MR: Abe's column-a review of places of worship-is featured in the San Diego Reader and that's about the only thing I read in the Reader. Every time it comes out, I look forward to seeing what Abe has to say because Abe is not a Christian, he is Jewish, and yet he reviews churches sort of like a music or a food critic.AO: It was based upon the New York Times restaurant review.
MR: It's a very entertaining and often very insightful look at churches. We thought it would be interesting to have Abe talk to us about churches outside of our usual orbit and also within our usual orbit and get some of his reflections from someone outside of the Christian family. First of all, can you give a little bit of your own background and where you stand in terms of your own religious tradition and how you got interested in doing this?AO: Well, I started writing at the Reader when I was nineteen or twenty, and then I left for a number of years to study at Yeshiva in Israel. I came back and began writing for the Reader again. By this time our daily paper, like many daily papers across the county, had slowly been cutting down on religion coverage. So my boss, the publisher at the paper, really wanted to have a regular religions feature. But he wanted it to be something that people would actually read. He didn't want what is called a "faith and ethics" kind of feature. So he and my editor, Judith Moore, hit on this idea of making it in the form of a restaurant review. I would grade churches on their sermon, choir, architecture, snacks, and then come up with a star system where one could give them one to four stars. This idea of competition, my bosses thought, would encourage people to turn to this column. From what I understand, it has become the best read, or one of the best read columns in the paper.
MR: It is insightful as well as humorous. Speaking as an informed non-Christian, what do you think makes a church successful? What gives it the four stars? AO: Over the past five years I have probably visited at least two hundred and fifty different places of worship. And a successful church is generally made up of the some of the things you would assume, before you went in, would make it successful. It often begins with a very committed pastor, because one thing I have learned is that it does all trickle down from the senior pastor. If you have a snotty senior pastor, you have a snotty congregation. [laughing]
MR: It's personality driven.AO: Yeah, it really is. Who was it, I think Thoreau, made the famous statement about "the organization is the shadow of the man," you know, who runs it. But apart from the leader, I look for a cogent sermon. It can't be one of these prepackaged ones that people get really used to, like kindergarten worksheets where it's like: Jesus came to blank, you know, humanity. [laughing] And then everyone writes "s-a-v-e." The sermon has to be delivered in a fashion that addresses adults. Preferably, someone should be using humor, irony, and even sarcasm. The preacher needs to show a real familiarity with both the Bible and exegesis. Of course, friendliness is always a big deal. And like I said, how congregants greet people from the outside is truly a reflection of the senior pastor. Music is also important. If you are going to use rock music it better be really, really good rock music [laughing], and not this . . .
MR: Like imitation Carpenters?AO: Right. I understand among your people, you refer to it as "Jesus is my boyfriend" [laughing] music. I have heard that term amongst the Calvinist sect. [laughing] But often, the churches that hit the mark most of the time are African-American churches. Where the rhetorical style is still valued. You can hear these amazing sermons that can go on for forty-five minutes or longer and are cogent, funny, sarcastic, and so forth.
MR: Do you often find that you either have good communicators with no content or good content without great communication skills?AO: There are certainly pastors that can hold the congregation's attention by virtue of their own personal charisma, but even when I am hearing a great sermon, I am wondering how many people are actually listening to it in the pews. I am appreciating it because I am paid to sit there and take notes! But I don't know how many other people really know what's going on. I wonder how effective it really is. I don't know what these congregants do when they get home, but I know for myself, that points I have heard in various sermons will stay with me.
MR: What are some of the changes you have seen since you have been writing, reviewing, and attending churches?AO: Among the changes that I have seen, of course, is PowerPoint. I'm not a fan of PowerPoint! I was just at a church where we sat for about ten or fifteen minutes and waited for the morning speaker to get the PowerPoint up and running. I have yet to see any sermon where there was any apparent reason why PowerPoint was being used in the first place!
MR: Why it made a difference! [laughing]AO: It's like in the old Second City TV sketch they did where the producers wanted to do a 3D version of Midnight Cowboy and this women playing Pauline Kael says, "But why, it was a perfectly good movie in the first place." It is a perfectly good sermon; I don't see why they need these little PowerPoint spinning things!
MR: This is like Neil Postman talking about technology: we don't ask "why" any more, it's just there.AO: It would not be so insulting if it actually worked! [laughing] Three-quarters of the time it doesn't work. So, you sit there and it is very awkward because there is a lot of male pride and a lot of testosterone invested in getting the thing to run right. It's a very charged and uncomfortable moment in church.
