Cautious Overshoes (1956).
• Never Turn Your Back (1959).
• The Corpse in the Flannel Nightgown (1965).

Rev. Lily Connor is a “tentmaker,” an ordained minister who, like the Apostle Paul, works at a trade outside the church, often in addition to church duties. Rev. Connor is the creation of Michelle Blake, who teaches in the English Dept. at Tufts University and lives near Boston. Blake earned a Master of Theological Studies at Harvard and considered becoming an Episcopal Priest herself.Connor is a theological liberal, trying to make sense of faith and God in our complex post-modern world. She has her share of hang-ups and problems.  This makes her a character with which many readers can identify, but it comes close at times to not taking her identity as a priest seriously.

• The Tentmaker (1999). Lily is called to be an interim pastor and ends up solving the murder of her predecessor.
• Earth Has No Sorrow(2001). Lily is working for a Women’s Center and the plot involves explorations of the Holocaust and anti-Semitism in Christian churches.
• The Book of Light (2003). Lily is now a campus chaplain at “Tate” University, a fictional counterpart to Tufts, where the author works.  Her relationship with a police photographer is not one that we would tolerate in a male minister and the plot has WAY too many Da Vinci Code overtones for my taste, but Lily remains an interesting protagonist.

Christina Summers, who has taught English and worked in churches, has B.A. in English from Vassar, an MDiv. from the (Episcopal) General Theological Seminary, and an MPhil in Medieval English studies from Oxford.  Her priest/sleuth creation is The Rev. Dr. Kathryn Koerney, a divorced Episcopal priest who is based at St. Margaret’s Episcopal Church in Harton, NJ, a parish in which “everyone seemed to have either money or brains,” but apparently not both.  The fictional church is modeled after Trinity Church in Princeton, which is the real counterpart to Harton.  Koerney isn’t in an illicit affair, but seems to hover at the edges of it, since she helps solve crimes with a police chief who is in an unhappy marriage–and finds him very attractive.  Again, while I find the nearly sinless Fr. Brown to be boring, I am troubled that these interesting fictional female priests are not being held to the same standards of sexual ethics we would demand of their male counterparts. This is just the opposite of my experience in real life, where I find that male ministers get away with far too much that would have resulted in the firing or even defrocking of female counterparts LOONG before. 

• Crooked Heart (2002). Characters are interesting, but the plot is somewhat slow.
• Thieves Break In (2004).  Time and place changes are abrupt and complicated.
• Familiar Friend (2006). The murder is complicated by an unresolved three-way love affair.

Carol Fosher Chase, an ex-pat American become a British citizen, writes under the pen name of Kate Charles. She has created an engaging priest/sleuth, The Revd. Callie Anson, newly arrived curate of All Saints’ Church in Paddington, London (a fictional counterpart to All Souls’ Church?).  Callie, aged 30, has just broken up with her fiance, Adam, who, awkwardly, is now a curate in the same diocese. (Oy!) She has a very demanding mother who is never satisfied with her and a brother who is happy as an out gay man and whose company she loves.  Peter, the brother, first called her “Callie,” as a child when he could not pronounce her given name of Caroline.  These mysteries are very well grounded in the politics of the Church of England (or so my ecumenical contacts tell me–it’s been over a decade since I was in the UK and I was exploring British BAPTIST life!), but this might be confusing to some American readers.  Oddly, Callie doesn’t seem to do much of the detecting in these mysteries, though, in all other ways, she’s the protagonist. That might be more realistic (Honestly, have you ever met even ONE clergy detective?), but it seems to buck the nature of the genre. 

• Evil Intent (2005).
• Secret Sins (2007).

Fictional Protestant Ministers Who Solve Crimes.

Charles Merrill Smith (?-1985) was a liberal United Methodist minister and created a sleuth in that image, Rev. C. P. Randollph.  Randollph is an ex-football quarterback (nicknamed “Con Randollph” by the sportswriters for the way he could fool defensive lines) who quit professional sports to enroll in seminary and eventually become a church historian and then, for our reading pleasure, Senior Minister of the Chicago Methodist Episcopal Church of the Good Shepherd. This large, wealthy, parish is located on the bottom floors of a large office block skyscraper that includes a hotel but comes complete with a gothic spire on top and an octagonal parsonage directly below.  The Church owns the entire building and gets much of its income from the rent from the various secular businesses.  When I read a few of these novels in the ’70s, I assumed that this was Smith’s sarcastic depiction of the horrible mega-church phenomenon. Sadly, no. It is based on a real parish: Chicago Temple, First United Methodist Church of Chicago. Sigh.

The character of Randollph is too upper-middle class for my tastes and his parish too obscenely wealthy. Further, Randolph’s theology seems to be nothing but the “cheap liberalism” (there are other kinds) of much of the white Protestantism of the late ’60s and early ’70s.  You read these novels and find out more about what Randolph doesn’t believe than what he does.  (It would be hilarious to have a C. P. Randollph meet a theologian like Stanley Hauerwas and watch the fur fly!) What makes Randollph a good detective is his apparently Niebuhrian/Augustinian view of sin and human nature, but he seems jaded to me. Both the social activists and the fundamentalists are portrayed more sympathetically in some stories.  I seem to remember liking these books more when I was younger, but I suspect my distaste now is a sign of age or something.

