"Exciting the Laughter of God's Creatures"--Remembering Mark Twain's Spirituality

[deutsey]

Although Wednesday marks the 100th anniversary of Samuel Clemens’s death, any reports of his alter ego Mark Twain’s demise have been greatly exaggerated.

In fact, Twain remains as well-known today as he was a century ago.

In January, Easton Middle School performed a popular musical adaptation of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer that had many of us humming sunny tunes about life on the Mississippi while shoveling snow here on the Eastern Shore. A couple years ago, Twain’s brooding image adorned the cover of Time magazine beside the somewhat ominous headline, “The Dangerous Mind of Mark Twain.”

That dichotomy between the whimsical and cantankerous aspects of Twain’s legacy captures well how we’ve come to understand his enduring iconic presence in our culture. As with most icons, however, there are usually many complex ambiguities coursing like murky river currents beneath the familiar façade we think we know.

Twain’s attitudes on race, for example, remain a matter of debate and have even led some to call for banning Adventures of Huckleberry Finn from schools because of its alleged racism. In terms of his religious beliefs, many people also assume Twain was an embittered atheist who, especially late in life, took devilish delight in mocking God and ridiculing Christianity.

More at link:



http://www.midshorelife.com/content/%E2%80%9Cexciting-laughter-god%E2%80%99s-creatures%E2%80%9D%E2%80%94remembering-mark-twain%E2%80%99s-spirituality

[Manifestor_of_Light]

1. Read LETTERS FROM THE EARTH and THE MYSTERIOUS STRANGER

if you haven't already.

Very thought provoking.

[deutsey]

2. I have, many times

I'm an independent scholar in Twain studies and focus mostly on his religious views late in life.

I see a big difference in LFTE between the real God in the opening chapter and the God of feeble human imagination that Satan attacks. Also, if you haven't read No. 44, The Mysterious Stranger (as opposed to the largely bowlderized The Mysterious Stranger--A Romance from 1916), I highly recommend it. Most scholars see it as Twain's intended final Mysterious Stranger manuscript, but it wasn't discovered until the late 1960s and not published until the '80s. In No. 44, Twain also makes a distinction between God's "real message" and what the church preaches.

My intention in the column was to write for a very general audience, but I have written a lot more scholarly articles on No. 44 in particular.

[trotsky]

3. Ah, the historical revisionism of Christianity. Predictable as the tides.

I wonder if there's any admirable person from history they won't try to posthumously claim as one of theirs?

So Twain didn't ridicule Christianity, huh?

"To trust the God of the Bible is to trust an irascible, vindictive, fierce and ever fickle and changeful master."

"Surely the ass who invented the first religion ought to be the first ass damned."

"The Christian's Bible is a drug store. Its contents remain the same; but the medical practice changes.... The world has corrected the Bible. The church never corrects it; and also never fails to drop in at the tail of the procession -- and take the credit of the correction. During many ages there were witches. The Bible said so. the Bible commanded that they should not be allowed to live. Therefore the Church, after eight hundred years, gathered up its halters, thumb-screws, and firebrands, and set about its holy work in earnest. She worked hard at it night and day during nine centuries and imprisoned, tortured, hanged, and burned whole hordes and armies of witches, and washed the Christian world clean with their foul blood. Then it was discovered that there was no such thing as witches, and never had been. One does not know whether to laugh or to cry.... There are no witches. The witch text remains; only the practice has changed. Hell fire is gone, but the text remains. Infant damnation is gone, but the text remains. More than two hundred death penalties are gone from the law books, but the texts that authorized them remain."

[deutsey]

5. Not what I'm saying at all.

Edited to correct a year and the word "presbyterian"; I always have a hard time with that word...

(And I'm not a Christian, btw...although there are certainly Christian scholars these days attempting to make a case for Twain's involvement with Christianity...Hal Bush is one of them. I don't agree with his overall thesis, but I'm open minded enough to read and consider what he says).

I'm saying Twain's beliefs in a Deity or religion are much more complex than either evangelicals or atheists assume.

