Letters To America - Onward, Christian Soldiers!
"I'm all out of faith, this is how I feel" ~ Natalie Imbruglia
Dear America,
Is that a cross on your sleeve or are you just terrified to see me? I guess, after systematically alienating those who don't share your faith, the appearance of "the other" in your quiet little world must be kind of scary. I remember sitting through the "war on Christmas" thinking "what the fuck are these guys smoking?" because it was obvious to me, even from a continent away, living in a country far more secular than yours, that Christmas was never under threat. How could it be? According to the best stats I could find, about four-fifths of your country claim Christianity in some variety and about a quarter of the whole country are Bible literalistic so how could Christmas ever be under threat?
Fear it seems, is the only truly American value. A fear that passes beyond anything rational into a kind of dream-world where the threat far exceeds reality, where saying "Happy Holidays" is a threat to Christmas. How is it a threat exactly? Does anyone honestly think that not hearing the word "Christmas" every time one goes into a store is going to shake anyone's faith? Or is this, as I suspect, another piece of the American Christian entitlement complex? Do you know what an entitlement complex is, America? It's where you believe yourself to be worthy of special treatment just for existing, where you're so convinced of your own specialness that you should be held to different standards than the rest of society. See, without that, you'd recognize that Happy Holidays was just a way of greeting people that didn't throw your choice of faith at them. But then, what fun would that be?
It seems that American Christianity is defined as much by the sense of being embattled as by any shared values. Everywhere you look, they're teaching evolution, allowing abortion, tolerating gays, abandoning their traditional morality. "Traditional morality", odd phrase isn't it? Perhaps it's the youth of your nation America but you don't seem to have realised yet that "tradition" is just the name we give to something daft we've been doing for a long time. The Scopes monkey trial is where blind following of tradition takes you. I wonder sometimes, if the entitlement complex of America the nation exists because of the entitlement complex of the Christians who make up the majority of the country. I was actually raised in a Christian household America. I was raised by a woman who tried as best she could to improve the lot of those around her. Whether that was inspired by her faith or whether her faith was inspired by her compassion I don't know but that's what I always associated with Christians. I might not have any time for their god but I could see that the effect that their faith had on many Christians was one of compassion and that was good enough for me. Even if I didn't share that faith, at least it was helpful to society.
But then I saw you America and what the hell were you playing at? You had a vast majority of your country believing in Christianity and a significant minority who believed that the Bible was literally true but that didn't seem to lead to compassion. It seemed to lead to attacking those who didn't believe as you did. A war of words raged over teaching evolution and no matter what the aggressors claimed, it wasn't because of the minor stones they managed to throw at evolution, it was because evolution didn't fit into the literal reading of the Bible. What the fuck kind of piety is this? Evolution has evidence, literal creationism has none of any kind whatsoever but because "proof denies faith", that absence of evidence is held to be evidence in itself. This was logic not so much twisted as bent.
What you have America isn't the Christianity I grew up with, it's something quite different. I grew up with a Christianity that wasn't really scared of much, that allowed God to be in charge and got on with living it's own life but the Christianity you seem to have created America is a Christianity that's terrified to it's core of anything that offers an alternative. Gay marriage can't be allowed because that would be a threat to Christianity (do not say a word about bullshit "traditional values"), like millions of Christians might take a look at gay people getting a fair break and suddenly think "I'm cured! I want the boys!". It's a belief system of fear where the existence of things we disapprove of is a threat to our existance. It's a club of exclusivity, if those Christians don't approach their faith the same way we do, they're not really Christians at all. It's kind of amusing if you're a history geek. The attitude of the Catholic church during the Inquisitions was that no rational man could possibly have philosophical differences with mother church so anyone who didn't choose it's loving embrace must be in league with demons. I see the exact same attitude from your assorted ranks of Southern Christians, if you're not with them, you're against them.
Perhaps that's where it comes from, America. You've always defined the rest of the world by allies or enemies, with you or against you, the idea of "live and let live" never seemed to occur to you so perhaps that's why so many of your Christians seemed to take the same attitude: With us or against us, either you're a believer or you're one of those evil secular liberals trying to erode our stranglehold on public morality. Whoops, accidentally slipped into honesty there. I'm not sure when being a fanatical Christian because a requirement for being an American . I imagine it started with the Puritans (people with about the same sense of fun as Hirohito). Certainly, by the time that Bush the Elected declared that atheists couldn't be patriotic, it was ingrained. The synthesis of piety and nationalism, agree with me or be labelled unpatriotic, unChristian, sieg heil and pass the jackboots. Much like nationalism, zealotry needs an enemy, someone to rail against and the fanatical Christians found it in the society that was no longer thinking of everything in terms of God and Satan. In reality, the cash register did more damage to Christmas than secularism ever did but ruthless capitalism has been the American way for the last fifty years so you couldn't campaign against that, better to go after the secularists. Better to create an enemy.
I'm not sure when it happened but somehow, the image of the American became the image of the American Christian. In your constitution, you have seperation of church and state built in but half of your country seems to be so ignorant of history that they ignore that. They insist that their view of things is the right one, the only acceptable one. A generic season's greetings isn't enough, it has to be exclusively a Christian greeting. It isn't enough that gay people aren't accepted by the church, the law of the land has to discriminate against them as well. It isn't enough for a schoolkid to be able to pray, he has to be able to pray in a moment of silence created especially for the purpose. The entitlement complex rolls on America. Your fervent Christians hold marches and rallies. Perhaps it's racial memory but the sound of marching people bellowing slogans about exclusivity puts images of swastikas in my mind's eye. But somewhere in my mind's eye, I see wild-eyed fanatics dumping Harry Potter books on bonfires and I remember that old saying "Where they begin by burning books, they will end by burning people".