• Reverend Randollph and the Wages of Sin (1974).
• Reverend Randollph and the Avenging Angel (1976).
• Reverend Randollph and the Fall From Grace, Inc. (1978).
• Reverend Randollph and the Holy Terror (1980).
• Reverend Randollph and the Unholy Bible (1983).
• Reverend Randollph and the Splendid Samaritan(1986). Finished posthumously by son Terence Smith.

The Rev. Raymond Sebastian is a rare example of a clergy detective who comes from the American conservative white evangelical context.  Once again, it is an example of authors writing what they know. Sebastian is the creation of James L. Johnson (1927-1987), who attended Moody Bible Institute before going to Nigeria as a missionary. He eventually edited the evangelical magazine  Africa Challenge and later earned a B.A. in journalism from the University of Michigan.  His creation, Rev. Sebastian, “always considered himself a poor excuse” for a minister. He had lost his wife 5 years before in an auto wreck for which he blamed himself.  He attributed his ready acceptance in church circles to his father, “the most famous Bible expositor in America.”  Pulpit committees lined up to interview and hire him without ever hearing him preach, examining his doctrine, etc. simply on the basis of his famous last name. (Readers: If you think this doesn’t happen–and not just in white evangelical circles–you are quite naive about church politics!) And so, he becomes the unhappy minister of an evangelical church in Nashville, WI. (Denomination never revealed.)  Sebastian is sincere, but not very gifted at ministry. However, he ends up finding an unexpected talent at solving mysteries.   The books are fun and, while not preachy, respectful of the conservative evangelical context.  Sebastian, however, seems to become a kind of secret agent.

• Code Name Sebastian (1967).
• The Nine Lives of Alphonse (1968).
• A Handful of Dominoes (1970).
• A Piece of the Moon is Missing (1974). I haven’t read this one, but the plot is highly unlikely.
• The Last Train from Canton (1981).
• Trackless Seas(1987). Sebastian has been defrocked because his denomination has, finally, concluded that his clandestine work over the years was not in keeping with his ordination vows.

Rev. Calvin Truman Turkstra, whose adventures I have NOT read, is also from the American evangelical camp, but in the Christian Reformed sub-culture–a transplanted Dutch Calvinism that thrives in the U.S. Midwest, especially Michigan. Author Christopher Meehan came from this background and also was a reporter for a newspaper in Grand Rapids, MI–the Mecca of American Dutch Calvinism! Rev. Turkstra has a love/hate relationship with his Dutch Calvinism. He has outward signs of rebellion (e.g., long hair, Rolling Stones T-shirts, etc.), but is not overly rebellious of the ethical and theological culture of the denomination. I plan on investigating the novels.

• Deadly Waters (1995).
• Murder on the Grand (1997).
• Murder on Sacred Ground (2006).

Michael Lister was a chaplain at the Florida State Prison for 7 years before turning to writing full time in 2000.  Having read the Father Brown mysteries, he decided to create a prison chaplain sleuth and did so with John Jordan. Jordan is an ex-cop turned minister who was hounded out of his Atlanta parish (and his marriage) by accusations of sexual misconduct. He’s now a recovering alcoholic and his ability to resist the temptation to drink keeps him believing in God.  He is now a prison chaplain and, like the author, resists organized religion, but has a strong vocation to minister to the abandoned and forgotten.  I have not read these mysteries and they are supposed to include graphic violence–not for young readers or those with weak stomachs.

• Power in the Blood (1997).
• Blood of the Lamb (2004).
• Flesh and Blood (2006). This one is a collection of short stories.

P. L. Gaus, an Amishlieben or friend of the Amish, has written a series of mysteries set in Ohio Amish country.  They have as their protagonist, Pastor Caleb Troyer, an Amish-descended pastor of an independent Church of Christ in the sleepy college town of Millersburg, OH.  These sound worthy of investigation and I hope to make time to read them in the near future.

• Blood of the Prodigal (1999).
• Broken English (2000).
• Clouds Without Rain (2001).
• Cast a Blue Shadow (2003). This description to an outsider rings true to any who have tried to sort out the Amish/Mennonite strands: “at the simplest level, and this wouldn’t be at all considered to be a thorough listing, we have the most conservative Old Order Amish, what you might call house Amish, then Beachy Amish, Church Amish, Swiss Mennonites, Old Mennonites, Wisler Mennonites, Mennonites , New Amish or Apostolic Christian, Reformed Mennonites, and, most liberal, Oak Grove Mennonites up in Wayne County …. It’d take a trained sociologist years to sort out the differences, and then it’d probably be wrong … Other Amish groups have split over things as little as putting a side glass window in a buggy.”  It almost makes Baptist splits seem kind of tame, by comparison!

