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Sacred Nine Project: New England Primer
The Shame of It All
Monday, October 31, 2022 (Halloween), 6:00 PM, Dixon Annex Recital Hall, Tulane University
The New England Primer, emerging at the end of the seventeenth century by Benjamin Harris, who had published a similar volume in England, was the first reading primer created for the American Colonies. The ubiquitous children’s verse, “Now I lay me down to sleep” was first seen here, but adjacent to that seemingly benign quatrain are dozens of pages of religious propaganda, in which children are portrayed as inherently wicked and bound for hell unless they maintain their purity and devotion to God.
This is not a concert, but a musical brainwashing. However, there is plenty of beautiful music, brand-new settings of large swaths of the New England Primer. Professor C. Leonard Raybon will lead his class (you!) through a terrifying, interactive, cinematic experience in which he, as well as several disturbing animated characters, such as The Devil and Death, help guide you through musical lessons and group recitations that will help ensure your place in Heaven. This is not a time for examination or introspection; it is a time of unquestioning surrender to becoming the obedient, sanctified children you are called to be.
[Real talk now…] As you experience this multi-media musical presentation, the temptation might be to pat ourselves on the back for coming so far as a country; after all, the sentiments in the primer are so, well…primitive. But are they really? The UCLA Williams Institute asserts that 16,000 youth will experience conversion therapy (in the 32 states where the practice is legal) before they reach the age of 18. Eric Luis Uhlmann led a study in 2012 that demonstrates that Americans, unlike their Canadian counterparts, work harder when primed with words like “salvation,” presumably revealing a deeply ingrained impulse to take action in order to avoid hell.
There are many extreme examples, too, of the belief in divine intervention in our material world. For example, when the pandemic hit, The Solid Rock Church in Cincinnati was still holding services. More than one congregant interviewed expressed that they would not contract the virus because they were covered in the blood of Jesus. Anne Graham Lotz, daughter of famed evangelist, Billy Graham, doesn’t necessarily believe that coronavirus was created as a punishment, but believes that God is using the pandemic to teach us a lesson.
Of course, the audience participation is not to proselytize, or to promote religion at all. The hope is that the experience will be just creepy enough to remind us of the dangers of groupthink and to admonish any who would like to see a continued tethering of church to state, an outcome that a vast number of Americans would welcome, unfortunately.
Beside Raybon, Journey Schaubhut, Cedric Bridges, and Chase Kamata will also sing. To protect the performer, we ask that the audience is masked, and masks will be provided. We also encourage any sinister mask of your own to add to the atmosphere.
