[Frederica-l] Branson, Meatfare, OSB

[Frederica at aol.com]

I'm trying to change my email address; the new one is _FredericaMG at gmail.com_ 
(mailto:FredericaMG at gmail.com) . STill getting used to the new interface--it 
wouldn't let me send this from there. I'll figure it out sooner or later. 
 
Here's an article that appears in the current issue of Books & Culture, about 
Branson, Missouri. I had fun researching it and writing it. 

Also, we Orthodox Christians are getting closer to Lent. Most years we begin 
Lent after Catholics and Protestants do, due to Orthodox use of an older 
calendar; this year, Pascha (Easter) is on April 27. Yesterday was "Meatfare 
Sunday," the last time we eat meat before Pascha. My friend Rod Dreher wrote a 
ballad about it on his blog at _Beliefnet.com_ (http://beliefnet.com/) : 

_http://blog.beliefnet.comhttp://blog.beliefnet.chttp://blog.beliefnet.com<Wht
tp:_ 
(http://blog.beliefnet.com/crunchycon/2008/03/the-doleful-carnivore-at-great.html) 

He is a "doleful carnivore." By the way, the recent news story about the 
exchange student who lost so much weight while staying with a Coptic family in 
Egypt was incomplete. All Orthodox ethnicities fast about 200 days a year, not 
just the Copts. What's confusing is that "fasting" means eating a vegan diet, 
not going completely without food, as we usually understand the word. So they 
would have been offering the student what they usually ate during a fast. The 
news article mentioned bread and cucumbers, for example; the Middle Eastern diet 
in general leans toward grains, vegetables, nuts, olive oil, not 
cheeseburgers. It seems like the student should have been prepared for the cultural change 
in diet. 

Next Sunday is "Cheesefare," the last time we eat dairy till Pascha. The 
Western church used to follow the same pattern, which is why there were 
traditionally "pancake suppers" at church--to use up the milk and eggs. The term 
"carnival," still used to refer to New Orlean's Mardi Gras, is Latin for "farewell to 
meat", carne - vale. 

Also, here's some exciting news: the Orthodox Study Bible has been released. 

_http://orthodoxstudybible.com/
_ (http://orthodoxstudybible.com/) 
The exciting part is that it provides a translation (for the first time in 
150 years) of the Greek version of the Old Testament. The Jews translated their 
Hebrew Scriptures into Greek around 250 BC, because Hebrew was becoming no 
longer a spoken language. Greek was the common language of trade, like English is 
today. btw, I just saw a description of a movie, "The Band's Visit," about a 
musical group from Egypt that gets lost in Israel on a gig. They hoped that it 
would be eligible for the Oscar for foreign language film, but the decision 
was that it didn't have enough foreign language; much of the dialogue is in 
English, because that is how Arabs and Jews can communicate. 2000 years ago, they 
used Greek. So that's why the New Testament was written in Greek--it 
transcended boundaries.

Well, this Greek Old Testament (known as "the Septuagint") was the Scriptures 
used by the early Christians. Most of the time, when St Paul or another New 
Testament writer quotes the Old Testament, they quote it as it appears in the 
Septuagint, not as it is in the Hebrew bible. So you can see that the 
Septuagint is a very important link to the thinking of the early church. It was "The 
Bible" to them, until the New Testament was assembled around 400 AD. (Of course, 
many NT documents were honored and in use before the form and contents of the 
whole NT were settled.) 

In addition to the OSB being a wonderful way to encounter the version of the 
Old Testament taht the earliest Christians used, it also (as a study bible) is 
full of notes and helps that present the OT as foreshadowing Christ. This was 
also the way the early Christians read the OT. They didn't go to it as a 
history book, they went to see how God had foreshadowed the plan of salvation. You 
can see that approach all through the New Testament. But that's not the 
approach we're used to, in the modern West; in seminary I learned all about the 
"critical method," about the many different sources who wrote the Pentateuch, 
about what parts we should just ignore because they didn't sound historically 
accurate. The early Christians just wouldn't ahve thought of it that way. For 
example, they would have thought that if Habbakuk 3:3 says that God will come 
"from the dark and shadowy mountain", it's a reference to the Holy Spirit 
overshadowing the Virgin Mary at Christ's conception, and that's the main thing you 
need to know. "You search the Scriptures," Jesus said, "And them they are that 
speak of me." There's something astounding and liberating, in being able to 
read the OT with the eyes of ancient faith. So I recommend the Orthodox Study 
Bible, and especially now before prices go up after the introductory period. 