Other “Clerical” Detectives:

Elizabeth Eliott is an elderly Clerk of an unprogrammed Friends (Quaker) Meeting in Cambridge, MA. She is the creation of Irene Allen, the pen-name of Dr. E. Kirsten Peters, a Geologist and herself a practising Quaker.  Historical note: The Friends/Quaker tradition founded by George Fox and Margaret Fell in the mid-1600s (”There is One who Speaketh to Thy Condition, Even Jesus Christ!”) splintered, especially in the U.S., in the 19th C.  The Hicksite or Liberal Friends are the most traditional in form of worship and church order and in traditional ethical and lifestyle commitments: “Church” is a name reserved for the universal gathering of Christians. Instead, Friends gather at Weekly, Monthly, and Yearly Meetings.  There are no ordained or paid clergy (something that some Baptists would have agreed with; Roger Williams’ The Hireling Ministry None of Christ’s!comes to mind and it was written during the same period that the early Quakers arose). Every member is to be a minister and an evangelist or “publisher of Truth.” Meetings for Worship are conducted in silence until someone is moved by the Light Within to speak a word or sing a hymn, etc.–something that may not happen for the whole time of worship. Since all of life is sacramental, the sacraments/ordinances have been completely spiritualized, i.e., there is no observance of water baptism or the Eucharist/Lord’s Supper.  But this group, though the most traditional in Quaker form, has largely lost the Christocentric shape of George Fox’s faith–with many Weekly Meetings devolved into a kind of Unitarianism.  Evangelical Friends, by contrast, have pastors and orders of service very like other evangelical congregations, including hymn singing and sermons. The only thing “Quaker” about them is that the outward forms of baptism and the Lord’s Supper are considered optional. Somewhere in the Middle is the Wilberite or Conservative Friends tradition which has both programmed and unprogrammed Meetings, but tries to retain the historic Christocentrism of Fox and the early Quakers. Ironically, the more liberal, unprogrammed Meetings have most strongly retained the historic Quaker commitment to nonviolence and pacifism, while this gets downplayed or even resisted in the (supposedly more biblically oriented) Evangelical Friends!  Elizabeth Elliot comes from the unprogrammed tradition and her local meeting is probably related to New England Yearly Meeting, though this is never explicitly stated.  Her skill at detecting is linked to her deep Quaker awareness that violence and deception are related intimately as are truth and nonviolence.  These are fun books, and Elliot is a fascinating character, but, one of great moral seriousness without being preachy.

• Quaker Silence (1992).
• Quaker Witness (1993).
• Quaker Testimony (1996).
• Quaker Indictment (1998).

Sister Rose Callahan is the fictional Shaker Eldress creation of Deborah Woodworth, a sociologist of religion who has deeply researched the Shaker movement. Only one living Shaker community remains. It is in Maine and dying out.  However, the fictional Sister Rose has a Shaker community in rural Kentucky. (Shakertown, KY is just a tourist attraction these days.) The Shaker movement arose in the 19th C. It was an earlier form of Pentecostalism. In some ways it was very “modern,” with an emphasis on gender equality and nonviolence and even feminine imagery for God to complement masculine imagery for God. But Shakers thought all Christians ought to be celibate. The men and women stayed in separate communal homes, but ate meals together.  They adopted abandoned children, but to have survived as a living option, they would have had to be far more aggressively evangelistic–or else believed in sex and procreation!  I have not read these novels, yet.

• Death of a Winter Shaker (1997), set in 1936 in rural Kentucky.
• A Deadly Shaker Spring (1998).
• Sins of a Shaker Summer(1999).
• A Simple Shaker Murder (2000).
• Killing Gifts (2001).
• Dancing Dead (2002).

Well, I hope you have enjoyed these posts, Gentle Readers, as breaks from blogging about religion and politics. 

I have been asked what I am writing since I told people that I started a book during my blogging hiatus. Well, I have outlined 3 books. One is a book on biblical interpretation and Christian ethics.  A second, which I am working on the hardest and hope to have published by 2009 (why ‘09 in another post) is a book on progressive, peace and justice, Baptist churches–profiling 20 of them.  But, I have also outlined a detective novel.

Yes, I have decided to try my hand at the genre. I would like to see something about a Latino Pentecostal minister or an African-American woman Lutheran minister, etc., but I must write about what I know. My sleuth will be a white, male Baptist minister (Yes, my wife and my pastor are both female Baptist ministers, but I hope to write 1st person and I don’t think I am good enough at writing fiction yet to try a female perspective). He will be younger than I am and educated in the post-SBC diaspora of non-fundamentalist Baptist education in the South. He will be center-left in theology and progressive in political outlook with a deep concern for peace and social justice. I will set the stories in Neptune Beach, Florida (one of the Jacksonville Beaches) because I don’t want to set them in Louisville, and that’s the only other place I have lived long enough to describe really well. He’ll be newly arrived in a small congregation, just planted, of the Alliance of Baptists, that is still meeting at the local synagogue (which, naturally, doesn’t need the building on Sundays). He’ll be single at the beginning and have broken up with a fiancee.  He will be working on his dissertation for a Ph.D. in Church History, concentrating on Richard Overton and the Levellers. :-)  Soon after arriving, a woman in a bikini will be found murdered in his office and soon a prominent member of the church will become the prime suspect for the police.  I hope you’re intrigued!

