From "This Community Welcomes Mediums, but First You Have to Prove Yourself/A lawsuit against the nonprofit that runs Lily Dale, a New York haven for Spiritualists, has put a spotlight on the hamlet where residents believe death does not exist" (NYT).
Shepp is quoted in the first paragraph of the article: "The underlying belief in Spiritualism is that we don’t really die. We pass on, but we carry on in the spirit world, which is exactly like this world, except with less restrictions."
Isn't that what most people believe?!
Anyway, the lawsuit is about needing to pass a test before you can call yourself a medium and practice your trade and give readings within the Lily Dale property, which is privately owned and which attracts a lot of visitors who may pay "hundreds of dollars for a single session." Naturally, the tourists want officially certified mediums, not a bunch of fly-by-night hucksters.
Now, I don't think anyone is a real medium, but don't you think religious groups are entitled to decide for themselves that some people are mediums and others are not and to structure the local tourist trade — on their private property — according to that belief?
Posts
62 comments:
ha ha ha ha
Althouse rocking
so much fun
Prediction-CrackEmcee dominates this comment thread.
Hmmm. Mediums arose in conjunction with the development of photography, electricity, and the discovery of radiation. It was early quack science married to religion and tarot card fortune telling.
I'm looking for a certification board knowledgeable about reading the entrails of bird and sheep sacrifices myself. Human sacrifices are too kinky for me, but I'm not one to discriminate against alternative lifestyles and sacrifice-attracted persons. [Sarcasm]
To answer your question: yes.
Since New York is not a right to work state, the private company can require that it’s mediums be a member of a union, and unions always can control the professional qualifications of members, mediums or pipe fitters. They can require tests the brotherhood of electricians does.
Finding a good medium these days is rare...
Stork-adjacent.
"Naturally, the tourists want officially certified mediums, not a bunch of fly-by-night hucksters."
The difference? Only a credential.
Sounds like what so many university programs are selling these days.
"don't you think religious groups are entitled to decide for themselves that some people are mediums and others are not"
Yes, indeed. Just another one of those pesky First Amendment rights.
Shepp is quoted in the first paragraph of the article: "The underlying belief in Spiritualism is that we don’t really die. We pass on, but we carry on in the spirit world, which is exactly like this world, except with less restrictions."
Isn't that what most people believe?!
My very first thought! She conflates any belief in an afterlife with Spiritualism, which - as I understand it, in any case - quite specifically teaches that we the living can contact the dead and have a 2-way conversation.
'Spiritualism offers this very nice, comfortable ideology that these sons that were lost in battle aren’t really gone forever,' she said.
Oh, very nice, very comfortable. How patronizing. And she actually works for this organization? It doesn't even sound as if she believes what she's selling.
"Now, I don't think anyone is a real medium, but don't you think religious groups are entitled to decide for themselves that some people are mediums and others are not and to structure the local tourist trade — on their private property — according to that belief?"
Absolutely. Just for starters, the separation principle ought to strangle this particular baby in its crib. Yes, it's also a business that rakes in tons of filthy lucre, but so do other religious organizations that are legally incorporated under a name. When disputes within a religious entity arise, the customary solution is schism.
Spiritualist is a common word, so any religious entity can use that term descriptively, but for purposes of tax exemption you need a less general name, like "Bob's Spiritualist Church and Carpet Cleaning Service". Combining religion and a usually for-profit business activity might get you in hot water with the IRS, but that hasn't been a problem for Scientology, has it? The followers of the Blessed L. Ron provide comic-book-grade psychotherapy and life coaching plus an untold number of other "services" at exorbitant and obviously profitable fees and get away with the fraud scot-free. All you need is a cockamamie reason why a owning clean carpet is a religious obligation. The ethereal plane has only immaculate floor coverings, therefore a freshly cleaned carpet is inducive to clear communication with the Beyond.
If you want to make a vast fortune quickly, forget that killer app you've been trying to develop in XCode, just have some cards printed naming you as supreme pontiff and presiding bishop of the Associate Reformed Church of Scientology. Solder up your own black box and start doing audits. You'll get a nasty visit from a Scientology shyster with a notarized cease-and-desist demand within a few weeks. But you can laugh in his face because there's nothing, absolutely nothing the official Church of Scientology can do legally to stop you. Nevertheless, showing that slimeball your high-capacity 9mm in its shoulder holster will help curtail an illegal hindrance he might have up his filthy sleeve. Just like every other denomination, Scientology will just have to get used to sharing the territory.