here's the Branson piece: 

**********  
On the road, shuttling between airports and motels, I sent my daughter an 
email: "I'm on my way to Branson, Missouri. They say it's like Las Vegas, but for 
Christians over fifty." She wrote back, "I can't even begin to imagine what 
that means."  
I could; I imagined it would be laughable and hokey. (You could point out 
that I *am* a Christian over fifty and should get off my high horse, but I would 
only blink at you.) This little town of 6,000 in the southwest corner of 
Missouri is set in the broad, undulating hills of the Ozark Mountains, where the 
view is beguiling in every direction. But what draws visitors is "the strip," 
five miles of theaters that blaze the night with brilliance until around 11:00 
pm, when everyone is snug in bed at the Red Roof Inn or the Best Western. 
Branson's biggest stars are primarily folks you don't hear much about any more, 
like Yakov Smirnoff (whose mid-80's shtick was based on comparing America 
favorably with Russia: "What a country!") or Andy Williams, who began his solo career 
in 1952. In 2007, Williams did a month of Branson performances with Glen 
Campbell, and nearly three months with Charo.  
The names may have a hint of mothballs on the page, but it's high-energy on 
the stage. There is plenty of genuine talent in Branson, and performers work 
hard, many of them doing three shows a day. Visitors can do many more than that, 
and someone determined to sample as many as possible could start with the 
Dixieland Breakfast Show at 8:00 a.m., leave for Breakfast with Mark Twain at 
9:00, drop by Yakov's act at 9:30, get to "Celebrate America" at 10:00, and slide 
into violinist Shoji Tabuchi's palatial theater at 10:30. When you stumble 
out two hours later there will just be time to visit the Veteran's Memorial 
Museum, the Butterfly Palace and Rainforest Adventure, Ripley's Believe it or 
Not!, the World's Largest Toy Museum, God and Country Inspirational Gardens, the 
half-scale replica of the Titanic, and to take a whirl around the 60-acre theme 
park, Silver Dollar City. Refreshed, head into magician Kirby VanBurch's show 
at 2:00, at 3:00 see the Osmonds (not Donnie and Marie, but there are plenty 
of other Osmonds), at 4:30 get a big ol' dinner and a show at Dolly Parton's 
Dixieland Stampede, at 7:00 take in the Penny Gilley show, and at 7:30 see 
comedian Jim Stafford (surely you remember his 1973 novelty hit, "Spiders and 
Snakes"). Almost everyone is back on stage for an 8:00 p.m. performance, as well 
as Mel Tillis, the Gatlin Brothers, the New Shanghai Circus, American Bandstand 
Theater, and dozens of other less familiar acts. 
Yet Branson itself is constructed on a very modest scale. Like a resort town, 
it has only as many year-round residents as necessary to meet the tourists' 
needs, so the infrastructure is slight. For comparison, picture the last time 
you drove to a theme park like DisneyWorld or Six Flags. When you were 
approaching the highway exit, how many lanes were there going in each direction? As 
you approach Silver Dollar City, a theme park that sees up to 20,000 visitors a 
day in summer, the number of lanes going in each direction is: one. Well, 
there's a turning lane in the middle. The theater-packed "strip" is the same. It's 
congested and slow, but get a couple of blocks off the strip and traffic 
disappears. There is pretty much nothing in Branson except tourists, shows, and 
the cast and crew who keep the shows going. It's still a genuinely small town.  
Such homey dimensions are unquestionably part of the appeal, and not just for 
tourists. The compelling thing about Branson for performers is that they can 
get off the road. As Mel Tillis put it, "You can go to church every Sunday and 
put your underwear in the same drawer every night." Audiences come to them, 
rather than the other way round, and many performers build their own eponymous 
theaters to make themselves easy to find. Branson is reputed to be the 
nation's second most popular drive-to destination, and those driving in (or being 
driven, on tour buses) tend to have gray hair. They also tend to be conservative, 
and prefer entertainment that is clean; as Jim Stafford said, "You're not 
going to walk into a Branson theater and see 'Equus.'"  
It's a patriotic town, too. I visited over Veterans' Day Weekend, and at each 
show I attended there was a moment when veterans in the audience were invited 
to stand and receive applause. The guy sitting next to me at the Shoji 
Tabuchi show said, "If you're a Vietnam vet and nobody ever said 'Thank you,' it's 
great."  
Branson is also recognizably evangelical, and that, combined with its 
patriotism and old-fashioned style, make it a laughing stock to cultural elites. In 