• The world is currently outraged that the military dictatorship of Myanmar/Burma is refusing to let U.S. and international aid in to help the millions devastated by the cyclone. Even Pres. Bush is begging to send massive aid (aid he still hasn’t sent to New Orleans, but that’s a different story). So, who has Sen. John McCain picked to run the upcoming Republican National Convention? Doug Goodyear, once a lobbyist for the Burmese military dictatorship! Great choice, no? And yet more evidence that McCain’s relationship with D.C. lobbyists is MUCH closer than he lets on. (Update: Goodyear just quit over the Burma ties. Good call, but doesn’t show much judgment on McCain’s part.  People have made a big stink over Obama’s slight aquaintance with a former member of the Weather Underground–even though that movement took place when Obama was eight years old and living in Indonesia!–but McCain should thoroughly vet people he wants to employ! He’s an adult and trying to become President, for crying out loud.
• In 2000 and 2004, John McCain tried to modify the GOP platform plank on abortion: allowing exceptions for rape, incest, and saving the life of the mother. These are exceptions that even the majority of pro-life people support. Now, because his relationship with the GOP rightwing base is so shaky (thousands of GOP voters in North Carolina last Tues., long weeks after McCain secured the nomination, still voted for Romney or Huckabee), he is flip-flopping–and won’t challenge the plank’s opposition to all abortions under any circumstances!
• McCain’s reputation for honesty seems to rest on simply a cozy relationship with the media.  Arianna Huffington claims that in 2000 (after Bush  and Rove smeared McCain grossly in South Carolina), both John and Cindy McCain told her that they didn’t vote for George W. Bush. Now, McCain says that he did.  Who is telling the truth? Well, consider some other McCain denials:
• He denied ever talking with Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) about becoming his VP running mate in ‘04. Later, he admitted this conversation did take place. (I thought Kerry was dumb to think about McCain, but that’s a different topic.)
• McCain has denied that he ever said that he doesn’t know much about the economy. But he said exactly that to The Wall Street Journal (not exactly a bastion of liberal spin!), and the Boston Globe, and The Baltimore Sun. That’s in addition to the original quote to Tim Russert, which you can watch here.  Recently, McCain has been touting economic plans in Iowa (where he polls well below either Obama or Clinton) and Michigan. If I were living in Michigan, I’d remember that when he was campaigning for the GOP Michigan primary in January, he told potential voters that their jobs were leaving and never coming back. So, the new jobs he’s promising must be Wal-mart types, huh?
• McCain claimed that in 24 years in the U.S. Senate, he’s never asked for an “earmark” (porkbarrel projects snuck into appropriations bills without voting–both parties regularly waste taxpayer money this way) for Arizona. But he did.
• Less than 24 hours after Cindy McCain told reporters that the McCain campaign would not resort to smear tactics (she was branding a DNC commercial that quoted McCain’s own words and used them against him as a smear), John McCain claimed that Obama is “the favorite candidate of Hamas.” Now, Obama has always said that Hamas is a terrorist group and, in his only trip to the Palestinian territories, told Hamas that unless they renounced terrorism and recognized Israel’s right to existence, NO U.S. President, from any Party, would ever recognize or help them. So, this was clearly a smear. But now McCain says that people want him to link Obama and Hamas. Which people? Bill O’Reilly? Karl Rove? Nasty stuff.
• McCain has been involved in yet another land swap deal that does not show anything illegal, but does show that he has not been as immune to lobbyist charms as he has claimed after his involvement in the Keating Five scandal.
• And then there’s major McCain flip-flops: He voted against the Bush tax cuts, but now wants to make them permanent. (Note: McCain claims that, as a fiscal conservative, he wanted tax cuts only if accompanied by spending cuts to pay for them. Sounds good. Except that’s not what he said at the time. The first round of Bush tax cuts he specifically opposed because they favored the rich. The second round he opposed because, as he rightly said, it is irresponsible to cut taxes when going to war!) He voted, and CAMPAIGNED for immigration reform that he now opposes.  He once opposed the Religious Right as “agents of intolerance,” but now actively seeks their support–including the support of the late Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, Rod Parsley (who urges America to declare war on all Muslims!), and John Hagee!
• McCain was formerly for much stronger climate change legislation than he now supports.
• McCain, a victim of torture while a prisoner of war, used to be completely against torture, including waterboarding (the drowning torture). He had said that all interrogations should be conducted according to the Geneva Conventions as codifed in the U.S. Army Field Manual. But recently he opposed legislation that would have specifically restricted the CIA to the techniques authorized by the Field Manual and praised Pres. Bush for vetoing it.
• He makes jokes about bombing Iran.
• He voted against desegregated housing in Arizona and against the Martin Luther King, Jr. national holiday.
• He has made crude jokes and comments that suggest a deep-seated sexism, even misogyny.  They are too vulgar for me to repeat or link to, because of the danger that children could see them. But you can find them on the web. One such joke in the ’90s was a put-down of Hillary and Chelsea Clinton and former Atty. Gen. Janet Reno in one breath. It also implied that all strong women must be lesbians.  Another “joke” publicly referred to his wife, Cindy, by a nauseatingly vulgar slang term.
• Then there is the strange opposition of McCain to a new “G.I. Bill.” Why would someone of the “we support the troops” party oppose Democratic-sponsored legislation to help the brave men and women we send into harms way (especially into stupid, illegal wars like Iraq)? The G.I. Bill after WWII helped to create the vast middle class of the 1950s by paying for college or job-training for millions of vets. Why would McCain begrudge this to today’s vets?
• McCain’s use of his wife’s jet for campaign purposes may be illegal. So may her refusal to release her tax returns. 

For more on the John McCain who is NOT the jolly maverick created by the media, see The Real McCain.  With a McCain presidency we get less jobs and more wars. No thanks.

When former Sen. George Allen (R-VA), once one of the GOP’s stars and seen as a major presidential contender, referred to an independent, student journalist filming the campaign as “Macaca,” an apparent racial slur, it wasn’t just a gaffe or a stumble. It was also an opening for VA voters to consider seriously for the first time the candidacy of his challenger, Jim Webb, a former Republican who was Sec. of Navy under Reagan and whose son was serving in Iraq–but who was strongly against the war and running for the Senate to stop it.  Since VA, like the rest of the U.S. in ‘06 (and still–the latest numbers are 68% of the population wanting the troops home within 6 months and 85% of Democrats wanting the same!) wanted to end the Iraq War, they gave Allen the boot and welcomed Webb.

