Bill Moyers is a recently-retired, long-time journalist who is perhaps best known for two things: His series on mythographer Joseph Campbell titled The Power of Myth and his hard-left bias in reporting.
In more than one way, Bill Moyers has been long acquainted with the power of myth.
Take recent events, for example.
In a recent column Moyers recently wrote the following:
Remember James Watt, President Ronald Reagan’s first secretary of the interior? My favorite online environmental journal, the ever-engaging Grist, reminded us recently of how James Watt told the U.S. Congress that protecting natural resources was unimportant in light of the imminent return of Jesus Christ. In public testimony he said, "After the last tree is felled, Christ will come back."
Trouble is . . . Watt never said it. He didn’t say it in front of Congress or anywhere else. In fact, he said things to Congress in direct contradiction of such views.
Moyers didn’t do his homework. He found a juicy quote in his "favorite onine environmental journal, the ever-engaging Grist" and ran with it.
In so doing, he gave his opponents . . . well . . . grist for the mill.
James Watt, in particular, took offense and
HE WROTE THIS EDITORIAL DEFENDING HIMSELF.
The paper that printed the Moyers’ column (the Minneapolis Star-Tribune) has issued a non-apology apology in which it says it will "will report any further developments in the Grist inquity" to its readers, as if it is holding out hope of finding a basis for the quote now that they’ve been called on the carpet.
Similarly, Moyers has issued a non-apology apology, saying:
Despite [the] widespread currency [of such quotes attributed to Watt], I should have checked their accuracy before using them. Grist and the Washington Post have now published corrections concerning the quote attributed to Watt in 1981.
I talked to Mr. Watt on the phone and expressed my own regret at using a quote that I had not myself confirmed. I also told him that I continue to find his policies as secretary of the interior abysmally at odds with what I, as well as other Christians, understand to be our obligation to be stewards of the earth.
So Moyers can’t simply say a gentlemanly "I’m sorry for being delinquent in my duties" without simultaneously issuing an attack of the form "You were also delinquent in your duties." In other words, the pot can’t simply apologize. It also has to call the kettle black.
Ah, well. In the days before the blogosphere came around to popularize this story (via Powerline), Moyers might have gotten away from it.
That’s the power of myth.
Bill Moyers is a Christian?
I remember watching him on Larry King Live once (why is he on that show about once a month spewing his filth?) and he seemed to rejoice in the fact that in “enlightened” “Catholic” France only 10% of people went to church on Sunday.
In my opinion, Bill Moyers is a Gnostic. No wonder he got on so well with Joseph Campbell.
[RELIGIOUS COMMENT SPAM DELETED.]
I actually rather enjoyed the PBS “Power of Myth” special. I’ve always been fascinating with Carl Jung’s therories of archetypes, and I believe that Joseph Campbell’s studies in this regard have contributed greatly in helping to understand how men have exercises their religious instincts throughout history, and the resulting parallels that have emerged.
So Campbell is an apostate Catholic. So Moyers is a Liberal Christian. Who the heck cares? Must every scholar, writer, researcher, author, or commentator be an orthodox Catholic in order for his views to be taken seriously, or even be considered worthy of consideration?
I think not. The kind of simplistic attitude of so many Catholics, whose read very little of anything not related to pop-apologetic organizations like Catholic Answers or other “conservative Catholic” publications, do nothing for true Catholic academeia, and instead serve to justify the prejudices that so many Modernists have against us, putting us in the same category as Fundamentalist Protestants.
Are many of Cambell’s ideas heretical, or otherwise at odds with a Catholic worldview? Yes; but overall I’ve found his work to be very well-written, and his points very well-made.
I think many of his ideas can be easily Christianized by us Catholics; these many parallels between the world’s religions, myths, fairy tales, etc. demonstrate not only the essential universality of human nature, even the religious instinct, but they can also serve to demonstrate how the Gospel was long prefigured in the religions/mytheologies of non-Christian peoples; and how the Catholic faith perfectly satisfies, fulfills, and sheds greater light on the psychology of all men.
Now, what I’ve written applies more to Campbell than Moyers. Still, I’ve found Moyers to be very thought-provoking, even when I don’t agree with what he says.
Let’s face it folks. Truth sometimes shine most brightly when it is seen against a backdrop of error, which is why Catholic liberal education has always involved reading and studying the planet’s greatest minds, even those that were not Catholic, Christian, or even “good.”
It would be refreshing if some of these journalists learned how to report actual facts and let the public form its own opinion.