The litigants are in no way hampered or obstructed by the Lily Dale Assembly spiritualists. If the term medium is a problem, small, large, and jumbo are still available.
They call them Grandes in Seattle
Perhaps the Bard can shed some light on the matter:
Glendower: I can call the spirits from the vasty deep.
Hotspur: Why, so can I, or so can any man;
But will they come, when you do call for them?
"In the 1870s, Spiritualists and Freethinkers camped out in what would become Lily Dale during the summertime.... The pursuit of mediumship was particularly appealing to women ... "
"There's an Elmer Gantry in every one of our hearts," warns Phillip Bethancourt, a master of divinity student at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisivlle. Bethancourt, who recently watched a DVD of the 1960 film version of Elmer Gantry (a role that earned Burt Lancaster an Oscar), says he finds modern-day Gantrys on television and the Internet.
NPR
what cracked me up at 1:41
sorry about my opaque shit at 1:41, hillbillies
I got the giggles because Althouse, who calls herself an atheist, nonetheless has respect for all the people who profess to be Christians, or Jews, or Muslims. And she's astounded that this writer has seemingly no clue.
Isn't that what most people believe?!
Yes, we believe in an afterlife. So she nailed whatever secular monkey was unable to make the connection between "Spiritualism" and Christianity or Islam or Judaism.
"The underlying belief in Spiritualism is that we don’t really die. We pass on, but we carry on in the spirit world, which is exactly like this world, except with less restrictions."
Althouse: Isn't that what most people believe?!
It’s certainly not what serious Christians believe. What Jesus said – and ALL he said about the nature of the afterlife – was:
“In my Father's house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you.”
“Like this world”? “With less restrictions”? Where would “most people” (who, if you mean in America, at least profess to be Christians), get such an idea?
“Spiritualism” is Pagan. And in the US people have every right to be Pagan. I don’t think “most people” here have embraced that right.
"The pursuit of mediumship was particularly appealing to women because 'it was a way for them to be admired for defrauding others at a time where it wasn’t really seen as a thing you could do"
The Civil War began "officially" in 1861. But several years before that there was "Bleeding Kansas" and the horrors of the that struggle between anti-slavery elements in Kansas and pro-slavery elements in Missouri. That struggle helped set the tone of what was to come later.
"All you need is a cockamamie reason why a owning clean carpet is a religious obligation."
Sunshine Carpet Cleaners
My wife's oldest (half) brother is the only strong Catholic left in the family. He sought and got an annulment to his first marriage (after four kids) so that he could marry a second woman, also a devout Catholic.
The annulment went way way up the chain of command, I'm told, and required a lot of American dollars, but by golly there was finally a positive decision.
Spiritual as all get out.
People in pain can choose how they heal. It makes the wounded feel better without actually healing anything. For the traumatized, feeling better may be all they can achieve.
Spiritualists prey on emotionally vulnerable people. It isn't like a magic show, where the magician is understood to be performing tricks. Harry Houdini spent years looking for a real instance of communicating with the dead because he wanted to contact his deceased mother, but instead found only charlatans passing off magic tricks as evidence of actual ghostly presences.
“ I got the giggles because Althouse, who calls herself an atheist, ”
You need to be more careful with your factual assertions!
One thing that struck me about Obama's years, which bracketed the entire sesquicentennial of the Civil War, there weren't any national anniversary celebrations or remembrances. Not even of the Gettysburg Address. I would have expected a big affair centered on the Lincoln Memorial, a PBS special and a dramatic reading of the Address by a famous actor. Nothing.
It finally dawned on me that was because the narrative is that white America has never paid any price or made any sacrifice for the sin of slavery. Celebrating the ending of the war that took over half a million, mostly white, combatant deaths would cause narrative dysfunction. The Spielberg movie Lincoln, with the super performance by Daniel Day Lewis, was about the only thing of national note.
Saint Croix:
I got the giggles because Althouse, who calls herself an atheist,...
Solid atheist here and have gone back and forth on that topic with Althouse. She's not atheist. I came to believe somewhere around Methodist-ish.
The Crack Emcee:
"The pursuit of mediumship was particularly appealing to women because 'it was a way for them to be admired for defrauding others at a time where it wasn’t really seen as a thing you could do"
Similar to race huckstering in a way.
Yes. Every group or association typically has its own credentialing process.