I have no idea whether or not George Allen is a racist or intended his “Macaca comment” to be a racial slur. (I had never heard the term before the controversy.) But the term has now entered the U.S. political lexicon as a huge, possibly fatal, gaffe on matters of race.  Earlier this week, Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) had her very own “Macaca moment.”

She was telling USA Today why she should remain in the race for the Democratic nomination. That she had a coalition that was more electable than Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL)’s coalition  in the general election because “she had the hard working, working class white people.”  Well. I am a white Southern male. I come from working class roots (and she doesn’t). Although I have spent time in the ivory towers of the academy and in other white collar situations, I currently work a blue collar job for the union based health insurance and other benefits.  I have to tell you, I found Clinton’s comments insulting.  It seemed like she was trying to recreate Richard Nixon’s Southern strategy or channeling the ghost of (former Alabama Gov.) George Wallace and saying, “Vote for me. You and I are white together–not like YOU KNOW WHO!”  I felt that I was being called a racist and urged to vote for because I am (supposedly) a racist at the same time.  That was incredibly insulting.

Clinton has insulted me and other Obama supporters throughout the primaries.  We are not the right kind of voters. We live in the “wrong” states. We are college educated or college students. We make too much money (Is she kidding me?  First off, my wife and I work 3 jobs to make less than $45,000 for a family of 4–in which we are trying to save for both our children’s upcoming college costs and our retirement–as the GOP keeps trying to privatize Social Security. Second, she and Bill made $109 million since leaving the White House. WHO makes too much money!!!) We are too intellectual. And now, we are not white working class. Well, I AM BOTH a highly educated intellectual AND white working class. And I am proud to support Obama.

BTW, by calling the white working class voters who support her “hard working” is she implying that African-Americans are lazy?  I’d expect a comment like this from Trent Lott (former GOP Sen. from Mississippi), but this is Hillary Clinton. What gives?

Yes, Clinton has done better among white working class voters than Obama. But it’s not like Obama has not had any voting for him. In some states, including Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia, Louisiana, and Alabama, he got the majority of white voters as well as the majority of black voters.  In many states, he won where there are hardly ANY African Americans (e.g., Iowa, Wisconsin, Washington State, Vermont, Idaho, Wyoming, etc.) Yes, some of those states will NOT likely go Democratic in the Fall. And, YES, Clinton’s edge with white, working class voters in OH, PA, WV, and KY gives her the (current) edge in the Electoral College delegate math.  But, as everyone knows, that edge is fluent.  And, if she urges her supporters to support Obama in the general election, there is no reason to think that enough of them won’t help him win.  Nationally, he is once more out-polling (slightly) Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) after falling behind him during the month long smears in March.

Look, Democrats cannot win the White House without working class whites in key states, it’s true.  But neither can they win without African-Americans (13% of the population that votes 90% Democratic). For Hillary to try to create or widen divisions instead of healing them shows that her desire to be president is outweighing the interests of the Party and the Nation.  I hate to see her and Bill Clinton, who used to try for national dialogues on race to try to address our divisions, now become remembered for race-bating. But they have been guilty of it at several times during this campaign. Now, it seems Hillary is trying to get in touch with her inner Klansman and urging whites in WV and KY (and superdelegates) to do the same.  This blue collar evangelical WASP from the South says–”No thanks!”

P. S.: Jimmy Carter in 1976 was the last Democrat to win the majority of white working class voters. Bill Clinton only got 39% of white males in ‘92 and owed his election to Ross Perot. John Kerry only had the same % of white males as Obama does at this point in the ‘04 campaign, but went on to lose the popular vote by less than 1%.  I don’t know if Obama will get the majority of the white working class, but in a year in which the economy stinks, in which 68% of Americans want the troops withdrawn from Iraq(not stay indefinitely as McCain urges), and in which the GOP brand-name itself is very unpopular (as recently both Karl Rove and Newt Gingrich both warned their GOP colleagues!), I think it quite possible that Obama can win enough white working class voters that, combined with the other parts of the coalition, can beat McCain in November.  John Kerry lost in ‘04 by less than 1 million votes. In the 7 primaries that culminated in PA, alone, there have been 1.8 million new Democratic voters. Obama, who has great experience in voter registration drives, just launched a 50 state voter registration drive that hopes to register millions of new voters between now and November.  He’s growing the Party. Clinton is pandering to racial stereotypes.  What has happened to her?

Secretary of State Rice is here shown repeatedly denying that the U.S. tortures, but Congressional investigations have shown that she knew and approved of the CIA using such techniques as waterboarding (the drowning torture), sleep deprivation, stressed positions, slappings, sexual humiliations, religious humiliations, etc.  This woman, who has so dishonored the nation and may be guilty of CRIMES, is still regularly put forward in many circles as a possible VP running mate for Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), the GOP nominee for U.S. President! That’s right: John McCain, who claims to be against torture, but voted against a bill that would specifically prevent the CIA from using any interrogation techniques not authorized in the U.S. Army Field Manual (derived from standards of U.S. and international law) and who cheered when Bush vetoed said bill, is now considering running with Ms. Pro-Torture–presumably because she is black, female, and well-liked by the Rightwing GOP Base.

