Black Mass

In Black Mass: Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopia, John Gray traces the Bush administration's high hopes for a new Iraq back to the birth of Christianity and its dangerous optimism.

The first followers of Christ expected him to return in divine glory, ushering in a new era where the Kingdom of Heaven would reign on Earth. So far, this hasn't happened.

"The history of Christianity is a series of attempts to cope with this founding experience of eschatological disappointment," Gray argues.

Impatient strains of the Christian faith have decided that humans must usher in this new era - with violence if necessary. History is understood to have a purpose - the salvation of human kind - and Christians must bring it about. Gray is relentless in his pursuit of his thesis. In terse, lucid prose, he steamrolls through glass walls once thought steel. This is not a book for the meek: Gray presumes a solid knowledge of Western political history, especially the 20th century, and uses words like "eschatological" without pausing to let the back of the class look them up. (It means "the part of theology concerned with death, judgment, and destiny," by the way. I looked it up).

This "millenialism" can pop up outside of Christianity - Gray looks at the Jacobites of Britain and their children, the revolutionaries of France, the Nazi efforts to "perfect" the human race and Stalin's Soviet dream of a better mankind as "a continuation of religion by other means."

Gray hunts this belief in the perfectibility of humanity as it switches from the political left (Trotsky's permanent revolution) to the right, and puts on a wig to become a friend of the Christian Right as neo-conservatism (Bush's limitless war on terror).

And this is where Gray unloads his intellectual arsenal: after dispatching Britain's Tony Blair (who shocked his fellow countrymen by announcing "I only know what I believe,"), he opens fire on George W. Bush.

"Our responsibility to history is clear: to answer these attacks and rid the world of evil," Bush opined about 9/11.

Gray gapes for a bit, shakes his head, and ravages the idea. Evil is not something that can be cleansed from the world, but a permanent part of existence. Gray notes that for much of Christianity, Bush's belief is heresy. The doctrine of original sin precludes the possibility of humans eradicating evil.

On a secular note, Gray observes: "Humans are an extremely violent species ... Where the West is distinctive is in using force and terror (in an attempt) to alter history and perfect humanity."

With a mindset deeply out of touch with reality, the Bush administration is on record as preferring "faith-based intelligence." Gray quotes a Bush aide as scoffing at the "reality-based community."

"That's not the way the world works anymore," the aide says. "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality."

Well, they can write the script (liberators greeted with flowers) but can't control the actors (insurgents with bombs).

And they are not an empire, says Gray, but "tourists with guns," as one U.S. soldier in Afghanistan put it. The U.S. aims for short-term occupations and expresses little of an empire's concerns for the occupied country's long-term history and growth. Just dress it in blue jeans and move on. Inevitably, as in Iraq, "the dream of Utopia ends in squalid horror."

Black Mass is a phenomenal book, and a pleasure to read. Gray is a profound thinker, and often delivers his thoughts in clear shards of poetry. After describing religion as a myth that gives us meaning, he presents his picture of reality. Humans cannot be changed. We are not like angels, not guided by a divine hand, but "ephemeral struggling animals, each with its own passions and illusions."

And "nothing is more human than the readiness to kill and die in order to secure a meaning in life ... paranoia is often a protest against insignificance."

Gray says we generally "prefer the romance of a meaningless quest to coping with difficulties that can never be finally overcome."

The disaster of Iraq has killed this modern dream of Utopia. Even Bush doesn't sound convinced these days when he rattles his bent sabre at Iran.

Black Mass is brilliant, but not happy. Gray concludes that whatever exit strategy the U.S. devises, there is no exit for Iraqis. There will be long, bloody struggle, and eventually, a ruler will emerge amid mountains of corpses and rivers of blood.

Whether he brings flowers is anyone's guess.