In the one quote you mention Twain refers to "the God of the Bible"...he had a big problem with that "god". He distinguished between that "god" and what he often referred to as "the Deity." If you read "Letters from the Earth" (one of the last things he wrote), you see in the beginning chapter Twain's attempt to describe that Creator Deity in some way while demonstrating how impossible it is to do so with human language.

While Satan in LFTE doesn't quite understand that Deity (Satan here is a part of the heavenly court and is more like the Satan in Job than the boogeyman we know today), he does make a distinction between that Deity and "this race's god" (meaning the human race), the one that we've made up and believe to be true.

Note, too, that he refers to "the Christian's Bible" in your second quote. In No. 44, The Mysterious Stranger (written between 1902 and 1909), Twain also differentiates "God's real message" and the hateful, malicious, and self-serving message human religion promotes.

I don't claim to have the definitive view on Twain's religious views, but I have been studying them for over a decade and what I say here is based on that research. In fact, at the moment I'm looking into Hindu influences on his ongoing attempt to make sense of himself, his suffering toward the end of his life, and the larger cosmos. There's evidence, imo, that Vedanta philosophy may have had some influence on not only his religious views but on the cryptic ending of No. 44, in which the narrator is alone in nothingness with possibility of dreaming other dreams. For me, this and other writings about the vastness of the cosmos and our place in it are very much similar to Vedanta beliefs about "Brahman." (Not "Brahma", the god, but "Brahman," the ultimate Source from which all reality arises and returns eventually).

Among my reasons for believing this are his friendship with former Unitarian minister Moncure Conway (who wrote extensively on Eastern religions), his friendship with Tesla (who also was interested in Vedanta), his reading of authors of the time who spoke highly of the Upanishads (Max Mueller), his visit to India in the 1890s during his world lecture tour when he met an Indian holy man named Sri 108.

Do I say that Twain converted to Hinduism and that he spent his remaining days doing yoga or blissed out in Nirvana? Did his views become some kinda Eastern thing (in the parlance of The Big Lebowski)? Far from it, dude. I'm just fascinated by his religious views in general (which were very fluid) and in particular what they may have been toward the end of his life.

I believe Twain was a life-long seeker whose views were shaped by the Calvinistic Presbyterianism of his youth, by the Deism of Thomas Paine, by the Christianity of his close friend Rev. Joe Twichell, by his readings in science and evolution, by his friendships with Unitarian and other liberal clergy, etc. In my research I've found that there are many, many different strands in Twain's religious life all tangled up in what amounts to one big enigma.

Unlike absolutists on either side of the God debate, I see that as a more authentic representation of what all this thing called life, the cosmos, what-have-you ultimately is.

But that's just, like, my opinion, man.

[trotsky]

10. The point is, Twain most certainly did ridicule Christianity.

The very same mainstream Christianity practiced by the large majority of Christians today. At best, I'd say Twain was a Deist much like the Founders - a clockwork god who started the universe up and then stepped back. Which is really a product of the Enlightenment thought of the period.

I also take issue with your use of the word "absolutists," as if the ultra-religious nutjob who bombs abortion clinics or flies planes into buildings is somehow the analogue of an atheist who says "I don't believe in any gods." It is disingenuous to try and use the triangulation strategy to put yourself right in the "sensible middle" by framing two other opinions as somehow being the opposite ends of extremist thought.

[deutsey]

11. Yeah, he did ridicule Christianity

He also attended and did lots of things with the churches he attended.

If you read his writings in total within the context of his times, I think you'll see there's much more to what he believed and didn't believe than is generally believed.

And regarding the absolutist thing: I don't have a dog (or a god, if you're dyslexic) in this "atheist v. believer" grudge match.

[trotsky]

14. Don't know if you intentionally chose to miss my point

but go ahead and think whatever you want to about what Twain believed. No one will never know, including you.

[deutsey]

15. LOL

Whatever. Kettle meet pot. :rofl:

Thanks for playing. :eyes:

[trotsky]

16. Whatever, indeed.

I'm not the one who wrote a blog post about just that, then posted it on a message board for self-promotion, and then argued with everyone else that they're wrong.