Rice's involvement is documented at the following links:  ABC News; The NY Times; Empty Wheel.  Sign the petition calling for Rice’s resignation and urging all three presidential candidates to do the same. It’s time we begin holding people accountable! We impeached one president for a consensual (if adulterous) sexual act–but this administration commits repeated high crimes and misdemeanors and gets away with it.  No amount of flag lapel pin wearing can cover that over.

From time to time, I have taken a break on this blog from my usual topics in theology, religious social criticism, politics, etc., to write about one of my hobbies: detective fiction. It’s usually done better in books than in film, but there are exceptions, and I have previously written about Columbo and The Closer.  I also wrote a column about Fictional Clergy Detectives.  Now, I will follow up on that column.

This is a list of as many fictional “clergy” (stretching the term in some cases) as I have found. If I have read any of their mysteries, I will comment on them, but otherwise just link to more information.  Enjoy.

Fictional Sleuths From Non-Christian “Clergy.”  I list these interfaith sleuths first simply because they are so few and it is easy to overlook them.

Darcy Lott is the creation of veteran mystery writer Susan Dunlap, who has written other series and single novels.  Although she also has another job (stuntwoman!), Darcy is an American Zen Buddhist living in San Francisco. She is a jisha (assistant to the roshi or Zen spiritual leader) at the Ninth Street Zen Center in San Francisco.  There are 2 Darcy Lott novels to date:  A Single Eye (2006), which is a very Zen title, and Hungry Ghosts (2008). I have not read either of these novels, yet, so I cannot comment on quality, etc.

I have yet to see any fictional detectives who are Imams or other leaders in Islamic traditions.  There are, however, 2 fictional detectives who are rabbis and 1 who is a rabbi’s wife (rebbetzin).

Rabbi David Small is the fictional creation of Harry Kemelman (1908-1996), a former schoolteacher whose own father was an immigrant rabbi from Russia.  He created the character of Rabbi Small in order to explain Judaism (as Kemelman’s own centrist Conservative Jewish tradition sees it) to both Gentiles and to rapidly assimilating American Jews. I love this character and the novels. Rabbi Small uses pipul or rabbinic logic in solving crimes and the stories work as mysteries. As a teen, this was my first introduction to Judaism from a Jewish perspective. Small, and Kemelman, have their blind spots: His description of faith-based social action seems more caught from American individualism than from Judaism. In Monday the Rabbi Took Off, the Smalls travel to Israel for a Sabbatical and Rabbi Small describes Israeli treatment of Arabs in glowing terms that probably showed bias, THEN, and certainly fails to match current reality.  And often Kemelman’s/Small’s descriptions of Christian views seem to this Christian to miss the point considerably.  But if one loves mysteries, one does not expect to share all the biases and perspectives of the sleuth/hero.  The Rabbi Small mysteries are, in order of writing:

• Friday the Rabbi Slept Late (1964), the debut, which won the Edgar Allan Poe Award of the Mystery Writers of America.
• Saturday the Rabbi Went Hungry (1966).
• Sunday the Rabbi Stayed Home (1969).
• Monday the Rabbi Took Off (1972).
• Tuesday the Rabbi Saw Red (1974).
• Wednesday the Rabbi Got Wet (1976).
• Thursday the Rabbi Walked Out (1978).
• Someday the Rabbi Will Leave (1985).
• One Fine Day the Rabbi Bought a Cross (1987). No, he didn’t convert to Christianity.
• The Day the Rabbi Resigned (1992).
• That Day the Rabbi Left Town (1996).

There is also Conversations with Rabbi Small (1981), which is not a mystery.

Rabbi Daniel Winter is the creation of an actual rabbi, Joseph Telushkin, who has written works on Jewish ethics and humor.  Rabbi Winter is a more contemporary figure than Rabbi Small. He is described as an Orthodox rabbi in a Conservative congregation with Reform laypeople!  He has his own radio show (”Religion and You”) and is the author of The Religious Manifesto.  He is better at growing his congregation than Rabbi Small. When asked if he is a male chauvenist, he replies that he probably is–but that sometimes he is ashamed of it. I haven’t read the series, but they seem to do well on Amazon.com, so I will probably check them out. 

• The Unorthodox Murder of Rabbi Wahl (1987). A feminist (and female) rabbi is deliberately run over by an automobile after appearing as a guest on Rabbi Winter’s controversial radio talk show. Since he disapproves of female rabbis as a distortion of Judaism, Rabbi Winter is an initial suspect.
• An Eye for an Eye (1991).
• The Final Analysis of Dr. Stark (1998).

Ruby the Rabbi’s Wife is actually the Rabbi’s widow. The character is described initially as a bouncy, lively extrovert of 46 who owns a deli called “The Hot Bagel.” The books are all told from her perspective and in her words. She is “a solid size 14,” with auburn hair and curls cut short and green eyes. She has a 14 year old son, a 3 legged dog named Oy Vay (I love that!), and later gets a kitten she names Chutzpah! The lively widow is no longer young and beautiful, but doesn’t lack for male admirers including Kevin the incompetent rabbi and Paul Lundy, the police Lieutenant.  Ruby the Rabbi’s Wife is the creation of Sharon Kahn, an attorney and arbitrator who was, herself, the wife of a rabbi for 31 years. (Write what you know!)  I haven’t read these, but they sound intriguing.