Hail Feedonia!
You need to be more careful with your factual assertions!
Althouse, you know I hope and pray you come back to our church!
I don't know of any major Christian denomination that claims that the living can COMMUNICATE with the dead, which was what Spiritualism was really about.
The Mediums in "Lilydale, Home of Spiritualism" (as the signs at the town line say), were offering people reassurance that their lost sons were safe and at peace and that they remembered their families.
At the same time "spiritualism" became so popular, people were also flocking to Christian churches during the "Great Awakening" from 1850-1900. If you read letters from that time period, it is amazing not just how well people knew the Bible, but how sophisticated their conversations about spiritual matters were.
I think much of what was going on was a reaction to the unprecedented progress in science and technology: it wasn't unreasonable to speculate that new scientific discoveries might explain spiritual matters and "prove" basic tenets of Christian belief. Mary Baker Eddy's "malicious animal magnetism" is an effort to scientize the traditional idea that if people think bad things about you, you get sick. (though the "Science" in Christian Science is actually a reference to metaphysical idealism, not what we think of as science).
("Lilydale" is a beautiful Natalie Merchant song about a cemetery in there).
The mediums at Lily Dale seem a little too smug and self satisfied with their expertise. I'd like to go there and slap one of them upside the head. I believe you should always try to strike a happy medium.
Prof. M. Drout:
If you read letters from that time period, it is amazing not just how well people knew the Bible, but how sophisticated their conversations about spiritual matters were.
They were literate then.
The thing that amused me was "Spiritualists and Freethinkers." Freethinkers were, and still are, atheists. I would've thought that Free Thought was flat-out incompatible with Spiritualism.
Then again, you have cases like Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. His great creation, Sherlock Holmes, was portrayed as an atheist, or at minimum an agnostic; but ACD himself was quite the spiritualist (also a believer in other things, like "photographs" of fairies).
Joe Smith said...
“Finding a good medium these days is rare.”
Witty. I’d say your comment was well done.
Gospace said...
“Prediction-CrackEmcee dominates this comment thread.”
Your “powers” are still as off as when you accused me of spreading "The big lie”. Seek help.
Enigma said...
“Mediums [are] early quack science married to religion and tarot card fortune telling.”
Over 100 years after the Enlightenment. And it still goes on. That’s both scary and depressing, if you understand as I do, it’s believing in absurdities that allow atrocities to happen.
"There's an Elmer Gantry in every one of our hearts"
Fuck you.
Saint Croix said...
“Yes, we believe in an afterlife.”
I have seen more than my share of people die. I have not seen any evidence of an afterlife. Belief is a funny thing to entertain when we’re trying to understand things. It's almost like permission to lie.
The Godfather said...
“Spiritualism” is Pagan. And in the US people have every right to be Pagan. I don’t think “most people” here have embraced that right.”
It’s the fastest growing belief in the western world.
GRW3 - I think your theory is bullshit. Didn't it dawn on you that Obama didn't celebrate the end of the Civil War because (duh) he ain’t black? He actually had to ask blacks, he played basketball with, how to be black. The claim blacks carry a “narrative,…that white America has never paid any price or made any sacrifice for the sin of slavery” is all in your head, and you should really get it out of there.
Oligonicella said...
“[Spiritualism is] similar to race huckstering in a way.”
Take away the long, and well-established history of white people being racist and, yeah, you got a point.
Prof. M. Drout said...
“I don't know of any major Christian denomination that claims that the living can COMMUNICATE with the dead, which was what Spiritualism was really about.”
Montel Williams made a fortune (and even bedded the Vice President) selling this nonsense amongst self-described Christians. During the era of megachurches no less. Dumbest shit I've ever seen.
Saint Croix, you wrote "I got the giggles because Althouse, who calls herself an atheist...."
You owe me an apology, because here you are snickering at me while making something up. I challenge you to find, anywhere in my 20-year archive, even one place where I called myself an atheist. I know I have not, so where did you get this idea and come to believe it in such a strong way that you would assert it, without checking, and giggle about it? It says something about you that you cannot erase by making an alternative statement about your hopes and prayers. You do not set a very good example.
Ann Althouse said...
"Saint Croix,...where did you get this idea and come to believe it in such a strong way that you would assert it, without checking, and giggle about it?"
The way people on the Internet laugh at their own bullshit drives me nuts. Asserting assumptions as fact is another one. (I'd say half the debates I've had online are just over beating down people's wrongheaded assumptions.)