his scholarly book, "Holy Hills of the Ozarks: Religion and Tourism in Branson, 
Missouri," Aaron K. Ketchell provides some samples of the sneers Branson is 
used to receiving. New York Times book reviewer Joe Queenan called Branson a 
"cultural penal colony" and "Hades-by-the-Ozarks." Travel author Arthur Frommer 
deplored Branson's "fundamentalist, sectarian faith," which he likened to a 
"physical assault." Such contempt may be why Branson, despite its significant 
rank among tourist destinations, has been generally ignored by scholars of 
popular culture and religion. When Ketchell referred to the lack of research on 
Branson during his interview for a position at a religious studies department, 
the interviewer responded bluntly, "That's because most scholars don't like 
evangelicals." Ketchell decided to fill the gap.  
I don't expect "Holy Hills of the Ozarks" will join the crowded shelves at 
the Branson Tourism Center, because Ketchell is handy with phrases like 
"counterhegemonic cultural contestation."  But he has an interesting tale to tell, for 
the town has changed mightily over the years.  
Branson's initial charm was not spandex and sequins, but nature--the broad, 
undulating hills of the Ozark Mountains. A century ago, in 1907, the quiet town 
was suddenly thrust into the spotlight when Harold Bell Wright's novel "The 
Shepherd of the Hills" became a bestseller. The Shepherd in Wright's story is 
not Jesus, but a mysteriously sad older gentleman-a famous preacher, it 
eventually turns out-who wanders into the Branson hill country one day and accepts 
the humble work of tending sheep. He's in a position to dispense general wisdom 
and to do a "My Fair Lady" job on lovely but unpolished "Sammy" Lane. The 
story is a melodrama touching on unwed motherhood and mountain gangs, but an 
underlying theme is the pristine beauty of the setting and the robust health of its 
residents. There is a hint of the era's fashionable eugenics when Wright 
dwells lovingly on Sammy's radiant health and strength-she's described in terms 
that would suit a racehorse-and contrasts her with the shrimpiness of her 
city-bound fiancé, Ollie.  
"The Shepherd of the Hills" was a blockbuster of its time, selling over 2 
million copies. Some readers were so taken with the characters of Sammy Lane, Old 
Matt, Aunt Mollie, and the rest that they journeyed into the Ozarks, braving 
difficult travel and rustic facilities, in order to glimpse the prototypes. 
And once tourists started turning up, residents were happy to adopt characters' 
names and explain how they served as inspirations to Howard Bell Wright.  
Good country people were only part of the attraction; the glorious hills 
exerted their own pull. Poet and lyricist Dow Tate wrote, during his 1913 visit, 
"Here the Ozark flower-laden air supplied the breath that in the beginning 
helped to make man a living soul. The bubbling mountain springs filled his 
thirsting veins with the nectar of the gods...The fountains of power and life were 
supplied with wholesome viands from the hillside gardens that smile here and 
there like so many patches in the human heart, cleared away for fruitful deeds." 
Presbyterian Hill camp and conference center was built in 1913 to offer 
visitors a chance to imbibe that healthful ambiance, though folks had to be fairly 
healthy in the first place to climb the 330 steps that led up the bluff to its 
front door.  
Adventurous visitors could go about as far in the other direction, too. 
Missouri is the "Cave State," and the largest cave entrance in the U.S. is found at 
Marvel Cave, Branson's earliest attraction (also its most lasting, since the 
unused acreage above it eventually bloomed into Silver Dollar City, where a 
ticket now includes a tour of the cave). Henry Lynch, the first owner to open 
the cave to the public, dubbed the immense subterranean space, 400 feet long by 
225 feet wide, the "Cathedral Room," and by 1894 he and his daughters were 
conducting tours. Access was by "rickety ladders" (so said a 1922 visitor), a 
steep 200 foot climb straight down; Ketchell reproduces a 1950 postcard photo 
that is distinctly unnerving. Lynch continually improved his property, building 
cabins for visitors, improving cave access, and even installing a grand piano 
in the "Cathedral Room" so that his daughter Miriam could entertain guests. 
That combination of elegance and rusticity-a grand piano in a vast dark cave-is 
an earmark of Branson attractions right from the start.  
Later, about mid-century, Branson dwellers would embrace a "hillbilly" 
identity (it was from Ketchell's book that I learned that the term came from 
Scots-Irish immigrants' pride in Prince William of Orange; his supporters were called 
"Billy Boys"). A number of "Beverly Hillbillies" episodes were filmed at 