• Fax Me a Bagel (1998).
• Never Nosh a Matzo Ball (2000).
• Don’t Cry for Me, Hot Pastrami (2001).
• Hold the Cream Cheese, Kill the Lox (2002).
• Which Big Giver Stole the Chopped Liver? (2004).
• Out of the Frying Pan, Into the Choir (2006).

Fictional Clergy Detectives: “Modern” Roman Catholic Priests (I.E., not set in Medieval settings).

Father Brown is the prototype of Catholic priest/amateur sleuth of fiction.  He may even be the first of the fictional clergy detectives, period. He is the creation of G. K. Chesterton (1874-1936), a prolific author whose conversion to Catholicism turned him into an apologist for conservative Christianity (especially Catholicism). Chesterton based the fictional Father Brown on actual Isrish Catholic priest, Fr. John O’Connor of St. Cuthbert, Bradford, who was the human catalyst and guide for Chesterton’s conversion. The Fr. Brown stories are short stories collected in 5 volumes.  I have not really enjoyed these stories, myself. I find Fr. Brown too perfect a character to be believable, though many others disagree.

• The Innocence of Father Brown (1910).
• The Wisdom of Father Brown (1913).
• The Incredulity of Father Brown (1923).
• The Secret of Father Brown (1927).
• The Scandal of Father Brown (1935).

Fr. Ralph McInerny, who teaches at Notre Dame, created the popular sleuth, Father Dowling.  This series of novels became so popular that (rather lame) TV series was spun off, Father Dowling Mysteries (in the UK known as Father Dowling Investigates). It ran for a few years in the ’90s.  I was so unimpressed by the TV series that I have never picked up any of the books. Friends who are fellow mystery buffs inform me that this was a mistake, so I may correct it soon. McInerny is still writing these novels and they are still selling well.

Father (later Bishop) Blackie Ryan is the creation of Rev. Dr.  Andrew M. Greeley (1928-), himself a Catholic priest (of a decidedly liberal bent) and a sociologist of religion who has also written other best-selling novels.  Fr. Ryan is the Rev. Monsignor John Blackwood Ryan, S.T.L., Ph.D. (and later Bishop), a priest and a philosopher. In the first book, he is just past 40 and Rector of Holy Name Cathedral.  Fr. Ryan is the author of such unlikely treatises as Truth in William James: An Irishman’s Best Guess and James Joyce: Catholic Theologian! Many have accused Ryan of being the alter ego of the author, but Greeley says that though Ryan often speaks in his voice, he has a different appearance and qualifications and gets on better with church authorities. He is presented by the author as the best of American Catholicism. (Throughout the series, Ryan sometimes refers to God as “She” or “Her.” This has both biblical and traditional precedent, but, I find it unbelievable that, since the Roman Church has backed away from Vatican II, that any priest who did this could still become consecrated as a bishop! Maybe Greeley was being hopeful about the future?)

I think this series works well as mystery fiction and I like Fr./Bishop Ryan very much.  He reminds me, slightly, of some priests I knew as colleagues when I taught religion and philosophy in a Catholic university.

• Happy Are the Meek (1985).
• Happy Are the Clean of Heart. (1987)
• Happy Are Those Who Thirst After Justice. (1987)
• Happy Are the Merciful. (1992)
• Happy Are the Peacemakers (1993)
• Happy Are the Poor in Spirit (1994).
• Happy Are Those Who Mourn (1995).
• Happy Are the Oppressed (1996).
• The Bishop at Sea (1997). British title: Blackie at Sea.
• The Bishop and the Three Kings. (199
• The Bishop and the L Train (2000).
• The Bishop and the Beggar Girl of St. Germain (2001).
• The Bishop in the West Wing (2002).
• The Bisho Goes to THE University (2003).
• The Bishop in the Old Neighborhood (2005).

Father Robert Koesler (pronounced “Kessler”) was created by William X. Kienzle (1928-2001), who had been a Roman Catholic priest himself for 20 years before resigning over the refusal of the Catholic Church to remarry divorced people.  The character appears in 24 novels, helping police solve murders that have a Catholic connection.  Kienzle may have been the first priest to write detective stories–and been the inspiration for Greeley’s works above.  The Fr. Koesler novels are set in Detroit. There are too many of them to list, but all are readily available. The first is The Rosary Murders (1979).

Father Mark Townsend, S.J. is the creation of an actual Jesuit Priest, Fr. Brad Reynolds, S.J. (1949-). Both the actual Fr. Reynolds and the fictional Fr. Townsend used to live in Alaska.  Fr. Reynolds is a priest in Oregon and Fr. Townsend is in Seattle, WA.  Jesuit education involves around 15 years of study in philosophy and theology, interrupted by a “regency” which is hard work in the field. Reynolds uses this intense educational program in his approach to Fr. Townsend’s sleuthing–he arrives at the answer in ways that often involve more abstract logic than “real world” experience.  The strength of this series lies in characterization and setting, but it is weaker on plot. One hopes that will change in future books.

• The Story Knife (1966).
• A Ritual Death (1997).
• Cruel Sanctuary (1999).
• Deadly Harvest (1999).

