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So I watched the musical Pippin for the first time yesterday and I have a distantly related thought about monasticism and modern American Protestant Christianity.
(I knew that there was a musical called "Pippin" but I did not know until Friday that it was about the son of Charlemagne. If you want me to watch a musical, I guess, tell me it's based on some obscure history.)
Obviously the musical is not a historical in any way, but it does converse in some really strange ways with the real history of the real Pepin the Hunchback.
The real Pepin the Hunchback was disinherited by his father, either because his mother fell into disfavor or because he was a hunchback.
Some time later (how much later is arguable) he attempted to lead a revolt against his father and particular his father's current wife, who was apparently quite awful.
He was bad at it. He and his conspirators were immediately caught and sentence to death.
He was bad at it. He and his conspirators were immediately caught and sentence to death.
Out of familial mercy, his father commuted Pepin's death sentence and had him forcibly tonsured and sent to a monastery, where he lived for many years (outliving his father) before eventually dying of plague.
Anyway, when watching Pippin the Musical, I was struck by how much it seemed to be an endorsement of monasticism. All of the earthly pleasures ring hollow for Pippin, so a retreat from worldly pleasure into a spiritual life seems quite reasonable as an answer to that.
But this doesn't happen, and in hindsight it is obvious that it doesn't happen, because Pippin the Musical is rooted in the morality of post-war American Protestantism and Protestantism has anti-monasticism deep in its marrow.
(there's even a line in the musical about this "the Church isn't saving souls; it's investing in real estate" which is a common Protestant critique of the monastery system.)
Instead of the monastic life, Pippin is saved by domestic life: a wife, a step-son, ordinary domestic labor in a pastoralized setting.
What struck me about this is how much it is presented _as a form of_ monasticism. Domestic life is seen as a retreat from worldly pleasure.
What struck me about this is how much it is presented _as a form of_ monasticism. Domestic life is seen as a retreat from worldly pleasure.
And then I realized that a huge amount of the post-war American narrative about marriage, child-rearing, and domestic life frames the family as the monastery: a spiritual and Godly retreat from earthly life and pleasures.
Everything from maudlin refrains about the sanctity of marriage to tasteless "jokes" about "your life is over now" is adopting the framing of the family as a monastery.
Which is really interesting! It certainly has some problems, though, the chief of which is that a happy marriage _is_ an earthly pleasure, and the framing marriage as solely as sacrifice and pious austerity denies that pleasure in a way that makes marriage a miserable trap.
What's also interesting to me is that the monastic tradition is rooted so deeply in Christianity that even the branches of Christianity that explicitly and violently reject it still need to reinvent it from time to time. It is a spiritual and narrative necessity.
Anyway, Pippin the Musical is really interesting. Pippin ends up in a bucolic marriage, Pepin ends up in a monastery, but are they really all that different?