But if it makes you feel better, you go ahead and post whatever else you want to get the last word in.

[deutsey]

17. Gosh, thanks

Insert _last word here_

[darkstar3]

18. "If you just read it the right way, it says exactly what I want it to say!"

I don't know if that unoriginal argument is what you MEANT to whip out there, but it's certainly the one you used...

[deutsey]

19. I forgot to put if you turn it upside down and read it backwards.

[deutsey]

12. If you're interested

you might want to look up writings by his friend Moncure Conway.

Conway's an interesting character. He used to be a Methodist minister from the South, but then went to Harvard's Divinity School and became a Unitarian minister. He was an abolitionist (despite his family's support of slavery) and was asked to leave the Unitarian church he ministered to in DC because of his staunch anti-slavery beliefs.

He was a liberal Christian for a time (like many Unitarians were back then, see James Freeman Clarke's Manual of Unitarian Belief http://www.americanunitarian.org/manual.htm, especially his definitions of liberal and rational Christianity) and a transcendentalist, but then determined that Christianity couldn't be saved from itself. He became an expatriate while in England promoting the Northern cause during the Civil War, and founded a freethought society there that stil exists.

He wrote a biography of Thomas Paine, a book on demonology and devl lore from around the world, an anthology of religious writings from around the world, served as Twain's literary rep in England...fascinating guy. I'm reading some of his sermons from a 1907 "best of collection" called Lessons for the Day...topics include "A Freethinker's Vision Beyond Death," "Orthodox Belief and Unbelieving Orthodoxy," "New Views on Natural Religion". These are from a collection from the 1870s/'80s, and one of them in that collection was "What Can India Teach Us?", which I think may have influenced Twain. If he didn't read that sermon, he definitely read the book by Max Mueller (India--What Can it Teach Us?). Mueller was also friends with Conway.

Throughout his life, Twain developed a rep for ridiculing religion (especially Christian orthodoxy). He was even accused of being a "son of the devil" by one pious preacher (which I believe gave Twain great delight). Still, by his own admission, Twain said he was always trying to deconstruct the bullshit (my word, not his) that people made up about religious experience, not what he saw as the real thing beneath the bullshit.

Personally, in terms of Twain's beliefs, I see him fluctuating throughout his adult life between the kind of liberalized Christianity his friend Joe Twichell preached (Twichell himself was influenced by his Civil War chaplaincy and by Horace Bushnell, a minister brought up unsuccessfully on charges of heresy by more orthodox types) and Conway (who was influenced by Emerson and friends with Thoreau and interested in Eastern philosophy). Twain was also apparently influenced by William James's work (according to a book by Jason Gary Horn).

Toward the end of his life, I believe Twain was much closer to Conway's views than to Twichell's, but they were his unique (and at times perplexing) views. Still, reading the things written by people he admired suggests to me that there was much more to the religious dynamic of his times than a simple either/or dichotomy.

[deutsey]

13. Orthodox Unbelief and Unbelieving Orthodoxy

By Moncure Conway (1880s)

I think this link will work:

http://books.google.com/books?id=ZAEPAAAAIAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=%22moncure%22+%22lessons+for+the+day%22&source=bl&ots=4dO-pPosJR&sig=Fd8pn1yE0yAtMJCZXFg28jBbZ3w&hl=en&ei=lVDPS4jrMIbGlQeiu7yhCw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=8&ved=0CCAQ6AEwBw#v=onepage&q&f=false

[Jim__]

4. Interesting essay. Thanks for posting it. - n/t

[Goblinmonger]

6. Religion aside in this post, I think it is ridiculous to say that his views on race

remain a debate. Only if you're an idiot. His wife was an abolitionist and there is every indication he supported her and the cause. And to call for a ban of Huck Finn is silly in that his treatment of Jim as a human and the overarching theme of the book make his attitude toward race, IMHO, very clear.