Silver Dollar City, supposedly Jed Clampett's home town. In 1959 a local Branson 
family, the Mabes, saw an opportunity and began putting on a country music and 
comedy show for tourists. (They still do it, or rather their now-grown 
children and grandchildren do. The Baldknobbers Jamboree Show hits the boards at 8:00 
pm six nights a week). Other country music shows sprang up, and Branson began 
to get a name as a performance capital; it now offers more live music than 
Nashville (where producing and recording is the thing).   
In the 80's, some noteable country names began to arrive-Roy Clark, Boxcar 
Willie, Mickey Gillis-and where there's country there will soon be sequins. What 
was once typified by the goofy Mabe character Droopy Drawers now includes 
magicians and ostrich races, dry ice and black lights, million-dollar restrooms, 
and performers sailing across the stage on wires. Branson now hosts seven 
million visitors per year, and has more theater seats than Broadway. It's a long 
way from there back to Sammy Lane. 
Over the years Branson has evolved into something the original boosters never 
foresaw. For one thing, though the hills have always been praised for their 
spiritual power in terms like Dow Tate's above, the theological foundation has 
undergone dramatic change. Harold Bell Wright was a Social Gospel proponent, 
whom his son said "came to a little different concept of God, not so much as a 
personal entity you could talk to...but as a great overall power." The author 
who was in some senses Wright's successor, Otto Ernest Rayburn, vigorously 
promoted the Ozarks till his death in 1960; his religious views were "syncretic," 
Ketchell says, and "combined ancient mythology, indistinct Native American 
mysticism, and other vaguely spiritual stances." What would those men have 
thought of Branson's current climate of cheerful evangelicalism? 
The early tourists sought an invigorating experience of the pristine hills; 
current tourists shuffle in and out of theaters. There are sidewalks in 
Branson, but no one uses them; everyone is inside cars, creeping down the strip at 
five miles an hour. The first tourists sought to meet the humble, honest 
residents of Wright's "Mutton Hollow;" current tourists interact with virtually 
nobody except waitresses, or performers during post-show autograph time. Such 
changes are not necessarily bad, but they sure are different, and I wondered how 
Branson's self-understanding has evolved, as the means by which it provides 
renewal and inspiration has changed over the years.  
This would have been a fascinating topic for Ketchell to examine, but he 
fails to focus on it clearly. It's hard for him to see the ways Branson has 
changed because, I think, he finds Branson baffling to start with. He recognizes it 
as representing one side of a culture war (the *other* side, it appears) and 
focuses on that to the exclusion of anything else. In his introduction he 
describes Branson as "a national hub for popularly mediated antimodernism." 
Furthermore, "This sentiment has been expressed through an omnipresent pitting of 
upright rural life against often contemptuous urban existence; promotions of 
unwavering patriotism against a larger culture supposedly unloosed from national 
pride; visions of unified nuclear families within a world struggling to 
preserve this elemental social unit; and endorsements of the foundational nature of 
Christian belief meant to combat perceived secularization."   
Ketchell explains that he began studying Branson because his thesis advisor 
specialized in Marian apparitions, and the topic of folk religion drew his 
interest. (Of his own background, he says that his family "has for many 
generations been staunchly Catholic.") As he thought about a past visit to the Ozarks, 
"I recalled that in that region one could not find statues of Mary or paintings 
of St. Sebastian skewered with arrows, yet its religious attractions were 
comparable mixtures of sacred and secular." (I am stumped as to how a statue of 
Mary is a "mixture of sacred and secular;" I can only guess that Ketchell 
considers art intrinsically secular because it partakes of the material world.) He 
goes on, "In addition, they fused contemporary consumer culture with 
religiosity in a way that mimicked the descriptions of many Catholic 
extraecclesiastical practices. But in a fashion that confounded my understanding of the 
Reformation, they also seemed primarily Protestant in tone. Finding that these sites 
befuddled conceptions of the iconoclastic and world-denying nature of 
Calvinism, I became determined to grapple with a perceived scholarly lacuna-the 
apparent disregard for popular expressions of Protestantism and their seeming Ozark 
manifestations."   
