What kind of Nation does this make?

July 25, 2009 by Dan Hooper.

Rachel Maddow made a comment in passing the other night in another context, but she used a phrase which has stuck with me. Referring to other commentators (I think it was Rush Limbaugh on the Crowley/Gates/Obama story), she said that people “stoke indignation.”

Stoke is a word seldom used these days. From www.dictionary.com: 

stoke [stohk]

–verb (used with object)  1. to poke, stir up, and feed (a fire).  2. to tend the fire of (a furnace, esp. one used with a boiler to generate steam for an engine); supply with fuel.

stoke 1660 (implied in stoker), “to feed and stir up a fire in a fireplace,” from Du. stoken “to stoke,” from M.Du. stoken “to poke, thrust,” related to stoc “stick, stump,” from P.Gmc. *stok-, variant of *stik-, *stek- “pierce, prick” (see stick (v.)). Stoked “enthusiastic” first recorded 1902; revived in surfer slang 1963.I love the reference to surfer slang, but Maddow’s use is more serious. And this on indignation:  

in·dig·na·tion [in dig’ney shuhn] 

– noun.  Strong displeasure at something considered unjust, offensive, insulting, or base; righteous anger.[Origin: 1325–75; ME indignacio(u)n < L indignation- (s. of indignatio), equiv. to indignat(us) ptp. of indignari to be indignant, take offense + -ion- -ion; see indignant ]

So this implies that the taking of offense or holding righteous anger and outrage, etc., must be stirred up or fed like a fire to keep it alive. Otherwise, people flame out and tempers cool off by themselves.As much as I enjoy the poking of one political force by another (preferably my side poking the other side), the phrase “stoking indignation” explains a lot of the supposed outrage in our culture/nation/world. One wonders what all of our public commentators, spokespersons, and self-appointed moralizers and critics hope to create by being “stoked” and trying to supply fuel to everyone else. Fred Phelps stokes the indignation of those who don’t like homosexuality, for example. His extremism gives support to others who take offense and don’t see their own offense as unreasonable because there is this minister guy who is even more shocked, shocked, shocked at the tolerance of homosexuals in America. But his church in Topeka, I understand, consists almost entirely of his own extended family members. His stoking doesn’t seem to find much fuel in Topeka or anywhere else.Is not this the agenda of Archbishop Peter Akinola in Nigeria who is still stoked, still outraged six years after the consecration of a gay Episcopal bishop in New Hampshire. Akinola has done everything possible to “stoke indignation” in the worldwide Anglican communion.And the right-wing Lutherans such as Solid Rock and Word Alone pretty much do the same. The Word Alone newsletter, which comes to me unsolicited, attempts to stoke indignation by offering news and analysis of everything they believe should stir up the faithful to righteous anger.

Herman Otten played this role, beginning with the Missouri Synod Lutherans, for decades in his tabloid Christian News. My friend Howard Erickson, who was instrumental in launching Lutherans Concerned for Gay People (now Lutherans Concerned/North America) in 1974, loved to bait Otten by mailing him copies of The Gay Lutheran, which Otten would not merely quote in his news tabloid but reproduce the entire front page of the mimeographed newsletter, in its entirety hoping to “stoke indignation” among fellow Missouri Synod Lutherans.

“I always put the complete mailing address right on the front,” says Erickson, “because I suspected many closeted pastors and lay people who received Otten’s newspaper would hear about Lutherans Concerned and be able to contact us easily.” (The first three issues of “The Gay Lutheran” by the way are reproduced in their entirety on the LC/Los Angeles web site. More will be added when I have time to scan them.)

Stoking indignation is hardly new. A thousand years ago Peter Damien (above; a saint and doctor of the Catholic Church) wrote a little treatise, The Book of Gomorrah, by which he meant to expose the terrible homosexual practices among Catholic clerics, and sent the work directly to Pope Leo IX. Leo responded with praise and approval for the work (”About these thins, since you have written what seemed best to you, moved by holy indignation . . .”) and commendation for Damien (” . . . for it is greater to instruct by deed than by word”), suggesting politely that he keep up the good work. The late John Boswell’s (below) groundbreaking study in 1980, Christianity, Social Tolerance and Homosexuality, pointed out that Pope Leo IX basically shelved Damien’s holy indignation and did nothing about the homosexuals among the ranks of clergy.

Hmmm.

Apparently indignation is not always stoked successfully. We can only hope that our modern stokers would take up surf boards and stop trying to turn America into one enormous Indig-Nation.

—Pastor Dan Hooper, Los Angeles

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