[deutsey]

7. Yeah, but it is a debate

People regularly want to ban Huck as a racist book or to stop teaching it because it may inadvertantly perpetuates racist stereotypes (which is somewhat ironic in that the bluebloods who wanted to ban it in the 1880s had more of a problem with Huck's low class language). I was also in a class with someone who was deeply offended by the book and said it portrays blacks as racist caricatures.

It was over a decade or so ago, but Jane Smiley called for replacing Huck Finn with Uncle Tom's Cabin in the canon. It's an infamous essay in Harper's, around '98, I guess. References were still being made about it at a Twain conference I went to last year.

I don't agree with these views, but they're out there and, hence, the debate.

[KansasVoter]

8. I say there is a 90% chance he was an Atheist.......

If he was not an Atheist then I am not either......

" a mass of fables and traditions, mere mythology."

"If Christ were here now there is one thing he would not be -- a Christian."

""In God We Trust." I don't believe it would sound any better if it were true."

"If there is a God, he is a malign thug."

" has noble poetry in it... and some good morals and a wealth of obscenity, and upwards of a thousand lies."

"I cannot see how a man of any large degree of humorous perception can ever be religious -- unless he purposely shut the eyes of his mind & keep them shut by force."

"Surely the ass who invented the first religion ought to be the first ass damned."

"I believe that the Old and New Testaments were imagined and written by man, and that no line in them was authorized by God, much less inspired by Him."

[deutsey]

9. See my response above

I'm saying his views were deeply complex, but, imo, not atheistic in the sense that he rejected any notion of a larger divinity (not a being, per se) of some sort.

Did Twain have a grudge match with the Christian God? Hell yes. Does that mean he categorically rejected the possibility of a larger reality, perhaps along the lines of how Vedanta defines Brahman? I don't know with absolute certainty, but I find intriguing evidence for it in my studies.

[deutsey]

20. Mark Twain's Creed

Twain wrote this personal creed in the 1880s, I believe.



I believe in God the Almighty.

I do not believe He has ever sent a message to man by anybody, or delivered one to him by word of mouth, or made Himself visible to mortal eyes at any time in any place.

I believe that the Old and New Testaments were imagined and written by man, and that no line in them was authorized by God, much less inspired by Him.

I think the goodness, the justice, and the mercy of God are manifested in His works: I perceive that they are manifested toward me in this life; the logical conclusion is that they will be manifested toward me in the life to come, if there should be one.

I do not believe in special providences. I believe that the universe is governed by strict and immutable laws. If one man's family is swept away by a pestilence and another man's spared it is only the law working: God is not interfering in that small matter, either against the one man or in favor of the other.

I cannot see how eternal punishment hereafter could accomplish any good end, therefore I am not able to believe in it. To chasten a man in order to perfect him might be reasonable enough; to annihilate him when he shall have proved himself incapable of reaching perfection might be reasonable enough; but to roast him forever for the mere satisfaction of seeing him roast would not be reasonable... even the atrocious God imagined by the Jews would tire of the spectacle eventually.

There may be a hereafter and there may not be. I am wholly indifferent about it. If I am appointed to live again I feel sure it will be for some more sane and useful purpose than to flounder about for ages in a lake of fire and brimstone for having violated a confusion of ill-defined and contradictory rules said (but not evidenced) to be of divine institution. If annihilation is to follow death, I shall not be aware of the annihilation and therefore shall not care a straw about it.

I believe that the world's moral laws are the outcome of the world's experience. It needed no God to come down out of heaven to tell men that murder and theft and the other immoralities were bad, both for the individual who commits them and for society which suffers from them.

If I break all these moral laws I cannot see how I injure God by it, for He is beyond the reach of injury from me-- I could as easily injure a planet by throwing mud at it. It seems to me that my misconduct could only injure me and other men. I cannot benefit God by obeying these moral laws-- I could as easily benefit the planets by withholding my mud. (Let these sentences be read in the light of the fact that I believe I have received moral laws ONLY from man-- none whatever from God.) Consequently I do not see why I should be either punished or rewarded hereafter for the deeds I do here.