Gary Laderman is co-editor and co-director of ReligionDispatches and Professor and Chairperson of the Department of Religion at Emory University. Pre-order his new book, Sacred Matters (The New Press, May 12, 2009), here.
What’s religion got to do with the Tiger Woods scandal?
One of the mainstream media’s journalistic luminaries, Brit Hume, put religion smack dab in the middle of this unfortunate story recently, counseling Tiger to consider converting to Christianity in the wake of his current predicament. Marital infidelity, betrayal of public trust, and secret meetings and texting with hot young cocktail waitresses—what better religion than Christianity to steer a powerful male through the thicket of public lambasting and condemnations, and lead him back to family, fame, and fortune?
American history is full of macabre, if not downright horrific episodes of disturbing the dead. Think of all the Native American graves that have been dug up, pillaged, disrupted, in the long, often undignified history of US expansion from the colonial era through the twentieth century; or consider the American Civil War, when the dead on both sides of the conflict were ill-treated to demoralize and degrade the enemy; the early history of medical schools is full of episodes of grave-robbing—literally hiring “resurrectionists” who went out in the dead of night to unearth and carry back freshly buried corpses to basements for aspiring young doctors to dissect; or more recently, the tri-state crematory scandal in North Georgia with bodies left unburied on the grounds, defiled ashes after cremation, and living family members outraged by the disgraceful management of their dead.
