Orthodoxy: does it matter? Who has it?

This Daily Beast article annoyed me; it's an article about a family practicing so-called Christian courtship, a mostly American practice that rejects dating, for courtship with extreme parental control and supervision. Wikipedia dates it to circa 1985. The key sentence in the article that irritates me says:

"Christian conservatives like the Wrights are often written off as crazy, uneducated hicks by educated, white, upper-middle-class urbanites, who are much more tolerant of other orthodox religions."

Again, it's a movie about a practice that appeared during the Reagan administration, that I don't think all that many people have heard of. It's pretty much the definition of heterodox behavior. One could separate their homeschooling and courtship from their religious beliefs (which is artificial, IMO, since they don't), but then it would be hard to say their beliefs are inspiring this writing-off, especially in the context of this movie.

(This is a side note, but I'm not sure I believe that "other orthodox religio(u)s" members are treated so much differently. The Hindus across the (figurative) street aren't perceived as planning on pressing their beliefs into law*, and have the patina of the other, but I think there's as many "how can you never eat beef?" questions as there are "how can you not believe in evolution?" They're both otherized, it's just that the White American is more annoyed by it then the devout Hindu come to America.)

In any case, what does orthodox matter? (In this case, I suspect it was in part a bad substitution for "fundamentalist".) This does seem to be a perpetual question, connected to the one about how we tell if someone is sincerely religious and more darkly about whether we're going to respect other's traditions. You can circumcise your newborn, but Holy Hullabaloos tells us the Santerias are still getting harassed when they engage in animal sacrifice. (Would it be okay to cut off a pinky of your newborn if your church demanded it? Should it matter if your church is only three years old?) Labeling the Wrights orthodox seems to be demanding we respect his courtship beliefs as "Christian" in a way that we wouldn't if they were explicitly labeled as being new. (I suppose it's the same thing with Wiccans who claim ancient history for a 20th century religion, except in that Wiccans aren't coöpting the largest, most politically powerful religion as well as historical figures both truly orthodox and truly heterodox, both in their day and ours. The Wiccan claim thus is not a political football or power play.)

* (Sidenote sidenote: The White House petition webpage got a petition a few years back to pass a law to protect major religious figures from defamation, namely Moses, Jesus and Mohammed. That is, the entire list was Muslim prophets. It struck me as tone-deaf, at the least; adding Confucius and Buddha on there would have at least made it feel a lot less sectarian a proposal.)

Okay, so it was a massive havering thought dump. As you will.

I think your question whether "orthodox" is the correct word to describe a minor US fundamentalist practice is a valid one.

"Orthodoxy" misses the boat twice in the case cited, as can be seen from the etymology of the word. First of all, what's in question is more a practice (praxis) than the belief (doxos) underlying it. Second, for it to be "right" (orthos) requires a conformity to a standard not in evidence, as the novelty and marginality of the practice demonstrate. To use "orthodox" for "fundamentalist" -- or, more broadly, innovatively reactionary, or sect-based authoritarian -- heteropraxis is certainly to muddy the discourse.

Sidenote sidenote sidenote: If they were to pass that hypothetical law against defamation of religious founders, I don't think the prophet of my religion (i.e. Aleister Crowley) would enjoy its protection. Nor do I think he (or any others) should have it.

>2 John5918: I think your question whether "orthodox" is the correct word to describe a minor US fundamentalist practice is a valid one.

Size doesn't matter.

I prefer Bourdieu's depiction of "doxa" and "orthodoxy" in relation to "tradition." It (tradition) exists in a doxic state when "what is essential goes without saying because it comes without saying: the tradition is silent, not least about itself as a tradition; customary law is content to enumerate specific applications of principles which remain implicit and unformulated, because unquestioned; the play of the mythico-ritual homologies constitutes a perfectly closed world, a world which has no place for opinion as liberal ideology understands it, i.e. as one of the different and equally legitimate answers which can be given to an explicit question about the established political order" (Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice, 168). In this doxic state, the arbitrariness of tradition is not perceived.

This doxic state of tradition is revealed in its contingency when a "field of opinion" develops, the "locus of the confrontation of competing discourses." When this happens, "Orthodoxy, straight, or rather straightened, opinion" is invoked, which "aims, without ever entirely succeeding, at restoring the primal state of innocence of doxa..." (Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice, 169).

Viewed in this light, Christian courtship is orthodox, an effort to restore traditional sexual relationships to the state of innocence that existed before TV, communism, rock and roll, hippies, secular humanism, and, especially, atheism ruined everything by approving, rather than condemning, the temptation of pre-marital sexual relations, i.e. sex for pleasure. It is no longer self-evidently true that young people must "save themselves for marriage." The competing discourse on sexual pleasure as essential to the self called into question self-evident traditional views of the proper time and place for sex. Hence, the practice of Christian courtship is an effort to re-establish doxa; it is an effort to put the sexual pleasure genie back in the bottle. However, it can now only function as one discourse on sexual relations among other competing discourses. It is a reassertion of tradition which can no longer function traditionally, i.e. silently.

