Home Shrines for American War Dead: Are They Just About remembering?

 

 By:  Kenny Smith, Guest Blogger

In a recent series of photographs and essays for the New York Times Magazine entitled, “The Shrine Down the Hall,” Ashley Gilbertson, Dexter Filkins, and Miki Meek, offer “a look at some of the bedrooms America’s young war dead left behind.” The photograph above, for instance, comes from the childhood home of U.S. Army First Lieutenant Brian N. Bradshaw, age twenty-four, from Steilacoom, Washington, who was killed June 25, 2009, in Kheyl, Afghanistan by a roadside bomb. In all, the article shows nineteen of these “war memorials with neatly made beds.”

Gilbertson began this project in 2007. While his coverage of the war in Iraq has received numerous accolades over the past seven years, “he has stopped photographing combat zones because the American public isn’t responding anymore… [He] is now concentrating on showing the aftereffects of war, including post-traumatic stress disorder… [and] looks at bedrooms as a way of memorializing the lives–rather than the deaths–of young combatants.”  As Gilbertson himself explains, “[y]ou walk into these rooms… and you feel like these are the kids you used to hang out with…. It’s powerful to look at where these kids lived, to see who they were as living, breathing human beings.”

 A number of families have chosen to preserve, virtually untouched, these highly personal spaces, “to which young American service members will never return.” The bedroom of U.S. Army Pfc. Karina Lau, for example,

 has not changed. A stuffed teddy bear and floppy-eared rabbit sit on top of her floral bedspread. Angel figurines and framed family photos line her bookshelf and dresser. The only thing missing is her. Private Lau was killed seven years ago when insurgents shot down her helicopter in Fallujah, Iraq. She was 20 years old. Her mother, Ruth, usually keeps the bedroom door closed and the window shades drawn, but when Mr. Gilbertson came to her home in Livingston, Calif., she opened them up.  

Nor has the bedroom of Pfc. Jack Sweet (Alexandria Bay, N.Y. ), who was killed by a roadside bomb in Jawwalah, Iraq, on Feb. 8, 2008. This practice extends also to items returned to families by the military. “In Private Sweet’s bedroom are two trunks that the Army sent back from Iraq. Next to them is his laundry hamper. The clothes inside, still carrying his scent, have never been washed.”          

 The authors interpret these actions as attempts on the part of family members to “resist” and “wrestle with” what has happened; this is “how they will cope and how they will remember.” No doubt this is the case. Still, this view has trouble explaining why so much personal space, and so many personal possessions, remain intact and untouched, even to the point of clothing, still “carrying the scent” of the person who was killed, remains unwashed. If we think about these sacred spaces as if they really are shrines, what else might we learn about them? More, what might we learn about the larger culture in which they take place, or about the war in which these persons died?

 In the Western sense of the word, shrines (from the Latin scrinium, meaning a box or receptacle) serve as “places or containers of religious presence.” As Paul Cartwright, writing for the Encyclopedia of Religion, explains,

 One of the distinctive features of religion is that its objects do not “exist” in the ordinary sense of the word. Deity, spirit, soul, afterlife, and other familiar categories of religion lie outside the realms of everyday objects in time and space. However, human beings across multiple cultures experience the presence of these religious realities at particular times and places and in relation to material objects. Much of the work of shrines is to provide habitations for sacred presences within the everyday world. As places having a particular shape and materiality, shrines give particular density to complex sets of religious associations, memories, moods, expectations, and communities. Shrines may be seen as sites of condensation of more dispersed religious realities, places where meanings take on specific, tangible, and tactile presence. (p. 8376)

A shrine, then, is a very special kind of sacred space, in which we can experience heightened forms of intimacy and relationship with those who exist only in religious worlds. Bob Orsi defines religion itself in similar terms. Religion, he argues, is best understood not as an intellectual model of reality, but “as a network of relationships between heaven and earth involving humans of all ages and many different sacred figures… I can think of no religious world,” he writes, “that does not offer practitioners opportunities to form deep ties with saints, ancestors, demons, gods, ghosts, and other special beings”(2005).   (Click on Read More Button Below)

Westboro Baptist Church: Religion Gone Wrong

By: Heather Abaham aka Religion Nerd

I am sure most Religion Nerd readers have, by now, heard of the infamous Fred Phelps, founder and leader of the Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kansas.  If not, you will be briefed and up to speed on Phelps’ shenanigans by the end of this blog.  