Stupid editors at NYT!
Should be "This Community Welcomes MEDIA ..."
I'm an agnostic. I used to be an atheist, but they didn't have any holidays.
You owe me an apology.
I hope you will forgive my debts.
Sorry I called you an atheist. My mistake.
Saint Croix said...
"Sorry I called you an atheist. My mistake."
Call me an atheist. I'll feel better.
the tourists want officially certified mediums, not a bunch of fly-by-night hucksters
Government bureaucrats, like the ones in this case, are the only fly-by-night hucksters allowed.
Saint Croix:
Sorry I called you an atheist. My mistake.
It was not a mistake, it was an aspersion.
The Crack Emcee:
Over 100 years after the Enlightenment. And it still goes on. That’s both scary and depressing, if you understand as I do, it’s believing in absurdities that allow atrocities to happen.
Like your believing the superstitious "sins of the father".
The claim blacks carry a “narrative,…that white America has never paid any price or made any sacrifice for the sin of slavery” is all in your head, and you should really get it out of there.
So, reparations are out?
Take away the long, and well-established history of white people being racist and, yeah, you got a point.
You don't just believe in the superstition "sins of the father" you go a step further to "sins of the race of the father". An even deeper superstitious belief.
The Crack Emcee:
Asserting assumptions as fact is another one.
If it drives you nuts, stop doing it.
Still waiting for you to support your assertions as facts about Baum's writings and no, referring to that video again won't do as the video does not support your assertions written as if fact.
The Crack Emcee said...
Saint Croix, I should've said - Call me an atheist. I'll feel better. Because, the next time someone says I'm siding with Hamas, somebody else might step in and say "That's crazy talk because he's an atheist."
Not the dumb accusations I've been defending against so far.
"Freethinkers were, and still are, atheists."
I don't think that's correct.
Bertrand Russell: "What makes a freethinker is not his beliefs but the way in which he holds them. If he holds them because his elders told him they were true when he was young, or if he holds them because if he did not he would be unhappy, his thought is not free; but if he holds them because, after careful thought he finds a balance of evidence in their favour, then his thought is free, however odd his conclusions may seem."
"Sorry I called you an atheist."
You didn't call me an atheist. You asserted that I called myself an atheist.
This isn't the apology I want and it doesn't even seem like a sincere apology. Why are you sorry? Why is it a "mistake"? You haven't admitted you are wrong and you haven't even shown that you understand what you got wrong.
"Freethinkers were, and still are, atheists."
I don't think that's correct.
Bertrand Russell: "What makes a freethinker is not his beliefs but the way in which he holds them. If he holds them because his elders told him they were true when he was young, or if he holds them because if he did not he would be unhappy, his thought is not free; but if he holds them because, after careful thought he finds a balance of evidence in their favour, then his thought is free, however odd his conclusions may seem."
ISTR, once, long ago, before I was a regular here, a statement by the Prof TTE that commenters should not presume to convert her to their faith, but I've never seen her identify as having a definite one of her own outside of references to upbringing.
Some would take that as prima facie evidence of atheism, but some would be wrong if they did.
The usual, traditional, trinity of secular thought is Atheist, Agnostic, Freethinker--they are not identical, as any of us will tell you.
Ann Althouse said...
"Freethinkers were, and still are, atheists."
I don't think that's correct.
I don't either. Look at Sam Harris. All atheism is, is the recognition there's no gods, because none has ever shown up and never will. It doesn't really require thought. It's an observation. An observation that can't be argued with, because you can't make God show up.
If we believe that words actually mean things, then we should address the issue of that misnamed conflict. War is the subject of serious academic study, and the types of war have accepted definitions. A civil war is defined as two or more parties fighting to gain control of a nation. That isn’t what happened during that dreadful war. The southern states declared themselves as being an independent country, the Confederate States of America (CSA). It was never the CSA’s objective to gain control of the US; they just wanted to be their own country. That conflict is properly defined as a failed war of independence, one I’m personally glad that it failed (words seldom spoken by a native of Alabama).
"All atheism is, is the recognition there's no gods, because none has ever shown up …. It doesn't really require thought. It's an observation.". (emphasis added)
That's where I'm at.
Oh boy, another pedant uncloaks to lecture us about how "Civil War," which IS the standard term used by librarians* and historians to describe what took place between 1860 and 1865, is incorrect.