Father Joseph Bredder is one of the best of the Catholic priest sleuths of fiction, to my (liberal, Protestant) mind.  He is the creation of Leonard Wibberly (1915-1983), an adventurous journalist turned novelist, who wrote under his own name, under the names Patrick O’ Connor, Christopher Webb, and, for the Father Bredder mysteries, Leonard Holton.  Wibberly’s most famous novel was the 1955 The Mouse That Roared, a satirical farce about a tiny European country that declared war on the U.S. and was made into a movie starring Peter Sellers.   Holton claims that he wanted to write mysteries, but disliked the violence of many sleuths or the fussiness of the “Miss Jane Marple” types. So, he created Fr. Bredder, a former professional boxer and ex-U.S. Marine turned Franciscan priest as a nonviolent detective who was also decidedly masculine.  The stories are very fast moving and set in San Francisco.  There are 11 novels.

• The Saint Maker (1959).
• A Pact with Satan (1960).
• Secret of the Doubting Saint (1961).
• Deliver Us from Wolves (1963).
• Flowers By Request (1964).
• Out of the Depths (1966).
• A Touch of Jonah (1968).
• A Problem in Angels (1970).
• The Mirror of Hell (1972).
• The Devil to Play (1974).
• A Corner of Paradise (1977).

Medieval Monks/Friars as Sleuths:

The best example in this category is Umberto Eco’s classic, The Name of the Rose (1980 in Italian; 1983 in English) which became a movie by the same title.  The hero is Brother William of Baskerville, a brilliant Franciscan monk (who used to be a Dominican and a member of the Inquisition) and he must solve a series of murders in an isolated monastery in 14th C. Italy.  A  must read.

Edith Pargeter (1913-1995), writing under the pen-name of Ellis Peters, created an excellent Medieval sleuth, Brother Cadfael, a monk in a Benedictine abbey in 12th C. Shrewsbury near the Welsh border.  There are 20 novels, beginning with A Morbid Taste for Bones (1977) and a BBC TV series based on the novels ran for some years. Ellis won several awards for the novels and was eventually awarded an Order of the British Empire for her work.  I am just now discovering these and can’t yet evaluate them. I don’t know the historical period well enough to know how accurate the historical part of this historical fiction is, but the mysteries themselves are challenging. The Medieval setting means that the detective, Bro. Cadfael, cannot just wait for the crime lab to solve everything.

There are several others in this category, but I have not waded through them, yet.  I’ll end this post here and pick up soon with fictional nuns/women religious as sleuths, then turn to the many Protestant variations.

• On Torture: Melissa Rogers notes that Evangelicals for Human Rights will host a national summit on torture this coming Fall with the title, “Religious Faith, Torture, and Our National Soul.” The Anabaptist/Baptist in me is skeptical of both generic “religious faith,” and the constantinian, civil religion notion of a “national soul,” but I expect good things to come from the conference anyway. 
• Chris Sanders is beginning a series of posts on Thinking Theologically About Torture.
• Helen Thomas, dean of the Washington Press Corps, comments on Bush’s admission that he approved of torture.
• A cameraman for Al-Jazeera, imprisoned in Guantanemo Bay, Cuba for 6 years without charges, claims that he and others housed there were routinely tortured and compares torture morally to terrorism.

Oaths:  In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus taught his disciples to refuse to swear any oaths at all. Since the time of Constantine, most Christians have refused to take Jesus seriously at this point with oath-taking being common in Eastern Orthodoxy, Roman Catholicism, Anglicanism, and all kinds of Protestantism. In this nation, we even use Bibles in administering oaths–having people swear on a book that includes Jesus’ ban on swearing!! But some Christians have tried to follow Jesus and refuse to use oaths: Anabaptists (Mennonites, the Church of the Brethren, the Amish, Hutterites, etc.) and Quakers especially.  There were enough Quakers in early post-Revolutionary U.S.A. that the U.S. Constitution allows for presidents to “Affirm” a promise of office rather than swear an oath of office. (The Quaker Herbert Hoover affirmed. The lapsed Quaker, Richard M. Nixon, as the later Nixon tapes revealed, had no problems with swearing!)

Well, now a California public school teacher, a lifelong Quaker, has been fired for refusing to swear an oath of loyalty–based on a 1952 law designed to ferret out Communists!

Bob Cornwall over at Ponderings on a Faith Journey has more on this amazing story where religious liberty is not practiced in America.

Related to loyalty oaths, of course, is the whole question of Christian blind obedience to political authorities, a curious habit usually blamed on Romans 13.  Thom Stark, therefore, is doing everyone a big favor by outlining the numerous approaches to Romans 13 and the question of Christians and civil authority on his blog Semper Reformanda.

Oil:

John McCain admitted that the war was all about oil and then tried to say that only the first Gulf War was about oil, not this one. (If Dems don’t use this against him all the way to November, they are too stupid to win.)

Meanwhile, my friend Dan Trabue has been writing a series of blog posts on our addiction to oil. Check them out.

Evolution and Intelligent Design: I need to get back to my series on this topic.  Meanwhile, David Congdon, has used the release of the movie Expelled to give Four Theses Against “Intelligent Design.”  Good job, David.

Finally, Aaron Weaver, the Big Daddy Weave of non-fundamentalist Baptist bloggers, has announced his upcoming marriage!  Alexis Cooper seems far more intelligent and beautiful than he deserves (as is absolutely the case with my own spouse, Rev. Kate Westmoreland-White!). This, once more, proves the superior kindness of women! As my Jewish friends have taught me, Mazel Tov, Aaron and Alexis!