Americans, if taken at their word, are the most religious people in all the industrialized world, but what does that really mean? Bill McKibben has some thoughts in the new issue of Harpers. Here’s a clip:
Only 40 percent of Americans can name more than four of the Ten Commandments, and a scant half can cite any of the four authors of the Gospels. Twelve percent believe Joan of Arc was Noah’s wife. This failure to recall the specifics of our Christian heritage may be further evidence of our nation’s educational decline, but it probably doesn’t matter all that much in spiritual or political terms. Here is a statistic that does matter: Three quarters of Americans believe the Bible teaches that “God helps those who help themselves.” That is, three out of four Americans believe that this uber-American idea, a notion at the core of our current individualist politics and culture, which was in fact uttered by Ben Franklin, actually appears in Holy Scripture. The thing is, not only is Franklin’s wisdom not biblical; it’s counter-biblical. Few ideas could be further from the gospel message, with its radical summons to love of neighbor. On this essential matter, most Americans–most American Christians–are simply wrong, as if 75 percent of American scientists believed that Newton proved gravity causes apples to fly up.
Asking Christians what Christ taught isn’t a trick. When we say we are a Christian nation–and, overwhelmingly, we do–it means something. People who go to church absorb lessons there and make real decisions based on those lessons; increasingly, these lessons inform their politics. (One poll found that 11 percent of U.S. churchgoers were urged by their clergy to vote in a particular way in the 2004 election, up from 6 percent in 2000.) When George Bush says that Jesus Christ is his favorite philosopher, he may or may not be sincere, but he is reflecting the sincere beliefs of the vast majority of Americans.
I’ve discussed it here before, but when I went and visited my local mega-church a few weeks ago, I was struck not only by the feel-good, motivational vibe of the sermon (set to music by the accompanying rock band), but by the fact that there was little to no discussion of Jesus and his teachings. There were no Bibles in the pews… There were no pews… There were just big, theater-style seats with super-sized, built-in cup holders. And, the only time that Jesus was mentioned it was to remind us that he was full of wrath and that we – at least those of us who’d marked the “saved” box on the form that had been handed around – would be able to avoid it.
There was no discussion of good works, of clothing the poor, of feeding the hungry. There was, however, talk of “us” being chosen, and the threat we all faced from the wicked, wicked world outside, but nothing about compassion. It was, to use the terminology of Bruce Bawer, all about evangelical “law”, with no mention of Christian “love.”
Having sat through this well-choreographed hour of mega-church religitainment, what McKibben says doesn’t surprise me at all. The people in that church, at least based on my experience, probably didn’t know the gospels. What they did know, however, was that Jesus was angry, that they deserved what they had, and that when Jesus returned, they’d be saved, while the rest of us burned in lakes of fire.
If I understand McKibben, he’s suggesting that believing in this self-validating religion of superiority, exclusion and privilege isn’t in actuality religious at all, and I wholeheartedly agree. It’s self-help infomercial wrapped in the cloak of religion, and nothing more.