"Is your God such a worldly god that He must play at politics?" ~ Sir Francis Walsingham
Dear America,
Is that a cross on your sleeve or are you just terrified to see me? I guess, after systematically alienating those who don't share your faith, the appearance of "the other" in your quiet little world must be kind of scary. I remember sitting through the "war on Christmas" thinking "what the fuck are these guys smoking?" because it was obvious to me, even from a continent away, living in a country far more secular than yours, that Christmas was never under threat. How could it be? According to the best stats I could find, about four-fifths of your country claim Christianity in some variety and about a quarter of the whole country are Bible literalistic so how could Christmas ever be under threat?
Fear it seems, is the only truly American value. A fear that passes beyond anything rational into a kind of dream-world where the threat far exceeds reality, where saying "Happy Holidays" is a threat to Christmas. How is it a threat exactly? Does anyone honestly think that not hearing the word "Christmas" every time one goes into a store is going to shake anyone's faith? Or is this, as I suspect, another piece of the American Christian entitlement complex? Do you know what an entitlement complex is, America? It's where you believe yourself to be worthy of special treatment just for existing, where you're so convinced of your own specialness that you should be held to different standards than the rest of society. See, without that, you'd recognize that Happy Holidays was just a way of greeting people that didn't throw your choice of faith at them. But then, what fun would that be?
It seems that American Christianity is defined as much by the sense of being embattled as by any shared values. Everywhere you look, they're teaching evolution, allowing abortion, tolerating gays, abandoning their traditional morality. "Traditional morality", odd phrase isn't it? Perhaps it's the youth of your nation America but you don't seem to have realised yet that "tradition" is just the name we give to something daft we've been doing for a long time. The Scopes monkey trial is where blind following of tradition takes you. I wonder sometimes, if the entitlement complex of America the nation exists because of the entitlement complex of the Christians who make up the majority of the country. I was actually raised in a Christian household America. I was raised by a woman who tried as best she could to improve the lot of those around her. Whether that was inspired by her faith or whether her faith was inspired by her compassion I don't know but that's what I always associated with Christians. I might not have any time for their god but I could see that the effect that their faith had on many Christians was one of compassion and that was good enough for me. Even if I didn't share that faith, at least it was helpful to society.
But then I saw you America and what the hell were you playing at? You had a vast majority of your country believing in Christianity and a significant minority who believed that the Bible was literally true but that didn't seem to lead to compassion. It seemed to lead to attacking those who didn't believe as you did. A war of words raged over teaching evolution and no matter what the aggressors claimed, it wasn't because of the minor stones they managed to throw at evolution, it was because evolution didn't fit into the literal reading of the Bible. What the fuck kind of piety is this? Evolution has evidence, literal creationism has none of any kind whatsoever but because "proof denies faith", that absence of evidence is held to be evidence in itself. This was logic not so much twisted as bent.
What you have America isn't the Christianity I grew up with, it's something quite different. I grew up with a Christianity that wasn't really scared of much, that allowed God to be in charge and got on with living it's own life but the Christianity you seem to have created America is a Christianity that's terrified to it's core of anything that offers an alternative. Gay marriage can't be allowed because that would be a threat to Christianity (do not say a word about bullshit "traditional values"), like millions of Christians might take a look at gay people getting a fair break and suddenly think "I'm cured! I want the boys!". It's a belief system of fear where the existence of things we disapprove of is a threat to our existance. It's a club of exclusivity, if those Christians don't approach their faith the same way we do, they're not really Christians at all. It's kind of amusing if you're a history geek. The attitude of the Catholic church during the Inquisitions was that no rational man could possibly have philosophical differences with mother church so anyone who didn't choose it's loving embrace must be in league with demons. I see the exact same attitude from your assorted ranks of Southern Christians, if you're not with them, you're against them.
Perhaps that's where it comes from, America. You've always defined the rest of the world by allies or enemies, with you or against you, the idea of "live and let live" never seemed to occur to you so perhaps that's why so many of your Christians seemed to take the same attitude: With us or against us, either you're a believer or you're one of those evil secular liberals trying to erode our stranglehold on public morality. Whoops, accidentally slipped into honesty there. I'm not sure when being a fanatical Christian because a requirement for being an American . I imagine it started with the Puritans (people with about the same sense of fun as Hirohito). Certainly, by the time that Bush the Elected declared that atheists couldn't be patriotic, it was ingrained. The synthesis of piety and nationalism, agree with me or be labelled unpatriotic, unChristian, sieg heil and pass the jackboots. Much like nationalism, zealotry needs an enemy, someone to rail against and the fanatical Christians found it in the society that was no longer thinking of everything in terms of God and Satan. In reality, the cash register did more damage to Christmas than secularism ever did but ruthless capitalism has been the American way for the last fifty years so you couldn't campaign against that, better to go after the secularists. Better to create an enemy.
I'm not sure when it happened but somehow, the image of the American became the image of the American Christian. In your constitution, you have seperation of church and state built in but half of your country seems to be so ignorant of history that they ignore that. They insist that their view of things is the right one, the only acceptable one. A generic season's greetings isn't enough, it has to be exclusively a Christian greeting. It isn't enough that gay people aren't accepted by the church, the law of the land has to discriminate against them as well. It isn't enough for a schoolkid to be able to pray, he has to be able to pray in a moment of silence created especially for the purpose. The entitlement complex rolls on America. Your fervent Christians hold marches and rallies. Perhaps it's racial memory but the sound of marching people bellowing slogans about exclusivity puts images of swastikas in my mind's eye. But somewhere in my mind's eye, I see wild-eyed fanatics dumping Harry Potter books on bonfires and I remember that old saying "Where they begin by burning books, they will end by burning people".
"Is your God such a worldly god that He must play at politics?" ~ Sir Francis Walsingham