As someone said, "That sentence should be taken out and shot." But if Mark 
Twain could catalogue "Fennimore Cooper's Literary Offenses," I'll try to be 
more specific. To start with, Ketchell has the sociologist's tic of qualifying 
statements with the proviso that they are only observations, not assertions, 
even when this habit makes no sense ("seeming Ozark manifestations"). His 
understanding of Protestantism is generally odd, as could be glimpsed above. In 
discussing Max Weber's "The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism," he 
explains that "Many of Weber's claims rest on the doctrine of predestination. 
According to this principle, individuals have fallen from grace and thereby lost 
their ability to influence salvation. Yet despite this somber condition, people 
still longed to know their fate and to at least partially validate their 
claims of election. With a lack of self-confidence being equated with insufficient 
faith, intense worldly activity became a way to bolster assurance." Ketchell 
seems to think that this Protestant insistence on "intense worldly activity" 
means that there can be no approved respite from work. Thus leisure, and by 
extension tourism, are dubious pursuits for Protestants.  
It's an odd premise for him to hold. Though Puritan or Calvinist asceticism 
may have been historically indispensable to the formation of Weber's "spirit of 
capitalism," there's no reason to assume that they continue in force today. 
(Indeed, Weber, writing a century ago, believed these religious influences had 
already waned.)  Ketchell speaks in his introduction of his interest in 
"popular religiosity" and his discovery that "there was a body of academics 
seriously interested in considering paraliturgical devotions and willing to examine 
the concerns of the folk with earnestness and empathy." That sincerity makes 
this misperceived premise all the more puzzling. I have never met a Christian who 
believed that his faith forbade taking a vacation. Perhaps Ketchell's 
impression of Christian beliefs was formed by reading sociological texts rather than 
by talking to Christians directly.   
Even stranger, Ketchell seems to think that Christianity forbids perceiving 
God in nature. The tradition of rejoicing in the beauty of Creation goes back 
to Psalm 8, and incalculably further. But Ketchell seems to think that the 
conjoining of God and nature was forced by promoters of tourism, in order to make 
tourism spiritually palatable. "Nineteenth century Americans who inaugurated 
national tourism found justification for their leisure through veiling 
seemingly secular experiences of nature in a language of religiously grounded 
reverence and wonder." He goes on, "Nature idolatry wrapped in a Christian idiom is 
evident in a wide range of Branson attractions." For example, a plaque inscribed 
with Psalm 12:1 ("I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills") is "stationed 
prominently above the outlook" (the view from a picture window at Silver Dollar 
City) "to reinforce this relationship between geographic place and 
transcendence." Again, he could have gained a much more accurate understanding of how 
Christians view nature, and why appreciating its beauty is not considered 
"idolatry," by asking almost anyone he found in Branson.  
Ketchell states that "Branson's tourism industry has utilized religious 
rhetoric to imbue landscape with a sense of inviolability grounded in utopian 
imaginings of the human-topography relationship." It uses "consumer culture to 
express theologico-geographic sentiments." At hymn-sings in Silver Dollar City's 
rustic chapel, "it is easy to characterize the brand of religiosity offered at 
the site as Reformation-derived and often Manichean." (More than once I felt 
like borrowing Inigo Montoya's line from "The Princess Bride": "You keep using 
that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.")  
Mani pops up again in the Veterans' Memorial Museum. Captured Axis materials 
there are accompanied by a note stating they are displayed as trophies of war, 
and intend no endorsement of Nazi views. In this Ketchell perceives "a 
Manichean world of absolute right and unconditional wrong--one that draws thick 
lines of ethical separation between religious and non-religious, country and city, 
and old-fashioned and modern." Yet later on, when writing about a protest 
Branson residents held against events involving the KKK and Christian Identity 
groups, Ketchell seems to approve. Perhaps "thick lines of ethical separation" 
are a sometime thing.  
Ketchell devotes a chapter to Silver Dollar City, a theme park which has a 
Williamsburg dimension, aiming to reproduce aspects of 1880's Ozark culture. 
Over a hundred artisans make candles, blow glass, weave baskets, and demonstrate 