>4 theoria:

That's a highly etic definition that explicitly makes "orthodox" mean "reactionary," and torpedoes a long prior usage of the term. It doesn't seem so helpful to me.

>5 paradoxosalpha: Perhaps long prior usage of the term is/was analytically and empirically insufficient.

Yeah, well, I tend to prefer the coinage of new terms to the hijacking of old ones. But in this case, I don't see either as being analytically and/or empirically necessary.

I have no sympathy with this use of "orthodox," nor do I like "Christian courtship," but while the "movement" may be Reagan-era, the concept of "courtship," distinguished by high parental and social involvement in the processes, and opposed to anything-goes dating, is hardly a new one in America.

>8 timspalding: This type of courtship came out of the homeschooling movement, and depends on it for the necessary exclusion of social involvement and ability to control a child after majority. There doesn't seem to have been any homeschooling movement in the US until the 1980s. In 1985, there were 50,000 homeschooled students in the US*, in 1999 850,000 and in 2007, 1,500,000**.

* http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-294.html citing Patricia M. Lines, "Homeschooling: An Overview for Educational Policymakers," U.S. Department of Education Working Paper, January 1997, p. 4.

** http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2009/2009030.pdf

>9 prosfilaes: the homeschooling movement

Not sure how to articulate this, but I find it interesting that in the USA homeschooling became a "movement", apparently with an ideology, whereas in many other places it was simply a practicality.

I had lunch with a European ambassador yesterday who is homeschooling his son as it is difficult to find a school in South Sudan where a child can be taught an international curriculum which will be suitable for him when he moves on to another country. I know many expatriates, including missionaries, who have homeschooled their children for this same reason. There was a story yesterday on the TV news about an Argentinian family who have spent the last 15 years travelling the world in an old car, and who have just pitched up in Kenya. They are homeschooling because they are never in one place long enough to enrol their four children in school (albeit the "home" is, er, the old car).

In Australia there is (was?) a long tradition of homeschooling for children in the outback because they were too far away from a physical school. They interacted with teachers and had their lessons over the radio.

>10 John5918:

Is. The school of the air.

A little more high tech now though.

>10 John5918: t I find it interesting that in the USA homeschooling became a "movement", apparently with an ideology, whereas in many other places it was simply a practicality.

The United States has a long tradition of accepting people who are what you might call "self-taught." -- whose education is outside any institution or college. It also has a very strong tradition of public education, especially in New England, where Puritan values mandated that people be literate enough to read the Bible, and towns often considered the establishment of a school a first priority. We weren't over-run with colleges and universities, but an elementary education was common and literacy rates were very high.

But that's not what's happening with the contemporary homeschooling movement. Much of that in its modern form is a rejection of public education -- either because parents feel that education is sub-par (public school systems being chronically under-funded and accused of being under-performing), or because they feel that a public school education does not align with their own values.

>10 John5918: I think it weird to say "in many other places it was simply a practicality". It was and is a practicality in some cases in the US. It is an ideologically driven activity in Germany, where it's generally illegal. It's interesting that it's so big in the US, but I suspect there's a comparable group anywhere there's enough public schooling to object to.

This type of courtship came out of the homeschooling movement, and depends on it for the necessary exclusion of social involvement and ability to control a child after majority. There doesn't seem to have been any homeschooling movement in the US until the 1980s. In 1985, there were 50,000 homeschooled students in the US*, in 1999 850,000 and in 2007, 1,500,000

Right. But you're missing that closed social circles and social control of young adults was the norm in America for much of its history. Fifty years ago "chaperone" was a basic, accepted social institution, not something you ask for when taking fourth graders to the Science Museum. Even progressive colleges in big cities took a "parental" role in policing social interaction between young women and men. In small-town West Virginia? Before the automobile radically changed dating and sex? Forgetaboutit. The conservative Christians advocating "courtship" are doing something "modern," in a modern context, but they are hearkening back to something old and real.

>14 timspalding: they are hearkening back to something old and real.

My favorite traditional Christian courtship ritual: Bundling.

We need to bring that one back.

In my day and at my school, however, bundling was replaced by backrubs. I must have rubbed a square mile of back flesh, generally through 80s sweatshirts, before I rubbed something more intimate.

>14 timspalding: Before the automobile radically changed dating and sex?

I'm suspecting you'd have to go back before 1965 for that. In any case, I've read a lot of stuff saying that pre-birth control, the first pregnancy could be months shorter than a full nine months. I don't think that once you had non-sex segregated public schools, that you ever had the type of courtship that the homeschoolers envision, where the father gets asked first. Unless you have isolation, either physical or homeschooling (which was impossible when the kids were required to work in the family store), you get Romeos and Juliets, and parents have been breaking up Romeos and Juliets for centuries, but short of dynastic families, not getting the control the Biblical Courtship people imagine.

The Victorian Internet talks about some of the effects of the telegraph on lovers, on a 1848 marriage where the father of the bride sent the young man out of the country, but the marriage was conducted by telegraph when the young man's ship stopped in New York. Or how the telegraph let people alert authorities in Scotland when lovers were taking the train up, since in Scotland marriages by declaration were legal. (I don't know what the authorities were supposed to do about it.)

they are hearkening back to something old and real.

