Tea Party Douche Bags do not Define Christianity I’m irked that my fellow liberals understand “Christian” to be synonymous with tea party douche bags! And Judaism to be the Zionist genocide of Palestinians. And Islam to be the Taliban. (Hindus are just unfathomable. But Buddhists are hip because, really, they are atheists) In our fear and loathing we forget our own stories and families. What about the favorite aunts and uncles, neighbors and teachers of fading generations who were quietly Christian or observantly Jewish? When I try to remind friends that many people are still sanely and intelligently observant and find a deep, rich, inspiration in the tradition, art, thought, mysticism of Christianity or Judaism or Islam they freak out. I must be defending THEM because I am ONE of THEM. Do they/I really believe that there is a God? If God is Love, what about all the evil? By definition, they say, Christians BELIEVE that Jesus CHRIST the SON of God. Jews believe they are CHOSEN. Muslims believe in Jihad. I can beg the questions and babble about the living history of liberal religion (loving religion) all I want, but that they have NO INTEREST in religion beyond denouncing the idiocy. A funny friend just says ACK! And tells the stories of nuns in his high school who told a young girl who’d been raped that she was the cause and that her parents were ashamed. But what, really, I ask about all the Religious people in the front lines of all the important human rights battles in the 20th century in America? Dorothy Day, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Cesar Chavez, The Berrigan brothers, Jimmy Carter. They were the exceptions that proves the rule: Christianity supported Capitalism. Apes and Elephants are kinder and more collective then human beings because they are NOT religious. Morality is just fine without God. I didn’t know Dorothy, Martin, Malcolm, Cesar, or Jimmy. But I do remember my mother’s Aunt Clara whose Christian Science gave her solace as a young woman who couldn’t have children living with an imperious mother-in-law. Thaddeus Clark the Philosophy Professor minister of the St. Louis Unitarian Church who pondered much and made it clear. Harry Diehl who taught me about Marxism as we dried dishes when he was 80 and I was 12, who was a trial lawyer for the Wobblies before he left Detroit to farm his wife’s Illinois land and teach Presbyterian Sunday School—never relinquishing his Marxism. Iris Markham the Jewish English Teacher at Ladue High School in St. Louis who shared amazing books and directed us in the musicals. Mary Ann Nagy the artist who came out of the New Covenant group here in Champaign-Urbana who works with homeless kids in Seattle, holding their hands while they have babies, or die of Aids. Lucinda Strehlow whose spine is fused and who when her husband Jim was dying said, “ We know how to do this,” relying on her Presbyterian Church to give her support. Eva Blum the irreverent therapist who puts my head together when I can’t hold it up. Whose grand children are orthodox Jews. Mohammed Al Heeti the Iraqi Pater Familia of Champaigns World Harvest Grocery Store who is so deeply angry about what happened to his country but so unfailingly polite to his customers. And friends who are in the trenches? Claudia Lenhoff who leads the Champaign County Health Care Consumers, Esther Patt of the ChampaignTennant Union, the Ack! Man who does their books, who truly have no time for discussions of God? The fact that the code they live by just maybe, probably, came from theologies of social justice encoded in their religious culture, is beside the point. And no, Bryan Savage, I am not saying that these lovely people prove that God exists. Only that they are the saving remnants of their beliefs (Perhaps, only they know what they really believe in the middle of the night but I doubt any of them think there is a guy at the end of the telephone granting them and their beloveds immunity.) The Bible, most Religious Scripture I’ve read, is steeped in meditations and contradictions. Dire threats are followed by beautiful paeans to delight, and exhortations to take care of the Poor. Propaganda has been around forever. The Bible itself was the propaganda of it’s day. And all revisions and translations of the Bible have been made, in part, for political purposes including egalitarian ones: Let the PEOPLE read for themselves. My point, I think, is it would be better to challenge those who have simple and conservative ideas of God, with the vaguer, more ambiguous, more nurturing God-thoughts of a tolerant liberalism. I am not a good representative of this tolerance. But Anne Lamott is. Read her Stitches. You will laugh. And feel better about everything with the exception of the Douche Bags.
Posted on: Tue, 01 Apr 2014 20:39:55 +0000
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