other skills along the park's winding streets and under its abundant trees. 
Ketchell admits that the park features "immaculate surroundings protected by 
sincere conservationists," and that it has attracted awards from Audubon 
International and the National Arbor Day Foundation. Nevertheless, he perceives that 
here, as at Disneyworld, the real purpose of a theme park's Main Street is "to 
be a reembrace of a fabled public square prior to civil rights battles, ethnic 
divisiveness, or the muddling of conventional gender roles." Yet I saw no 
hint of racism in Silver Dollar City, or Branson as a whole (where a Japanese 
violinist is one of the biggest stars). And it's hard to see "conventional gender 
roles" in a town where Mom is likely to be onstage twice a day, singing and 
dancing in tights.  
Granted, Branson is thoroughly pro-family; a random stack of brochures tout a 
high proportion of family acts, such as the Gatlin Brothers, the Lennon 
Sisters, the Osmonds, the Hughes Brothers, the Presleys, the Duttons , the Brett 
Family, the Haygoods, and the Branson Brothers (I'm not sure if the "Brothers" 
are some or all of the 8 young people on the cover, representing a variety of 
genders and races). But there's nothing ominous in this. Branson is full of 
family acts because it's where acts settle to raise their families. In Ketchell's 
determination to see "conventional gender roles," he misses seeing the 
hardworking women in these and other shows. He insists instead that Branson promotes 
"a value structure that cherishes the procreative impulse, sanctions male 
authority, locates femaleness within the realm of childbearing and nurture, and 
stamps these dictates with a divine imprimatur that bestows them with a sense 
of naturalness rather than social construction." Yet I was unable to find any 
reference to childbearing, or even to gender roles, in Branson. They are 
culture-war bogeys from thirty years ago. Ketchell notes that Mormons fit in well 
because Branson "prizes extended families, heralds procreative inclinations, and 
values temperance." Later he states that "[T]he unbridled acquisition of 
offspring in Branson is not solely limited to biological breeding. Some musical 
families have augmented their ranks through the channels of KidSave 
International" a Christian nonprofit that assists adoptions from Russia and Central Asia. 
Somehow it sounds like a *bad* thing.  
I know you're saying, "Wait, go back to 'heralds procreative inclinations," 
but first let's wrap up Ketchell's prosecution of the culture war. All through 
the book he is caught between, on the one hand, his perception that Christian 
faith is oppressively forced on Branson visitors, and, on the other hand, the 
evidence. He perceives that "a visit to one of Branson's musical venues 
involves much more than just enjoying variety acts heavily laced with pious song. 
The medium and the message are intricately bound together there and intend not 
only to reinforce the values and beliefs of people who are already Christian 
but also to recruit the nonbelievers by offering the possibility of conversion 
mediated by experiences of leisure."  
Yet show biz professionals keep saying otherwise. "[G]ospel is hard to sell 
in Branson," says Phyllis Gotrock, director of the Branson Gospel Music 
Association, who ought to know. Ketchell writes, "Like all [Branson] boosters 
throughout the last century, [travel director Don] Gabriel avowed that regionally 
dependent evangelism should not be blatantly preachy." Barbara Mandrell states 
that she keeps her faith low key, perhaps limited to "introducing a gospel song 
into a secular show...Do you think they would have tuned into me had I been on 
a 'gospel' music show?" Overall, Ketchell admits that "Industry experts 
...agree that Calvinistic and transparently proselytizing recreational offerings do 
not result in profits." He even gives some examples: the Collins Family's 
program of entirely religious music ran only four years in Branson, and the 
all-gospel Blackwood Singers failed to draw big crowds. Bill Gaither opened a 
2000-seat theater, and closed it before two months were out. (It seems that folks 
like gospel music, they just don't think of it as entertainment, something you 
ought to pay for.) A musical presentation of Jesus' life, "The Promise," 
should be "enjoying great material success. In reality, however, 'The Promise' has 
struggled to stay solvent."  
Ketchell sums up, "[P]atrons want their mix of religion and ostensibly 
secular entertainment finely mingled-a desire that may account for the failure of 
many explicitly gospel acts." But two pages later he's having doubts, and feels 
sure that instead it's the secular stars who can't make it in Branson. Though 