That would be a convincing argument if there hadn't been decades of prediction by politicians and writers that civil war was a distinct possibility if certain issues could not be resolved peacefully. It was in all the papers.
They predicted civil war, and they called it civil war while it was happening, and "serious academics" have called it civil war since. But what do they know?
My own term is American Civil War About Between Among and Within the States, to capture the complexities of what was going on.
*Library of Congress Subject Heading is "United States--History--Civil War, 1861-1865" and even books titled "Grandpappy's Fight Against the Damnyankees during the War of Northern Aggression" or "Campaigns and Battles of the New York Interior Designers Regiment during the Slaveholder's Rebellion" get cataloged that way.
Practical Magic: The Lucrative Business of Being a Witch on Etsy and TikTok
This is the world y'all want, and this is the world y'all get. You're just waiting until it spins out of your comfort zone.
Crack:
All atheism is, is the recognition there's no gods, because none has ever shown up and never will.
Since one can't logically prove a negative like that - especially the "never will" - it's more like not believing in invisible pink unicorns. One can't show one exists so I don't entertain the idea as valid.
One cannot empirically prove or disprove, so for some of us it's just rejecting an unproveble concept.
You can believe what you want, but personal belief never trumps science.
Althouse,
I again apologize.
I said this...
Althouse, who calls herself an atheist...
Not sure why I said it or where that stray thought came from. Intuition? ESP? Satan?
I'm responsible for my words, so I'm retracting my statement. I meant no offense.
"All atheism is, is the recognition there's no gods, because none has ever shown up …. It doesn't really require thought. It's an observation."
Original Mike,
How do you observe across time and space?
Observers saw Jesus walk on water.
You or I did not observe that.
So now what?
(I would add "it doesn't really require thought" is kind of a dangerous attitude -- if atheism requires zero thinking, maybe it's a dangerous philosophy, kind of like nihilism).
"I again apologize."
And, to use your trope of "again": Again, I say this isn't the apology I want and it doesn't even seem like a sincere apology. Why are you sorry? Why is it a "mistake"? You haven't admitted you are wrong and you haven't even shown that you understand what you got wrong.
A lot of things led to the rise of spiritualism. There were new types of freedom and loneliness: modernism, alienation, and anomie, alongside absorbing the old horror of recent war. There was the expansion of the frontier, where traveling performances distracted from social isolation. City life also expanded and changed how people related to and felt isolated from each other. World fairs brought "exotic" cultures. Advertising, new leisure and consumer spectacles, and the dissolution of family ties through the rise of factories and more public education changed people. Marxist and eugenicist ideas led to the rise of utopian cults like Oneida, which had a charismatic, sexually predatory leader who tried to destroy traditional religious and family life and control reproduction. Proto-Marxism always has to destroy God and the family first. Oneida Colony is an amazing historical site. It's all still there -- the stiripculture nursery, the weird bedrooms and lecture stage, even some of the descendents still live there.
Spiritualists formed feminine cults of popularity offering spiritual consumer products and a good show. America began to be about selling things. Everything was changing fast.
There are differences between spiritualist and Christian ideas of the afterlife. Spiritualists sold direct interaction with the dead -- loved ones but also historical figures. There's a weird, short book by Harriet Orcutt, The Empire of the Invisibles, about a man learning to be a ghost in Chicago. Ghosts have to go to public libraries to read books because they can't turn the pages. They need a good, solid reader to settle down with a book so they can see the words. It's like blogging in 1898.
You're almost claiming a special power to read other people's mind and you're displaying it with pride — as if to say: Well, it might be true that you don't "call" yourself an atheist, but who really cares about that when there's this other question, whether you actually are an atheist in your mind, and about that I have strength — ESP, intuition, special attention from The Great Tempter — that gets me to what really matters so chew on that... and sorry if you were offended.
"(I would add "it doesn't really require thought" is kind of a dangerous attitude -- if atheism requires zero thinking, maybe it's a dangerous philosophy, kind of like nihilism)."
It's Crack's quote, but I adopt it because it makes an important point. Atheism is clearly the default position: the absence of God holds unless there is evidence of his existence. As it happens, I have thought about it a lot, and conclude that the only reason I started out as a child believing in God is because, to borrow from Bertrand Russell, my elders told me it was true. Once I reached the age I could reason for myself, I found no evidence to support this belief.
I wish it were otherwise, but I have to be honest with myself.
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