Phelps and his followers boast of conducting over 43,000 demonstrations “for God” since 1991. These “demonstrations” are in reality acts of emotional and religious terrorism cloaked in the guise of a perverted Christian worldview and protected by the first amendment.  As of yesterday, it appears that Phelps may have, again, managed to manipulate the justice system and paint himself as a victim whose first amendments rights have been infringed upon.  

Westboro Demonstrators

In 2006, Phelps and followers demonstrated at the funeral of Marine Lance Cpl. Matthew Snyder who lost his life defending his country—which has too often let Phelps off the hook for his sadistic and uncompassionate acts.  During Snyder’s funeral, Phelps and crew held up signs claiming God hates the United States and thank God for dead soldiers.  In response to Phelps’ egregious act, Al Snyder, grieving father of the slain soldier, filed a lawsuit against Phelps and won a judgment of more than 10 million dollars.  On appeal, the ruling was overturned on first amendment grounds and in a shocking turn of events, Al Snyder was ordered to pay $16,000.00 in court costs to Phelps.  Snyder has since appealed to the Supreme Court which has agreed to hear the case in the near future.   

Phelps’ actions have caused immeasurable pain and suffering to the thousands of families who have been victims of similar demonstrations; yet Phelps contends that he is only guilty of doing God’s work.  This brings me to my question for the day—what can we learn from Phelps and company and what does Phelps’ brand of religion tell us about religion in America? 

One only needs a few minutes exposure to Phelps’ website to determine that he and his church are promoting a very rigid, narrow, exclusive, and destructive religious worldview.  According to Charles Kimball, Author of When Religion Becomes Evil, Phelps’ brand of rigid religious exclusivism “feeds attitudes and actions that are diametrically opposed to the heart of the religion being espoused.”   In Phelps’ case, his actions and speech directly contradict the teachings of Jesus and the foundational beliefs and values of Christianity.  Phelps is so invested (to the extreme) in being God’s chosen mouthpiece, that he has lost any measure of Christian civility and charity he may once have possessed. His outrageous behavior has been escalating over the years as his need for power over the “other” grows.  

What lesson can we gleam from this insight? Well, for one, we can take a look at how we conduct ourselves religiously.  We can’t change Phelps, but we can take a lesson from his behavior.  Religion is a powerful force which has inspired and uplifted humanity throughout the ages, but when religion goes wrong, it can be the most destructive of forces.  Regardless of which religious tradition we belong, how we perform our religiosity impacts the world around us.  We have seen too many instances of irresponsible religiosity in the last decades to doubt the dangers that may await us. 

Society tells us to be fiscally responsible, sexually responsible, and to drink responsibly but remains silent in regards to responsible religiosity.  Do Americans practice their religions responsibly?  Think about it–I would love to hear your opinions.   

Special Acknowledgement:  In reading about Al Snyder’s battle against Westboro Baptist and Phelps, I found a blurb about a group called the Patriot Guards which intrigued me.  These good Samaritans, outraged by Phelps’ funeral demonstrations, reacted constructively and organized themselves into a Guard that, at the invitation of family, attends funerals of the fallen.  They respectfully place themselves, as shields, directly between the grieving families and demonstrators.  They do this in a peaceful manner and leave any

Patriot Guards

squabbles to the police.  Well done Patriot Guards!  You can read about their mission at:  http://www.patriotguard.org/  

To learn more about Matthew and Al Snyder, you can visit the Snyder’s site at:  http://www.matthewsnyder.org/

Note:  Religion Nerd is adding a new category called Hall of Shame which is reserved for those who use/manipulate religion for their own benefit regardless of the cost to others.  Fred Phelps is the first inductee.