some performers obediently fulfill the "call for Christian-infused Branson 
entertainment," others-Merle Haggard, for example, or Wayne Newton--have "either 
failed to buy into the 'Branson style' or offered performances in defiance of 
this template-actions that have led to their swift departure."  
He suspects that, if Christian performers keep their faith low-key, it's just 
because it's part of a scheme. Theater-goers "will not encounter an explicit 
missionary presentation," yet "all local acts imply [that] Christ is the 
fabric of the music and the message." It's true that not all shows have "overt 
Christian tones. However, lack of explicit religiosity does not preclude a 
forthright codification of appropriate ideals." One "may not easily identify a 
theological intent" in the old TV show "Hee Haw," but performer Roy Clark is an 
admitted Christian. At Silver Dollar City "placards do not adorn the grounds in 
protest of abortion or homosexuality or in support of school prayer," yet there 
is a notable "focus on families" (well, it *is* a theme park). The park has a 
"thorough yet muted integration of Christian morality" and has "unwritten (yet 
thoroughly scripted) 'sermons.'" Ketchell presents an anecdote in which a 
park employee cheers a disabled child and asks her to please her parents and the 
Lord. This serves "to further substantiate the ways that employees are 
compelled to provide Christian witness."  So things are worse than they first seemed: 
Bransonites are not only Christian imperialists, they're *sneaky* about it.  
As you've no doubt noticed, the writing is just plain strange. There are many 
cases where it's a matter of seizing on the wrong word, and breaking the rule 
by which Twain abjured Cooper: "Use the right word, not its second cousin." 
So we read that something is "put through a cleansing wringer"-no, a wringer 
squeezes water out of something already cleansed. Someone "stumbled on the 
bedrock"-no, you either stumble on a rock or build on bedrock. (Same thing goes for 
"Christ is the fabric of the music." Block that metaphor!) Fifties-style 
nostalgia performances "evade the stings and arrows of the past rather than trying 
to heal them;" Hamlet's phrase is not applicable here, and don't try to heal 
arrows. The Precious Moments Chapel at Carthage, Missouri, is a loose 
approximation of the Sistine Chapel, not a "loose replica," which suggests bolts and 
ceiling panels crashing to the floor. Bob the Tomato and Larry the Cucumber are 
not "pious plants," they're produce, perhaps pious produce, but nothing so 
leafy as "plants." Early tourists surely did not seek to become part of Branson 
"corporeally." Corrie Ten Boom's comment that Branson would be blessed is not 
her "divination." Ketchell says that Branson is subject to "urbane critiques," 
that Wright's fictional Shepherd confesses "the error of his former urbane 
ways," while the book's other characters must not "embrace urbane ways"-I'm not 
sure what's intended here, but it can't be "urbane."  
Ketchell also has an apparently effortless talent for constructing oxymorons. 
A performance exhibits "an embrace of physical restraint," a politician 
"reproduced the blurring of a line," Marvel Cave's "mystical nature remains 
palpable," Branson's Christianity is "a nebulous banner," Branson offers "regimented 
leisure," a Branson writer "tenuously grappled" with tourism, Sunday-only 
worship imposes "a gamut of...parameters" on life, and there's that "thorough yet 
muted integration" above.  
And sometimes it's just tone-deafness. A bible study serves to "underscore 
the...day's frivolity," campers learn "the religious underpinnings 
of...tribulations," values are accorded "an exhaustive embrace," a song may "spawn 
propitious visions," a Christmas show is "an avowedly nonconsumptive fete," and Gary 
Smalley's outlook "has bestowed him with much credence."  
In the last chapter, Ketchell warms to his summary: Branson is a "locus of 
what Thomas Franks calls a 'backlash' against progressive culture," 
characterized by "anti-intellectual championing, the valorization of idyllic rurality, and 
a lived religiosity that censures nonpragmatic theologies, elite control over 
ultimate truth, and the limitation of religious experience to formal 
sanctuaries." It's hard to reconcile such a sinister assessment with the pokey, hokey, 
endearing little town I saw. Possibly I was just temporarily befuddled by 
conceptions of the iconoclastic and world-denying nature of Calvinism. I wouldn't 
mind visiting again, just to make sure.  

********
Frederica Mathewes-Green
_www.frederica.com_ (http://www.frederica.com/)  
 
********
Frederica Mathewes-Green
www.frederica.com



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