Don't they always? But as with many of these attempts, I think they're viewing the past through conveniently distorted lenses. I think that from time immortal, young women have not been entranced with young men who started the wooing with her parents, and that parents who have put their foot down on their choice have seen their daughters disappear to London or New York or Scotland. I suspect that small-town West Virginia has produced a number of Kentucky's finest citizens, who before the automobile radically changed record-keeping, never got asked for a marriage certificate to prove they were "really" married. Most wise parents, then as now, try to keep away the unacceptable and tolerated young men who were not their first choice.

>15 southernbooklady: Bundling?

>16 timspalding: Back rubs?

I really have no idea what the two of you are talking about. US culture?!

Things one can do to substitute for sex/share intimacy without actually engaging in the act... I'm not sure about the first one (off to google "bundling" I am), but one of my better friends in high school was an, ummm, "saddlebacking" enthusiast as a means to find release while maintaining his girlfriend's virginity. Times have changed.

Edit - "Bundling" was the practice of allowing courting couples to share a bed for the night, but with a strict physical barrier between them to preserve chastity. According to Wikipedia, it originated in either the Netherlands or the British Isles before moving to Colonial America.

I'm suspecting you'd have to go back before 1965 for that.

Right. Sorry if that wasn't clear.

More generally, I think you fall victim to a certain appealing modern fallacy—that all the sexual and social diversity we see now was always there, and basically the same, just hidden. Yes of course there were "always" premarital sex, "Romeos and Juliets" and so forth. But the rate matters. And the social context changes the rate. Neoteny, contraception, chemical contraception, the decline of religion, the automobile, urbanization, rising educational opportunities, two-parents working, the decline of the two-parent families and so forth, and the attitudinal feedback loop, have transformed social and sexual statistics, with most of the change happening in the last half-century. Put another way, Romeo and Juliet made compelling social sense until quite recently. Today high-schoolers marvel that anyone would be so bothered about sex and love in the first place, and that marriage might get tied up in a story about hot, horny teenagers.

I really have no idea what the two of you are talking about. US culture?!

Actually, this was slightly more true of my wife than of me. But the 80s, at least 80s white, pre-school New England, entwined a lot of hanging out with groups of mixed-sex friends, listening to music, talking and smoking, or whatever, and giving each other back rubs, or foot rubs. See Pulp Fiction on the latter.

>18 John5918:, >19 Jesse_wiedinmyer:

Basically, the courting couple were sewn up together in a sack, tightly enough to allow very little movement. They were supposed to get to know each other better by talking to each other, instead of getting distracted by physical intimacy.

>20 timspalding: But the rate matters.

And what's the rate? What was the rate of 18-21 year old women marrying without parental approval? The social context has changed; it's much harder to ride into the next town over and get jobs without documentation then it was 100 years ago. Today, these families have been known to deny their daughters college educations (at accredited colleges or at all), high school diplomas or even birth certificates. High school and college is necessary in a way that it never was before, giving those parents power they never had before.

The social context has changed; it's much harder to ride into the next town over and get jobs without documentation then it was 100 years ago.

When you did that 100 years ago, you had to move to a city or very far away. The next town over and people would ask who your "people" were, and news would travel. And, except in certain social contexts, an outsider was always an outsider. Even today, Mainers outside of Portland are exquisitely aware of who and who isn't a Mainer, and you can live in a Maine town for 50 years and still be considered a blow-in. I suspect the same is true in many rural communities.

Yeah. I think the more common occurrence at the time would have been for the woman in question to take a rest cure or go visiting relatives for a few months. A friend who is a genealogy buff says that it's remarkable how frequently she runs across stories of people whose "sister" was actually their biological mother.

>23 timspalding: In Maine, maybe. Not in Oklahoma.

>24 Jesse_wiedinmyer: I'm not really talking about sex or pregnancy, though. I'm talking about women having their husbands chosen for them, I'm talking about the potential husband interacting first with her father.

>21 southernbooklady: Well that's a new variation to me. As I have understood it, bundling involved a bundling board that slotted into the head- and foot-board of the bed generally under the covers, although outside the covers was also possible.

In unheated houses in the frigid north, bundling had practical advantages quite separate from courtship. That's why the covers went over the board.

Yesterday's column from Dan Savage seems apropos: http://www.thestranger.com/blogs/slog/2015/04/22/22094056/savage-love-letter-of-...

>27 nathanielcampbell: I think he should have mentioned that not only do we call them medieval, they make a big fuss about not being modern, about holding to older traditions. It's part of the reason other branches of the religion have a hard time fighting the perception that these are true Christianity and Islam.

>28 prosfilaes: (A side note: I find it interesting that you assume the medievalist author of the letter to be a man; my unconscious assumption was that the author was a woman. Needless to say, medievalist circles are abuzz trying to figure out who wrote the letter -- it's not like there are that many of us who would have written such a thing!)