MR: How about the content in the preaching? What are your general impressions of Protestant preaching?AO: It really depends where you go. There are still pockets of places-among the intellectual Calvinists-where you can find very thoughtful sermons. But, of course, among the nondenominational evangelicals there is a lot of practical stuff about marriage. I can't tell you how many "keeping the marriage alive" sermons I have heard! The scary thing that I have noticed is that on both ends of the political spectrum, there is this real hysteria now. It's amazing. You can go to a very liberal church or a very conservative church and both sides see themselves as martyrs. Both sides think-for different reasons-that the world is going to hell in a handbasket. It's strange because you can hear the same thing on both sides and this is in spite of empirical evidence. I was just talking with a friend about this. You can look at the statistics about teen pregnancy, abortion, illiteracy, and so forth-things are actually going pretty well. But if you listen to the extreme right or the extreme left, you're left with a very dire picture.
MR: So the sense that you are going to church to have an actual meeting with God-that sort of transcendence-is missing in a lot of the churches?AO: In a lot of it. You can say that among the more politically committed conservatives and liberals what you have is a sort of a social gospel. They say, of course, that they are addressing something theological, but essentially you could get the same thing by staying at home and watching the talking heads on Meet the Press. In a way, it's another sort of entertainment. I haven't ever learned anything in one of those sermons that I did not know already.
MR: What would you say to a pastor or a parishioner listening to the program who really thinks that the best way to reach out to non-Christians is for us to tell people what they need by addressing what they want? Give them their felt needs, give them what they want. If they have a problem with their marriage tell them that Christ is the solution of that. Dress it up that way and don't get too theological, you don't want to turn people off. What would you say to people who would encourage us to go down that road?AO: There is a problem with that, as I see it-mind you I am an outsider. When you simplify things so much, they become a lie or they are a misrepresentation of facts. You hear people say that people don't want theology or that theology is a dirty word, but I find that is really dishonest and insulting because everyone obviously comes from a certain perspective. But there is no mention made and it's never articulated. You can go up and ask, "Do you ordain women?" Well, "No we don't." And you say, "Why?" They will always say, "Because the Bible says we don't ordain women." Well, yes, the Bible says a lot of things, but you have someone interpreting it for you.
MR: So the assumptions are hidden rather than explicit. AO: Right, and when you are dealing with something as intimate as religion, full disclosure is necessary.
MR: Truth in advertising.AO: You have to ask, What do you really want? Is it to get people into church? What, ultimately, is the goal? What is the point? There is a whole historical way of thinking that basically boils down to "get them in to the camp meeting!" Getting them there was the point. And then you let God sort them out. It depends on what you mean by success or what people want.
MR: Abe, you are often critical of traditional or confessional churches that sort of set aside their confessional identity. They strip it down to the bare essentials so that they can attract an evangelical audience. One of your great reviews, I thought, was of a mainline Lutheran church. You said that there was no liturgy; there was a sense of chatty familiarity with God; and there was really no content to the sermon. What would you say to those who are, say, confessional Reformed or Lutheran or traditional Catholics as they try to market their faith to the American culture and the mass-market culture?AO: I would first ask them to really investigate their own motives. It is more fun to have PowerPoint and praise bands, but why are you doing it? Is it that deep down there is some discomfort, some insecurity, about their own theology? I would ask them, what is really motivating this desire for change? And then also to ask themselves, where are you going to end, what is the logical conclusion of this? I don't think that there is just one way of coming to God, but when churches become so homogenous, I think you lose some very important things.
MR: Judaism would not be Judaism without Torah. There are some things you have to have or you don't have that religion.AO: Right! It does get kind of pointless to constantly keep up with modernity. I was sitting at a humanistic Jewish service and they had done their own little liturgy. I asked them how is it that people who have never diagnosed their own illnesses or prepared their own taxes or written their own contracts feel that they are up to writing a liturgy? [laughing] They understand that people have jobs like lawyers, attorney . . .
MR: Expertise maybe? [laughing]AO: Right, but when it is liturgy, it's a game the whole family can play! [laughing] I sit there and wonder about the thinking behind it because it makes you cringe. You want to ask these educated people, did you ever think that this is based on three thousand years of tradition?
MR: But now it's just arts and crafts. AO: Right, now anyone can do it. It's really not that hard. [laughing] But you wonder, why don't you just diagnose your own illnesses, then? All that mystification about medicine and law, it's needless-anyone can do it! [laughing]
MR: Abe, you are even more delightful in person than you are to read. AO: Thanks for having me.