Eric,
Let me start by stating that I agree in entirety with your assessment that “these many parallels between the world’s religions, myths, fairy tales, etc. demonstrate not only the essential universality of human nature, even the religious instinct, but they can also serve to demonstrate how the Gospel was long prefigured in the religions/mythologies of non-Christian peoples; and how the Catholic faith perfectly satisfies, fulfills, and sheds greater light on the psychology of all men.”
The problem with Joseph Campbell’s ideas is that on the surface they appear to be concordant to what you have written, but upon further reflection they are antithetical to the humanism they purport to portray. In my reading of Campbell, a number of threads seem to assert themselves. The first is his assertion that transcendental truth is unknowable, except to the degree that the more gifted will be able to apperceive the various traces of that truth left in mankind’s myths. While it is certainly true that mankind’s myths contain truth to various degrees, Campbell seems to have set up a theosophical system whereby it is an enlightened elite that is able to perceive some vestiges of the truth. This, in other words, is a type of salvation by knowledge, which is definitively Gnostic. What’s more, Campbell’s economy of enlightenment is Pelagian, namely, that by the Gnostic’s abilities alone he comes to know the truth; his framework leaves little room for God to reveal truth, particularly as he reveals himself in the incarnate second person of the Trinity. What’s more, by placing himself in a purely interpretive world, he comes to the conclusion that any moral framework is merely a human contrivance. The Gospel asserts that the moral universe is real; Campbell claims that it is an illusion. Having dispensed with the unnuanced world of right and wrong, he sets off to find a higher awareness in that universe where awareness moves beyond simple binary morality. This, being essentially unrealizable, leads nowhere except to this: real meaning found in following one’s bliss. This line of thought is eerily similar to that rejected in Wisdom:
1 Brief and troublous is our lifetime; neither is there any remedy for man’s dying, nor is anyone known to have come back from the nether world.
2 For haphazard were we born, and hereafter we shall be as though we had not been; Because the breath in our nostrils is a smoke and reason is a spark at the beating of our hearts,
3 And when this is quenched, our body will be ashes and our spirit will be poured abroad like unresisting air.
4 Even our name will be forgotten in time, and no one will recall our deeds. So our life will pass away like the traces of a cloud, and will be dispersed like a mist pursued by the sun’s rays and overpowered by its heat.
5 For our lifetime is the passing of a shadow; and our dying cannot be deferred because it is fixed with a seal; and no one returns.
6 Come, therefore, let us enjoy the good things that are real, and use the freshness of creation avidly.
For my part, I take Joseph Campbell very seriously and oppose his weltanschauung not because I am so hidebound to be unwilling to contemplate his propositions but rather because the Gnostic worldview he proposes has been a particularly pernicious one throughout salvation history, drawing away from the truth those who would otherwise come to know and love God and be open to His saving grace.
— Noah
A thought: if you remove religious spam, you should probably denature the name link, too. It can still be followed back to the guy’s site, in which time is being spent saying the NT doesn’t allow musical instruments in worship services, never mind what the Old Testament said. Hee hee. He doesn’t need the hits from his name, either, right?
More on the point, even Joseph Campbell’s muddy thinking inched me closer to an adult reversion: somewhere in that show a Buddhist monk said that he was serene about death because “now, he is individual. Then, he will become universal.”
That somehow made me realize I actually had a home in God, with God, and stuck with me all these years.
Thanks, Therese Z! I eliminated his link.
(I could eliminate his post altogether, but sometimes I feel it’s appropriate to just delete the content of an inappropriate comment and explain why. Serves as a warning to others. 😉
Noah:
Why should we care about what Joseph Campbell’s personal beliefs are? I’ve red his “Hero of a Thousand Faces” and parts of his “Power of Myth,” and find myself able to get a lot out of them, including a deeper appreciation of the fullness of Catholicism.
So long as one draws a line betwen his research and his belief, I think we’ve much to learn.
Much in the same way that I have come to understand human nature better by reading Freud. Freud got a lot wrong, but a lot right, too. He observed some very fundamental truths about human nature, articulated these well, and just went astray in his interpretation on how these flaws are to be resolved.
. . . continued . . .
Plato and Aristotle got a lot wrong too . . . a LOT. Doesn’t mean they can’t be appreciated for their contributions to human knowledge, or that we Catholics cannot learn from them.
I haven’t studied Campbell in much detail, but from what I do know of his work, I’m not convinced his somewhat reductionist analysis of myth (“Hero’s Journey”, blahblahblah) actually is all that helpful to understanding of the mythopoeic impulse, at least in the sense of being significantly more helpful than the initial groundwork by Jung he’s drawing on, or than, say, Bettelheim’s analysis of fairy tales.
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